Title says it all. Pet peeve of mine, anyone else agree? Literally everyone at a private equity shop is a board observer somewhere. Feels like putting "CEO/Co-founder/President" for your high school lawn mowing business..
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Agreed. I have a board observer role at one of our portco's and my responsibility is literally to dial into the quarterly board update and nothing else.
So many cringe things I can put on this thread. Board observer roles, title inflation, shameless self marketing, etc. I admit I’m a pretty cyclical person, but people are out of control these days.
100% agreed
On a scale of 1 to "Incoming Summer Analyst", how bad do we feel this is?
Incoming insight day web series
Although I don't do this, I think it's helpful to know which deals an individual has been involved in if I want to look him up, so I don't entirely hate it.
Definitely signals that you are low on the totem pole but at least you are connected to a company.
Agree - no observer roles. Board of Directors / Officer roles MAYBE but I'm still mixed on this.
Feel like if you actually hold a Board role, you should put it as it shows you actually have BoD experience as a contributing member, which is a unique and marketable experience. But yeah observer is so cringey - basically congrats on dialing into a call.
Agree...observer is horrible. So are things like "TedX speaker" (keep your local/regional speaking career to yourself jacka*s), disrupter, influencer, CEO (sorry bro, "CEO" of your one man physical training program is BS), visionary, or any other ambiguous language that is striving to indicate that you are unique when you aren't....
To me it just smells of inferiority complex. I see MDs and partner level people do it and it makes me crazy. You're already a senior person, why do you feel the need to convince me of just how awesome you are? I definitely see it as a red flag and leads me to far more questions about personality, firm culture, etc.
I think it’s fine when you do it as an established, contributing member / observer on the board. People find connections through Linkedin and if you’re at a MF PE firm, it can be hard to figure out which partner is on which deal.
I have an issue with Analysts and Associates putting board observer roles on LinkedIn. All you’re doing is dialing in and taking notes.
Let's be honest, it's only the analysts and associates who put observer roles on their LinkedIns because they're excited to have a "Board" role to show for. I've called out more than a couple friends for doing this haha.
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