Some ‘Senior’ Jobs Only Call For a Few Years of Experience
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Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, April 30th. I'm Arianna Espuru for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for J.R. Whelan. We talk a lot on the show about inflation for things like groceries, gas and travel. But what about inflation for job titles? Workers are landing senior level roles with minimal experience.
You could be a senior analyst at a large company like Johnson & Johnson, again, with a year, maybe three years of experience on the high end of what they were looking for for that position. So in some cases, these are big name companies and they're offering big titles to go with these early career jobs.
Wall Street Journal columnist Callum Borchers joins me after the break.
This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news in Washington. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise.
Turns out that senior level job posting you're seeing doesn't always require years and years of experience. Wall Street Journal columnist Callum Borchers joins me. Callum, you looked into quote unquote senior level jobs on hiring websites. What did you find?
Well, I found that a surprising number of them are actually entry-level or for early career professionals. Just take Indeed, for example, Ariana. You can put senior as the keyword in your search and filter only for entry-level jobs. And at least this week, you'll get over 8,000 results. Now, I mean, look, some of them are for your workers at senior care centers. So the keyword is kind of a blunt instrument there. But a lot of these are really entry-level jobs for recent college grads that are fluffed up with fancy senior sounding titles.
What evidence shows ‘senior’ job titles are being given to early-career workers?
Give me a few of the examples of the actual jobs that you saw on there. Like what sort of keywords are right next to the word senior?
Associate is a big one. And I think that's an important asterisk because the associate level does denote that it's a little bit lower down the chain. It's not director or partner or something like that. But for example, you could be associate. a senior client associate at J.P. Morgan Advisors, which is the high net worth advisory arm of J.P. Morgan. And the requirement is only a year of professional experience. Or perhaps you could be a senior analyst at a large company like Johnson & Johnson, again, with a year, maybe three years of experience on the high end of what they were looking for for that position. So in some cases, these are big name companies and they're offering big titles to go with these early career jobs.
Some of them really do pay handsomely. And in fact, recruiters have told me this is one of the reasons why you see this kind of title inflation, even at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder in the tech sector, in banking and consulting. The starting salaries for new grads can be six figures in some cases.
Tell me a little bit more about why are these companies offering these lofty titles, like you said, for workers with little experience?
There's a few things going on. There's a little bit of a keeping up with the Joneses effect here, right? So I've been told by recruiters that you can go back just a couple years when the labor market was at its tightest and companies were really competing fiercely for talent. One thing that they could dangle to prospective candidates was a better title. And that could be a draw for workers who say, if I go here, I can get this bigger title. It's going to look good on a resume, set me up for career advancement down the line. Some of it just comes down to padding people's egos, trying to make people feel special and engaged. That was another big theme in my conversations with managers.
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