Hunting for a Career? Catch and Release These!

Eleven genuinely questionable job titles

By Ed Goldman

I’m emailed a number of employment announcements every day, possibly because I applied for a job about 30 years ago and an algorithm suggested this singular action might be a trend-in-the-making. That’s soooo wrong.

Some of the jobs I read about have titles I feel are open to multiple interpretations. For example, the following 11 (all are real):

Questions: (a) Am I being asked to teach someone from Holland to be aloof? (b) Do I think I can teach people to speak Dutch by personally acting cold? (c) Are there two Dutch dialects—warm and remote? And if so, why are they hiring someone to teach only the remote one? Don’t we have enough problems in the world?

2. Position: “SMALL BUSINESS MARKETER”

Question: The lack of a hyphen between “Small” and “Business” makes me wonder if, at above-average height and a tad overweight, I’m too large for what’s needed. I’d have said I’m “too big to fail” but believe that’s been taken.

Question: Unless your company’s entry-level systems are something more complicated than doors, I may be your guy. I can just picture myself, clipboard in hand, writing such notes as “Doors opening ‘in’ are working well. Doors opening ‘out’ are causing occasional forehead bonking and nosebleeds. Suggest further study.”

4. Position: FOOD ENTHUSIAST INSTRUCTOR- ON CALL.

Questions: Since this is a job with the Culinary Institute of America, and an institute is a school, I’m assuming the successful candidate would be teaching students to be cheerleaders for their fellow future chefs. Instead of doing yells like “All the way/In one play!” they might be chanting things like “That souffle/Takes all day!”

5. Position: PILATES REFORMER INSTRUCTOR

Question: Are we talking about the family of Pontius Pilate (the Pilates), who never really did reform? And if so, should someone be teaching about him at such a volatile time for global religion?

6. Position: LAOTIAN VOICE TALENT FOR DENTAL FORMS

Question: I’m not sure why a dental form would need to be spoken aloud, much less by a voiceover expert. Contrary to common misperception, Laos does have a written language. Nevertheless, if you can deliver lines like “How often do you floss?” and “Be true to your teeth and they won’t be false to you” in a convincing Thai tongue, this could be an exciting career opportunity, possibly leading to recitations of IKEA furniture assembly instructions, which make no sense in any language.

Question: Does this ad target squids that work at refilling stations strategically located at several points under the sea?

8. Position: SENIOR SECURITY AND REPUTATION COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

Question: The employer recognizes that watching out for a senior’s security as well as his or her reputation might be too demanding for a single individual (the employer himself has a mother who’s personally insecure and whom nobody likes because of her caustic tongue). Therefore, job-sharing may be an option.