Do not reject on the title. Reject on the absence of evidence. "Prompt Engineer," "Growth Ninja" and "Chief Happiness Officer" are titles that tell you nothing, which is different from titles that tell you something bad. Two questions decode any title: what did you make, and who used it? If the answers are concrete, the title does not matter. If they are not, the title was the whole job.
Titles that tell you nothing
Prompt Engineer. Could be someone who built and tested the instructions behind a product used by thousands. Could be someone who typed into a chatbot for three months. The title does not say.
Growth Ninja. Could be the person who took sign-ups from 200 to 20,000 a month. Could be an intern who ran the social accounts.
Chief Happiness Officer. Could be the head of people at a 300-person company. Could be the office manager who bought the snacks.
Consultant. Could be anything, including unemployed.
The problem with these titles is not that they are silly. It is that they hide what the person did, and some candidates use them for that reason.
The two questions
What did you make? Not "what were you responsible for." What exists because you were there. A product, a process, a number that moved, a team that works differently.
Who used it? Customers, colleagues, a client. How many. What changed for them.
A real Prompt Engineer answers: "I wrote and tested the instruction sets for a support bot that handles 4,000 tickets a month. I cut the escalation rate from 18 percent to 9. The support team used my test set to sign off releases." Hire that person, whatever their title.
An empty one answers: "I was responsible for prompt strategy across the organization." Ask again. If there is still nothing, there was nothing.
Why rejecting on title is a mistake
Titles are given by companies, and small companies give odd ones. A "Growth Ninja" at a start-up may have done the work of a marketing director. Rejecting her on the title means your competitor places her. Rejecting on no evidence means you only lose the people who had none.
Decode it in the submittal
The client will have the same reaction to the title that you did. So translate it. "Title was 'Growth Ninja.' In practice: ran paid acquisition and email for a 20-person e-commerce company, grew monthly orders from 1,200 to 4,100 over 18 months." Now the title is a footnote.
Where M-Tracker fits
The submittal is where the title gets translated into evidence. M-Tracker reads each submittal against the order before the client sees it and points out, in plain words, where a must-have is covered only by a title or a claim with nothing behind it. The recruiter asks the two questions before the client has to.
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Questions people ask
Are inflated titles a red flag?
On their own, no. Inflated titles with no evidence underneath, yes.
What if the candidate gave themselves the title?
Common at start-ups and for freelancers. Ask what they made. Same rule.
Should I change the title on the resume?
No. Explain it in the submittal. The resume is theirs; the submittal is yours.
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