I know that both post and position are polysemic and have a lot of non-overlapping meanings, but I am asking about the following definitions:
position: a post of employment: a position in a bank.
post: a position of duty, employment, or trust to which one is assigned or appointed: a diplomatic post.
In this meanig, are these two words completely interchangeable or are there any slight differences in the meaning? The question arose when I wrote
[He] applied for the position of head of human resources at [a big company].
and my teacher corrected position to post. When I asked her why, she just said that in that particular context post sounded right and position sounded wrong (to her British ears).
So, what is the difference between post and position and why (if my teacher is right) is post preferable to position in my sample sentence?
Best Answer
While position and post can often be used interchangeably in reference to employment or occupation, I believe
In my experience, if you ask an executive for her post, she may say "the Lisbon office," whereas if you ask for her "position," she's more likely to say "Vice President for Ibero-European Operations" or some such.
Both position and post can trace their roots back to the Latin verb pono, ponere, meaning to put or to situate something, but the latter, according to Merriam-Webster, came via Middle French and Old Italian having acquired the meaning of a relay station along the way. This sense of post is of course carried through in its courier-related meanings, i.e. we send mail through the post (NAmE) or send a post through the mail (BrE).
The U.S. Army refers generically to its installations as "posts," and a soldier is "posted" to a particular assignment as well as given a particular "post" when on duty. In the same way we can speak of journalists or diplomats being sent to a "post" like the Tehran bureau or the Shanghai consulate or of waitresses or warehouse workers being sent to a "post" like tables 20-24 or delivery dock C. In both cases, we are speaking of a temporary assignment to a particular station.
So in your example, I would think either of
to be fine, the former preferred if "head of human resources" is a permanent role, the latter if it's a waystation for those on their way up or down the corporate ladder.