What one company means when they say manager, or librarian, or accountant, or personnel officer, or purchasing officer, or supplies clerk, or medical officer could be vastly different from the traditional interpretations you may have applied.

Not only that, the position requirements that I often see advertised along with these job titles vary from what experience and logic may prescribe. I do realise that job titles will vary across the economic sectors, and of course I know that the culture, character, reward policy, size and structure of an organisation will also influence whether a person is called senior officer, coordinator or manager.

In one organisation, the medical officer will be a nurse while in another, a doctor. In some unexpected cases, the medical officer is the staff member trained in first aid in charge of general counselling, dispensing Band-Aids & paracetamols, and HIV awareness activities.

The accountant could either be, in the larger corporations, one of the company signatories responsible for the full accounting and financial management function, with ACCA or CIMA, or, in smaller companies, just be the clerk responsible for creditors and debtors, banking and compiling relevant documentation. My concern is that in some cases, there is no substance behind the claim that this is a 'librarian' position that requires 3-5 years experience, if, for instance, such a librarian will only be responsible for the company's subscriptions to various industry publications that s/he would then file in stipulated order after all users have read it.

I am also concerned about the expectations an employer raises by giving any given position a sophisticated name that is neither supported by the necessary authority to act at those indicated levels of sophisticated management, nor, attached to a correspondingly impressive remuneration package. I have actually been asked to recruit a General Manager with a Master's, etc etc, reporting to the Board, to earn just over P6,000 per month.

In preparation for this article I collected tens of local and regional publications and just reviewed the vacancy sections.

Guess what? One vacancy for an Accounts Officer asked for the basic AAT, which I thought reasonable especially when I looked at the job summary. What surprised me was the experience and remuneration.

I did not think there was any correlation between the 'minimum 10 years post qualification experience in a similar position' with the personal competencies.

Nor did I think the salary offered of 5 to 8 grand a month suitable for 10 years worth of experience.

The advert wanted a self-motivated, focused professional capable of supervisory responsibilities. Admittedly I am not in the accounting field but as an HR practitioner I have come to learn that AAT is a basic qualification in accounts that many new entrants into the field start with.

For that reason, I would not have expected the successful candidate to have ten years 'in a similar position' because after ten years, a 'self-motivated, focused and professional' accounts technician may well have acquired the ACCA and moved up to supervisory, if not management levels.

I wondered where this candidate would have been working for the past 9-10 years for less than between 5 to 8 grand a month to be attracted by this advert. Another advert that caught my eye was for a senior engineer. The successful candidate would hold an engineering degree; have 5 years working experience, as well as all the usual rhetoric. Salary was not stipulated. I started to think that this sounded more reasonable, but then I stopped that thought pattern: a senior engineer with a first degree and 5 years on the job? A

t that point, what really would be the main difference, in terms of on-the-job exposure, between a first-degree holder with just 2-3 years experience and this senior engineer position? I wondered whether there really was anything senior about the position, or if the title was just enhanced to accommodate progression from one salary level to another.

I mean, when you think about the fact that in Botswana when you reach the 5 year point in one job you (are supposed to) get severance benefits, you may see how I got to this set of reservations about these names...maybe the company in question just wanted a way of distinguishing between engineers who had not yet got their 5 year severance and those who had. Just think about it.

Where would this company place an engineer who had a master's degree in the field, with 7 years experience after the master's etc etc? Maybe they have a Principal Engineer position. Or maybe it would be the Chief Engineer. Engineering Superintendent. Engineering Manager. Hmm.

There was another for an assistant manager with either a master's degree or an HND! I wondered whether academic qualifications actually mattered in that job. I also came across a very impressive job description for a security officer whose duties included operating sophisticated security and surveillance equipment...the position requirements were not consistent though.

The advert just wanted 10 years experience in security, 5 of which should have been at supervisory level and said nothing about computer literacy and knowledge of industry related software/hardware.

The only one I saw that I could not question was for a quality assurance officer. They just wanted an industry related diploma plus certificate in quality control and two years quality control experience in the industry.

We have, as a nation, either committed ourselves, or been swept along by the hype, to Vision 2016.

We expect to have made major achievements in various areas of social and economic development, which will not happen at the rate we are going. Do not shudder indignantly, I am as patriotic as the next person, and I am saying this from a positive place: if employment opportunities continue to be structured in an unrealistic and outdated way that excludes new entrants - who we presume possess quality education and a willingness to work - from the job market, we will continue to see unemployment figures rise as the same people, some accomplished and recognised professionals and others deadwood, go from one 'diploma/degree plus 8-10 year experience 'officer' position to the next while those who languish in the candidate glut try and fail to access the many youth and/or citizen empowerment facilities our generous government and supportive donors make available.

I did not miss the twisted irony in the statement that many unemployed people now call themselves self-employed...maybe just another way to play with names.