I am interviewing for a director level role in industry. There is a ton of influencing without authority in the JD. I’m wondering if this role is really senior director by scope.

What are your signals a role actually is senior director ( considering scope , complexity, impact etc) ?

For context, this role is responsible for managing a corporate functions portfolio of projects and a PMO/integrator and functional change leader/communications lead.

Cont in comments

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Maybe compare it with that company’s senior director JD and see what is the difference. If you think you qualify for that , then pursue that.

Industry is not a monolith, director role in one place may not be the same in another. Authority/ influencing doesn’t work the same way in all companies either.

likehelpful

Varies a lot by industry and company. I’m a Director of M&A in pharma and report into a VP who reports directly into the CHRO. I have zero direct reports.

Other layers of complexity at play:
- serial M&A environment
- holding company with three business lines and 50+ businesses
- 3 new members of c suite ( incl. my function)
- newly announced Ai strategy
- operate on 4 continents
- probably building a portfolio management / pmo from nothing or from something very immature/ too immature to function effectively

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Just looking at the JD, this looks like a mid-level executive role. What gives me this impression is the responsibility of standing up and leading a PMO; it sounds mid. Now, that does NOT mean that the role is not meaty and that you won’t have autonomy or control.

I worked for a few firms before going into consulting and directors I knew had a lot of latitude in their business areas. The general hierarchy was: CXO => VP => ED or DIR => SM => M => IC or Specialists.

A bientôt!

likehelpful

A Senior Director role isn’t automatically about scale and scope of your authority. Before any of that, it’s a reflection within their job classifications and pay bands what level of seniority they are trying to attract from the market.

If it pays $200k plus bonus (for example), they decided that that’s the comp range that would attract enough candidates with the years of experience and profile they think is needed.

Size of the role, and scope of your authority is secondary to that.

likesmart

At our company, senior director typically means managing a broad scope of topics or managing very large teams within one function.

What you are describing would be a Director role for us, but as C1 mentions, every company will have different criteria.

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Yes seems as Director , I am currently SD and have more responsibilities compared to what you shared

I keep seeing the “driving without authority” in JDs funny enough that phrase seems to often come up in AI outputs. I believe it’s already embedded in senior roles and probably means you can move the needle past execution, deliver high impact results and provide thought leadership

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