So I have to say, one of the perks of work­ing here in Cen­tral Asia is that you get some pretty cool job titles. And if there’s flex­i­bil­ity in your orga­ni­za­tion, you can take your pick. Unlike in Amer­ica, where you would be laughed at for try­ing to take on a title “too big for your britches,” here noth­ing is too big! A few examples:

Con­sul­tant

You would think this is a high-paid per­son who con­tributes an inde­pen­dent per­spec­tive, right? No. This is the low­est peon at Atameken* Uni­ver­sity, earn­ing some $700 a month. Unfor­tu­nately, when the uni­ver­sity reviewed out­side can­di­dates from the US, they actu­ally marked down those pro­fes­sors who had con­sult­ing expe­ri­ence with For­tune 500 com­pa­nies – why pay some­one well who had only earned such low titles? (Job-seekers beware!).

Man­ager

So you would think – this per­son man­ages projects, right? No. They are slightly bet­ter than a con­sul­tant. They do stuff. Like, what they’re told. But they have no man­age­r­ial authority.

Senior Man­ager

So… surely this per­son man­ages? Again, no. There are no mean­ing­ful super­vi­sor respon­si­bil­i­ties or abil­ity to con­trol sched­ules, projects, etc. I really really wanted this one because it sounds cool, but it got handed to a rather more vocal com­plainer instead. You have some respon­si­bil­ity for projects, but you still aren’t far from the bottom.

Depart­ment Head

Well, it really depends on how big the depart­ment is. If it’s a depart­ment of one, you’re not really, uhh, man­ag­ing. If it’s larger, you might be, but your depart­ment may still come under another lat­eral depart­ment through the mys­te­ri­ous laws of orga­ni­za­tional physics. Are you qual­i­fied? You might be, or it might just be a polit­i­cal appointment.

Depart­ment / Deputy / Gen­eral Director

Must say, I’ve never quite fig­ured this out. There’s a gen­eral direc­tor who is respon­si­ble for… stuff… at my friends job, that she never actu­ally sees. Then there’s her depart­ment direc­tor, who does a hel­luva lot of work. My impres­sion, though, is that the depart­ment direc­tor is sev­eral steps down from the gen­eral direc­tor, and not actu­ally a part of the Direc­tory Direc­tors, the invis­i­ble team of C-Suite peo­ple here who are all polit­i­cally con­nected. I am also, sadly, unlikely to every be a Direc­tory Director.

Librar­ian

Fur­ther­more, our school is run by sen­si­ble Euro­pean types, and so I just have the title of Librar­ian right now. I def­i­nitely man­age staff, but the title is more lowly than last year’s Man­ager of Ref­er­ence Ser­vices title, which I got as a non-manager.

On the upside, I’ve got­ten my name badge here changed over to Head of Libraries, so that’s progress. (One of my peers got E.L.Winkelstein,** Head of Drama Depart­ment, Head of Eng­lish Depart­ment engraved on his. Title infla­tion. I copied him.)

Next, I’m angling for Library Direc­tor, or pos­si­bly Library Dig­ni­tary. I’m sure it’s fine that I’ve only got a few assis­tants, an intern, and a vol­un­teer… I have two libraries to run, no direct bosses, and one hell of a work­load… doesn’t that make me a director???

Finance Direc­tor

But then… I recently dis­cov­ered that non-profits like the Arys­lanata* Edu­ca­tional Co., which I thought were run by the named leader for social ben­e­fit, are actu­ally run by Finance Direc­tors for the pur­pose of Sav­ing Money. These peo­ple hold incred­i­ble power over whole orga­ni­za­tions, over who gets fired in unre­lated depart­ments, over which paper-clip line-items on the bud­get are approved, and thereby over what kind of teach­ing can actu­ally go on at all lev­els from child­hood through grad­u­ate school. Those nom­i­nally charged with direct­ing edu­ca­tion have no mean­ing­ful author­ity. I have taken note: you do not mess with a Gen­eral Direc­tor, Finance Direc­tor, or any other Cen­tral Asian called “Director.”

(I say this with all new-found and grov­el­ing respect, dear Directors.) 

(But this is also why I hope to be known as Library Direc­tor, all-caps.)

Expert-Analyst

Of course, I also like to see what other titles are pos­si­ble. It’s like being in Queen Eliz­a­beth I’s royal court and aspir­ing and back­stab­bing one’s way to be Sec­ond Hand­maiden of the Bed­cham­ber or some­thing. There should be a mas­ter list of poten­tial titles somewhere.

Any­way, a local uni cur­rently has an Expert-Analyst posi­tion open. Com­ing out of a prior job search on the DC mar­ket, I found this intrigu­ing. They want a senior level white dude, some pol­icy wonk at AEI with a sketchy ‘gov­ern­ment ser­vice’ past, one that gives self-important speeches, right?

No. This requires exactly one year of expe­ri­ence and basic Eng­lish. Appar­ently it’s for local report-writer girls. Pity. The title is brilliant.

Project Man­ager

Fur­ther down, I see the Expert-Analyst may be man­aged by the Project Man­ager. Quite a dull title, but it requires a Master’s degree and sev­eral years of ana­lytic work expe­ri­ence. That may be on par for the Amer­i­can job mar­ket, but no word on whether this per­son actu­ally man­ages projects or not.

My sus­pi­cion, though, is that they do not. There’s a Gen­eral Finance Library Cor­po­rate Direc­tor of the Board out there some­where who, umm, Directs Things, and the rest of the cor­po­rate pyra­mid is an elab­o­rate mirage, a flat line below two or three oli­garchic data points at the top. In fact, I’d argue this is exactly why we have so much free­dom to invent impor­tant titles like Senior Man­ager and Expert-Analyst and apply them to our entry– and mid-level jobs: the titles don’t really matter.

And real­iz­ing that, I con­clude that it’s fine to call myself a Head Librar­ian of the Direc­torate of School Librar­i­an­ship Expert Library Ana­lyst of Man­age­ment of Libraries.

I can only hope it trans­lates to some­thing mean­ing­ful back on the U.S. job market (!).