One of the easiest shortcuts to take in B2B research is to define an audience by job title. On the surface, it feels logical. If you want to reach decision-makers, maybe you ask for Directors and above. If you want people involved in purchasing, maybe you build a list of titles that sound like they should be responsible for purchasing. The problem is that job titles are not nearly as consistent or meaningful as we often pretend they are.
We see this frequently in B2B research requests. A target audience will be defined as "Director level or above," or we will receive a specific list of acceptable job titles. There may be additional screening later to make sure those respondents have the appropriate purchasing involvement, decision-making authority or knowledge of the subject, which is absolutely appropriate. But there is a problem with using title as the first gate: we have already excluded everyone who may have that same level of involvement but does not happen to have one of the titles on the list.
Illustrative. Green marks a respondent who genuinely has the involvement the study requires.
That assumes a level of consistency across companies that simply does not exist. Not all companies are structured the same way. They do not have the same hierarchy, distribute responsibilities in the same way or use the same naming conventions for their positions. A Director at a large corporation and a Manager at a smaller company may perform remarkably similar functions. In another organization, those same responsibilities may belong to an Owner, Engineer, Project Manager or someone with a title we never would have thought to put on the list.
I like to use myself as an example. I have worked for the same company, doing essentially the same job and performing many of the same core functions, for more than 15 years. During that time, I have had three different job titles and different levels of seniority. If someone had been screening me for a research study based mainly on my title, I might have qualified at one point and been screened out at another, even though my actual knowledge, responsibilities and day-to-day involvement had changed very little.
Titles themselves have also changed. As the workplace has evolved, job titles have become less standardized in many organizations, not more. Companies create titles that reflect their culture, organizational structure or simply a different way of describing a familiar function. Some are more creative, some are broader, and some can be downright difficult to decipher if you do not work for that company.
I remember being at a conference and meeting someone whose title was "Product Evangelist." Without any other information, what would you assume that person did? Where would you put that title on a traditional B2B screener? Marketing? Sales? Product? Business development? And would you know whether that person should qualify for a study looking for professionals involved in any of those functions?
That is exactly the problem. We can make an educated guess based on a title, but an educated guess is still a guess.
That is why I think there is an important distinction between capturing job title and qualifying on job title. Capturing it is valuable. It gives us a snapshot of what the sector looks like, how responsibilities are distributed, and how different organizations structure similar roles. It can also help us understand whether certain types of respondents tend to sit at different levels or use very different titles depending on company size or business model. As titles continue to evolve, that information may actually become even more interesting.
But using title as the primary gatekeeper for whether someone belongs in a study is a very different thing.
The real issue is that titles are labels, while responsibilities tell us what people actually do. A Director at one company may have responsibilities that look much more like a Manager at another. A Vice President at a smaller organization may be deeply involved in day-to-day purchasing decisions, while someone with the same title at a much larger organization may never touch those decisions directly. In specialized B2B industries, the variation can be even greater because people often wear multiple hats and company structures are rarely uniform.
Consider three professionals who are all involved in evaluating products, recommending suppliers and influencing purchasing decisions for their companies. One might be a Director of Operations, another might be a Purchasing Manager, and another might be an Installer or Service Technician who works with the products every day and has significant input into what gets used or purchased. Depending on the industry and the company, those same responsibilities could sit with a Project Manager, Engineer, Estimator, Plant Manager, Owner or someone with a title that does not immediately suggest purchasing responsibility at all.
Now flip that around. Three people may all have the title Director of Operations, but one could be heavily involved in evaluating and selecting equipment, another could primarily manage staffing, scheduling and workflow, and the third could oversee multiple facilities and approve major expenditures without being involved in evaluating individual products.
Same title, very different responsibilities. Different titles, very similar responsibilities.
This is why I would rather understand what someone actually does as part of their job before making assumptions based on what their company happens to call them. As a very loose example, just to illustrate the broader idea, a screener might start with a question such as:
Q1: Which of the following functions are you personally involved with as part of your current role? Please select all that apply.
The relevant functions and qualification criteria would vary based on the audience and objectives of the study. The point is that we are starting by learning what someone actually does rather than assuming we know based on their title.
From there, we can get more specific about the category:
Q2. Thinking specifically about [PRODUCT/CATEGORY], which of the following describes your involvement in decisions about the products, brands or suppliers your company uses or purchases? Please select all that apply.
Qualification can then be based on the type of category involvement actually required for the research.
And I would still ask:
Q3. What is your exact job title? [OPEN END]
Now the job title becomes another piece of information the research can give us rather than a predetermined definition of who belongs in the research. We can see what titles the people actually performing these functions hold and get a much better snapshot of how roles and responsibilities are structured within that industry. We may find that the same responsibilities sit with Directors at some companies, Managers or Supervisors at others, or professionals with titles we never would have thought to include on a predefined list.
The point is not that these exact questions belong in every B2B screener. They do not. The questions and qualification criteria should always reflect the research objective and the market being studied. The point is that we have now learned what someone does and whether they are involved in the decision we care about without deciding in advance that only certain job titles are capable of doing those things.
This matters because adding an involvement question after a restrictive title screen does not necessarily solve the problem. Yes, you may have confirmed that the Directors who made it through your initial criteria have the appropriate involvement. What you have not learned is how many Managers, Engineers, Supervisors, Owners or people with less conventional titles would have met those exact same involvement criteria if you had allowed them through the first gate.
In other words, the respondents you included may be completely qualified. The problem is the qualified respondents you excluded before you ever had the opportunity to ask.
If the purpose of a study is to reach people who influence the purchase of a certain type of equipment, then the screener should determine whether they actually influence that purchase. If the study needs people who specify materials, maintain equipment, manage safety, approve budgets or make technology decisions, then those are the things we should be screening for. The qualification criteria should reflect the knowledge and experience required to answer the survey well, not whether a respondent happens to have one of five acceptable titles.
The same problem comes up with seniority. There are absolutely studies where level matters, and there may be legitimate research objectives that require a specific organizational level. But "Director or above" should not be treated as a universal shortcut for expertise or decision-making authority. In many industries, a senior executive may control the budget but have limited visibility into product performance, installation issues or day-to-day operational challenges. Meanwhile, a technician, supervisor or manager may be the person who actually evaluates the product, recommends the brand, works with it every day or has the strongest influence over whether it gets purchased again. Neither respondent is inherently more valuable. They simply bring different kinds of knowledge to the research.
This is where overly rigid title requirements can actually make a B2B sample worse. A target can sound very precise on paper while excluding the exact people who are most relevant to the topic. The more specialized the industry, the more problematic that assumption can become. Smaller companies often have flatter organizational structures and people who perform multiple functions. Larger organizations may divide those same responsibilities among several departments and levels. Applying one universal hierarchy across all of them is not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison.
That does not mean job title should disappear from B2B questionnaires. I actually think it is often worth asking. The difference is in how we use it. I would rather capture title as a descriptive variable and then learn from the data than assume beforehand that title alone tells us who has the right expertise. We may discover that responsibility for a certain decision sits much lower in the organization than expected, or that the same function is handled by people with a wide range of titles depending on company size or structure. Those findings can tell us something useful about the market itself.
For me, the better starting point is always the research question. What does this person need to know, do or influence in order to answer this survey meaningfully? Once that is clear, the screener can be built around those responsibilities, behaviors and experiences. Job title and seniority can still provide valuable context and, when the research objective truly requires it, they can certainly be part of the qualification criteria. But they should not automatically become proxies for the expertise or involvement we are actually trying to find.
In B2B research, we are not really looking for titles. We are looking for people with the right knowledge, experience and involvement to give us meaningful answers. If we screen too narrowly on what those people are called, we may never get the chance to find out what they actually do.
Contact: Ariane Claire, Research Director, myCLEARopinion Insights Hub
A1: It is fast. That doesn't make it accurate.
A title list feels precise because it is specific. Specific and correct are not the same thing.
A2: Only for the people you let through the first gate.
The problem isn't who you kept. It's the qualified respondents you excluded before you had the chance to ask.
A3: No — ask it, just don't qualify on it.
There is a real difference between capturing job title and qualifying on job title. The first is data. The second is an assumption.
A4: Some do. "Director or above" still shouldn't be the default.
The question to answer first is what this respondent needs to know, do or influence in order to answer the survey meaningfully.
A5: Ask what someone does, then ask about the category, then ask the title.
The exact questions should always reflect the objective and the market. The sequence is what matters — learn what someone does before deciding whether their label belongs.