Searching for the Right Job Title

by Peter
(Ontario, Canada)

I am 56 yr. old male living near Toronto, Canada. I owned and managed several small businesses (retail - 9yrs; business services - 2yrs) and then worked as a Small Business Consultant for a large bank & municipality for 5 years.

My issue now is that I can't even find a job title out there that seems suitable to my experience/education.

I've provided coaching & mentoring services to small business owners including: financial management-know how to read & interpret financial data such as P&L, Balance Sheets, etc.; have developed business plans and strategic plans for small businesses; and business development strategies & marketing plans.

I have well-rounded business acumen, lots of management experience & tools, BUT no degree-only a Business Admin Diploma from a reputable University obtained in mid 70's.

Thought a "General Manager" or "Operations Manager" position might be suitable, but advertised positions have been mostly warehouse or distribution centre positions.

I don't have the CEO, CFO educational designations or "corporate experience" that seem to be required in advertised positions either.

Any suggestion as to what "job title" or description I should be looking for with well-rounded small business acumen, but no degree, designation or corporate experience?

Thank you.

Reply by Peter Fisher Your Career Change

Peter, thank you for your question about searching for the right job title.

My initial answer is brief: Stop it!

I'm not being flippant.

Let me explain. Job titles are so often either misleading or meaningless that to keep searching for the right job title only to find, as you have done, that it's not the right job can be so frustrating.

What I recommend is to forget the job title and start looking at yourself first. You've already mentioned a range of experience, knowledge and know-how that you have used in service delivery, so you need to do a full inventory of your own skills, then rank those skills in relation to their importance to you, before looking at the job market any further.

When you know what you've got to offer and what you enjoy doing, then start to read the wanted ads more critically; look at the skills NOT the title.

Of course you may find opportunities in areas you never thought of, but your business skills seem to me to sorely needed by many small organizations.


Could you consider becoming a consultant? or even a resume writer? Try to think where your skills would be most useful and you should find a way forward.

May I suggest you take a look at some of these pages on the website to help you develop these ideas further.

7 Steps

This practical career change guide is written in straightforward language and contains concrete advice, tips and specific examples of resumes and CVs, cover letters and interview questions and answers. This information also contains all the charts and exercises you need to make sure you get to where you want to be.

All of us can achieve our ideal role so long as we do what needs doing and don't make excuses. You will not find any 'hype' in this '7 Steps' book, just good advice that you can adopt immediately. In the book you will learn how to work out not only the best type of job for you, but how you can go about getting it.

Analyse Your Skills

You can easily start to Analyse Your Skills by listing your top ten achievements or career events that you are most proud of. You should do this in the way I've just shown you by looking at your Achievements and then consider your Transferable Skills which are your richest source of information providing concrete and tangible evidence of what you have done so far.

Analysing Adverts

Analysing adverts thoughtfully saves you more than just your time, read between the lines for skills not titles. So my fundamental rule is: if you are going to apply for advertised jobs then only apply for the right ones. Don’t waste time by applying for the ones you’ve no chance of getting; not only is your time lost but your morale will suffer if you keep getting rejections.

Finding Your Ideal Career

I've included this article about finding your ideal career in response to the number of people who tell me they want to change, but aren't sure what they want to change to...

Searching for the right job title may not be the best way for you...