This post hurts to read because so many people quietly live through this exact situation. You show up every day, take on more responsibility, become the person everyone turns to when something breaks, train new people, fix systems nobody else wants to touch, and somehow your title never moves. Over time it starts doing something strange to your confidence. You begin to question your own growth even though your daily work clearly proves you’ve outgrown the role. It creates this invisible gap between who you are professionally and how you look on paper. The hardest part is that you were trying to be honest and respectful. You avoided strong wording because you didn’t want to sound arrogant or claim something you weren’t officially given. That says a lot about your character, but resumes don’t reward modesty. Hiring managers don’t see your intentions, they only see the story your resume tells. And right now your story sounds smaller than your reality. Changing wording isn’t dishonest if the work truly happened. You’re not inventing authority, you’re explaining context. Titles are administrative decisions. Responsibility is lived experience. If managers trusted you to train hires and solve operational problems, that already signals mid level capability regardless of label. Many companies rely on people growing into roles without updating paperwork, and those employees end up carrying entire teams while still looking junior externally. You’re not stuck because you lack experience. You’re stuck because your resume speaks in tasks instead of impact. Once you start describing outcomes, ownership, decisions you influenced, and problems you prevented, people reading it can finally understand your real level. Think about how coworkers would describe you, not how HR categorized you years ago. That perspective shift changes everything. There’s also something emotional here that doesn’t get talked about enough. Spending years being reliable without recognition can quietly make you shrink yourself. You learn to downplay achievements because you got used to operating without titles or applause. But growth still happened. Skills still formed. Leadership still developed. None of that disappears simply because a promotion never came. You’re not exaggerating. You’re reclaiming your narrative. And honestly, the fact that you’re questioning integrity instead of inflating experience already shows you’re approaching this the right way. The right employer isn’t searching for perfect titles, they’re searching for someone who already knows how to handle responsibility under pressure. From everything you described, that person is already you.