October 2020

should I apply to businesses that aren’t hiring?

A reader writes: I was hoping you might be able to help me finally put to bed a long-running argument between me and my mother about the proper way to find a job. For almost as long as I’ve been job hunting, she has insisted that it’s a good idea to apply to places that […]

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my boss tells weird lies about all of us

A reader writes: My boss, Valerie, makes up little lies about people who report to her. She never lies about anything work-related and while those of us who report to her all know she is a fibber about things, our clients and other people have no idea. Valerie would have no reason to lie about […]

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my coworker berates me all day long

A reader writes: For the past four years, I’ve worked at a small company of about 40 people spread over three states. I am the only person in my type of admin role and the only person who handles all of the documents coming into and out of all three offices. Everyone who has documents […]

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your job application was rejected by a human, not a computer

Christine Assaf of HRTact.com recently published a kind of amazing break-down of something I’ve been trying to convince people of for years: that your job application was most likely rejected by a human, not a computer. It’s reprinted here with her permission. (Christine, by the way, is currently looking for an HR, people strategy, or I/O […]

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team is meeting in-person despite company rules, counting school as work experience, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My team is meeting in-person despite mandatory telework requirement I’m lucky in that I work for an organization that recognized the importance of telework early on in the pandemic. Nationally, almost everyone has been moved to mandatory telework, except for rare instances of “critical” work. […]

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