Ask a Manager

Short answer Saturday is back!  Seven short answers to short questions, all in the same post:

Can’t get promoted after five years

I work in a small department of a very large organization. There are about 20 of us in three different offices. My problem is that the managers rarely promote internally. Sure, you can take on extra projects for no pay or title change if you want, but don’t expect anything to come out of it. The last few positions that have opened up have been filled by external people, who have legitimately been great. It’s really doing a number on morale, me included. This is my first “real” job out of graduate school, so I guess my question is — is this normal?? I’ve been here two years now and know that I won’t be moving up until I move out. There are people who have been in this same job for 5+ years! I don’t want that to be me. I just had a conversation with my manager about a recent spot they hired someone new for and he said the reason was that “nobody was ready.” From my perspective this isn’t legitimate.

There are plenty of departments where the senior positions require a background that the more junior people are unlikely to have, no matter how long they work there. So the things to look at are: What are the qualifications for the higher-level positions that they won’t hire you for? What’s the profile of the type of person they’re hiring for them? Does that profile match up with your and your same-level coworkers? If not, that’s why they’re not hiring you for them; you’re not the profile of the candidate they’re looking for. That’s not unfair; it’s just the reality of what the organization’s needs are. In that scenario, when you feel you’re ready to take on something new, you’ll need to look outside the organization, or at least outside your department.

On the other hand, if an objective outsider would say that you’re just as qualified as the people they’re hiring and they just have a weird bias against promoting internally, then your options are to (a) have a serious conversation with your manager about how you want to be given a chance to take on a more senior position in the company and ask specifically what you would need to do to be a strong candidate for promotion, and/or (b) look elsewhere.

(By the way, depending on the job, five years isn’t insane at all.)

Can the boss post the schedule this late?

My husband’s boss uses an online schedule site to post the weekly work schedule. The new week starts on Thursdays. This morning, it’s a Thursday when I’m writing this, my husband had to call the store he works at to see if he was supposed to work today because the schedule was still not up on the website. When he went in today he found out that his manager had posted the schedule up in the store last night. She does this from time to time but usually also puts it up on the web as well and never sooooo late. Is there any law against this? Don’t they legally have to give him a certain amount of notice? Don’t get me wrong, in this economy we’re glad he’s working but…really?!

I’m not a lawyer so can’t say with complete confidence that there’s no law against it, but I’d be surprised if there’s a law against it. The majority of things that are stupid or bad management aren’t illegal, just … stupid or bad management. But I’m also going to throw some blame at you here, because — really? Your first instinct is to wonder if it’s legal, rather than suggesting that your husband just talk to the manager, point out the problem, and try to work out a system that will meet everyone’s needs, hers and the staff’s?

Engaged and wanting a transfer after just five months

I recently graduated college and have been working in my entry-level professional position for 5 months and am still learning the ropes in my job. I originally took this job with the intention of “getting my foot in the door” so I could transfer to the corporate headquarters to be closer to my then-boyfriend within 12-24 months, but unexpectedly, I became engaged much sooner than anticipated.

Should I tell my supervisor I am engaged and am looking at transferring internally to a new location and new department in the near future (with the hope he will be supportive in this endeavor), or should I not say anything for another 7 months (when I reach my 12-month anniversary with this department) until I am more qualified to look for a new job? I am scared this will look bad for planning to leave my work group and department right after they hired me, and also that I may be treated adversely if they know I am looking to leave soon. Is this a legitimate reason that a manager would move someone to a new department, even though I am an inexperienced worker who was recently hired?

I can’t say how things work at your company, but I’d be annoyed if I’d been training a new grad for five months and she immediately wanted a transfer. I’d wait it out a year if you can. Also, if you haven’t already, make sure that your assumptions that it’ll be easy to get a transfer to the headquarters are rooted in reality; it’s possible that transfers are hard to get or only happen under certain circumstances.

How can I help my friend get hired at my company?

I work for a good company and I have a friend who would love to get hired here. We work in completely different fields so I don’t know any of the people that are in the department that she is looking to work in. I am also just an individual contributor so I don’t have a lot of pull, even in my own department. Also, there are very few open positions. Would it be wise to send unsolicited emails to managers with an attached resume? I personally wouldn’t think this is appropriate unless I knew the managers personally (which I don’t). Secondly, for the posted positions, how do I contact the hiring manager for my friend to get an interview? I can look up the recruiter and hiring manager for each posted position, but I don’t know how to go about approaching these people since I don’t know them. Should I just email them a resume and say my friend is interested in this job?

First, there’s a more fundamental issue: You need to feel confident that your friend would be a good fit for any role you’re recommending her for. Do you know for a fact that she’s qualified, smart, and reasonably easy to work with, and that she has a good work ethic? If not, you risk harming your own reputation by recommending her for a position.

If you happen to know that she’s absolutely fantastic, you could send her resume to the appropriate manager with a note saying that she’s phenomenal and they should take a look at her. (In this case, it’s fine that you don’t know the manager personally; you’re still an insider.) You can do this when there’s a posted job, and you can do this even when there’s not — because if she’s that great, she’s the sort of person managers want to know about.

But if you don’t really know for sure that she’s great, then I’d simply let the relevant manager know, “Hey, my friend Julie Smith applied for your open position. I’ve never worked with her so I can’t vouch for her qualifications for this particular job, but I can tell you that she’s smart, sane, and funny” (or whatever).

Asking about salary before interviewing

I applied for a job in July with a major NYC area university. The job advertisement made no mention of salary but it did say “master’s degree preferred.” I received an email today inviting me to schedule an interview and an attachment with the job description stating that the salary is $42,000. Not only do I think this is low for a job asking for a master’s degree, it is about 20% lower than my current salary. What is the best way to broach the subject of salary prior to scheduling an interview? No reason to waste everyone’s time if there is no room for negotiation.

If you know that you’d never accept the job at that salary, you have nothing to lose by asking about it. Email back and say something like this: “Thanks so much for asking me to interview. I’m very interested because ______. However, I noticed in the job description that you forwarded that the salary is listed at $42,000. I’m looking for a range closer to 50s, and I wouldn’t want to waste your time if that’s prohibitive on your end.”

As a side note, be cautious about assuming any particular degree buys you a higher salary. In D.C.-area nonprofits, I’ve seen highly qualified J.D.’s getting hired at $35,000. Salaries are determined by the market, not by the degree.

Can I leave a job I was fired from off my resume?

I am a nurse. In this past year, I held 3 different jobs for 2-3 months at a time. I’m asked to leave, because I’m not the right fit. One was a hospice job, most recent for 8 weeks. I am still signed up with a visiting nurse company doing per diem visits. Can I leave this last job off my resume? Or, is it being dishonest? I work in Florida as an RN and moved here from MA on 2007. I never had employment problems in MA. But, since being in Florida I only held one job for 1yr 9 months at a local hospital, then it’s been a bunch of part-time jobs. I need a full time job with benefits. I have no money saved.

You can leave the last job off your resume. Your resume is a marketing document, designed to present your candidacy in the strongest light. It’s not required to be an exhaustive listing of everything you’ve ever done. However, I’m concerned that you’ve been let go from three jobs in a row for not being the right fit. Have you figured out what’s caused that and how to avoid it in the future? You don’t want to keep repeating the same pattern, so it’s key to understand what that’s happened and what you can take away from it.

How aggressively can I negotiate salary in this market?

I am getting ready to finish up my master’s degree program and begin looking for work starting in June. I don’t expect the nation’s overall job outlook to improve much by then, however, given my experience, marketability, and the prestige of a degree from my school, I do expect to find a job. The question is, at a time when there is more competition for good jobs than ever before, can I afford to be aggressive in my salary negotiations when I am finally offered a job? Isn’t it likely that my potential employer would withdraw her/his job offer and move on to the next candidate if I try to command a higher salary?

How aggressive are you talking about? If you’re asking for, say, a 30% higher salary than what’s offered, you might come across as naive — because you’re right out of school and therefore to a large extent unproven. (Generally when employers are willing to go significantly beyond their original offer, it’s for a candidate they really, really want, someone head and shoulders above anyone else they’ve talked to. That’s unlikely to the case for a recent grad.) And yes, it’s possible that if you handle salary negotiations badly, an employer could take that as additional data about you that makes them reconsider wanting to hire you altogether, which is why you need to be realistic in what you ask for — don’t be aggressive just for the sake of being aggressive. (And make sure you’re researching the market rate for this kind of work in this industry in this geographic area so that you know what a reasonable offer is.)

But if you’re just asking for an increase of a few thousand dollars, no one is going to peg you as unreasonable for asking for it. Even if they say no, they’re not going to withdraw a job offer just because you asked.