Recently, our Chief Scientist, DJ Patil highlighted an interesting trend around the migration of professionals post the collapse of several of the major financial institutions. In that post, we also solicited your ideas and questions. Well, this week we take on one of the more popular topics – the emergence of new job titles.
What’s an example of one of these emerging trends? Between 2002 and 2007, we have noticed a surge in the percentage of job titles that include the term “ninja”. Modern day ninjas are not experts in martial arts or stealth soldiers – today they are more likely to throw Java exceptions rather than steel stars.
Other ninjas come from the social media, computing and design sectors. Professionals in customer service, advertising and finance have their share of ninjas too; for example, check out real life Investing Ninja Assassin Ann Miura-Ko.
How much has the job title “ninja” grown? The attached global “ninja” chart shows the percentage of people starting “ninja” jobs relative to all LinkedIn members who started a job year. This allows us to make meaningful year- to-year comparisons and discover interesting labor market movements.
Ninjas aren’t the only creative job titles we’ve seen emerging on LinkedIn. Since 2002, non-religious titles containing the term “evangelist” have taken off as well. “Guru” had been on the rise since 2002, but popularity has been declining since 2008.
Have you noticed an interesting trend? Do you have a trend or data question you’d like us to answer? Please post them here and we’ll feature them in a future blog post.
- Topics:
- Analytics
Comments
When will it be time for the samurais to re-emerge?
I wonder why “ninja”? The ninja were mercenaries who specialised in covert operations like sabotage and assassination.
Are these people saying that you can pay them to infiltrate your competition and destroy them?
Not much positive in that… or have they just fallen prey to some Hollywood fantasy?
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
I’ve saw some “magicians” too =)
What about Rockstars?
Is that for real?
Please add “linchpin,” my current favorite direct from Seth Godin’s NY Times Best Seller of the same name.
Soon, “Bounty Hunters”, “Soldiers of Fortune” & “Social Mercenaries”
Personally, I like the term Creative Curator of the Inner Child Museum versus my boring Mental Health Therapist.
Whenever someone uses the title Ninja or Guru I just chuckle. You can add “Rainmaker” to the list.
True Ninjas, Gurus and Rainmakers don’t use those terms to describe themselves. A Rainmaker wannabe does. Let me know when Bill Gates calls himself a Ninja or Guru or Rainmaker.
Hi
Can you track the demand for social media managers throughout the years ?
Thanks
This is a very interesting observation. I guess growing popularity of social media is contributing to these names.
This is all part of a trend in job title inflation (or obfuscation) with no commensurate rise in compensation or competency. This saves companies money in pay raises and new office furniture.
You see a lot of professionals giving themselves retroactive promotions on their resumes: some of them supposedly born into this world as senior managers. Making up your own cute job title makes it even easier.
On a more humoristic perspective.
I think to make the whole Ninja experience complete.
You should also know your real Ninja name right?
I need a good and professional job title for me. I am a beginner in business. I want to be a manager or in management. I just got my AA in Business. I need a job title?
Very interesting post, everyone is just trying to find new ways to get ahead in life and its looks like some have found it
That’s a good article about The LinkedIn Blog » Blog Archive LinkedIn Observes The Rise of …. Thanks for the info.
I also agree that this is all part of a trend in job title inflation with no commensurate rise in compensation or competency. This saves companies finances in pay raises and new office furniture.Thanks for this useful information!Thank you.
I’d like to use this graph (with attribution of course) in a presentation I’m doing. Can you tell us what is in the vertical axis? What are you measuring exactly?
This is why nobody I know uses LinkedIn.
The term I’d like to see trends on is CXO, where X can stand for E, or O, or T or F.
Obviously, it wouldn’t help to look for anything except CXO, but how many CXOs do you think are out there?