Ask a Manager

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I’m a new manager and getting pushback from some staff on job requirements

I’ve been promoted to the managerial position for a college program where I was formerly the program assistant and an instructor. I am also much younger than most of the other instructors who were my colleagues and now are my staff (about 10 people) and am taking over for a much-loved manager who founded the program.

While I have great relationships and feel respected by about half the team, there are several others who are having trouble adjusting (to say it lightly). The former manager was very lenient about some of the administrative requirements and I’m being pushed by my own supervisor to be more strict and make sure everyone is doing what they need to be doing. There are several staff members who have been under-performing and not following some of our grant requirements. These are are also staff members who are off-site (about an hour away). I recently sent emails to two in particular having issues, explaining that we need to make sure certain requirements are met in order to not risk our funding. I attempted to come from an empathetic perspective, and in fact the former manager (she’s been training me before she goes) looked it over and thought it was fine. I received fairly haughty responses back, along the lines of “(former manager) was very flexible, are you not going to be as flexible as her?”

I’m trying to be flexible, I’m trying to be delicate and empathetic, and I’m also trying to get respect and fulfill my responsibilities to my own supervisor and our grantors. These are people who have been in the program a long time and are overall good instructors so I don’t want to lose them, but simply don’t know the best way to proceed.

“I know we’ve been more lenient about this in the past, but we’re deliberately making a push now to follow the administrative requirements because ___. If it turns out to be really onerous to do this, let me know what you’re running into and we can talk about how to approach it, but (your own boss) and I are committed to following these requirements going forward.”

If you continue to get indications that some staff members are Not On Board with what you’re doing, talk to them about it directly — and if it’s getting in the way of them doing the work you need or being able to work with them relatively easily, be prepared to handle it as you would any other performance issue. It’s great to be flexible and empathetic, but don’t let that steer you away from being forthright when you’re not seeing what you need.

2. Writing a recommendation letter on a different company’s letterhead

I was asked to write a recommendation letter for a former employee who is now applying to graduate school. He was an excellent team member, so I’m happy to help.

However, the school he is applying to requires that the recommendation letter be on “company letterhead.” Both the former employee and I have moved on from the organization we worked for when we worked together. I called the school, and they confirmed that the letterhead requirement is important to them, suggesting that I use letterhead from my current place of employment (which the employee has no connection to).

The organization I work for now is well known and I’m not sure they’d want their letterhead used for this (something completely unrelated to them). I also don’t want to imply in any way that that I’m speaking on behalf of my new company or that former employee is somehow connected to this new company. Am I wrong to feel “icky” about using my current company letterhead? Are there any other options that I’m missing? (Also, what if I choose not to keep working after leaving my last place of employment? I wouldn’t have much option to use “current” company letterhead, right?)

It’s pretty normal to use company letterhead in this context. It’s not considered unethical, wrong, or weird. You’re not speaking for your current company, but you’re acting in your professional capacity, and this is where you now work. You’ll of course make it clear in your letter where you worked with the person, so you’re not being misleading in any way.

(That said, I agree with you in wondering how the school would handle it if you weren’t currently employed.)

3. Explaining why I don’t have a LinkedIn profile

I’m just starting my job search after completed a graduate degree and am trying to connect with folks for informational interviews where possible. It’s going really well, but I keep running into the same problem — every person I’ve connected with asks for my Linkedin profile. When I say that I don’t have a LI (or any social media), they tell me what a big mistake it is not to have an online presence during my job hunt.

The problem is that I don’t keep social media profiles for safety reasons, as I’ve been stalked online by an abuser from my childhood. I’m familiar with my legal options, but I don’t want to explain this very personal story to strangers or in job interviews. How do I answer this question? It’s exhausting to get a lecture on why I need Linkedin when it’s not an option for such an intimately personal reason.

I’d go with, “I know, and normally I would. There’s a long, complicated story behind why I don’t.” And then I’d immediately steer the subject to something else.

4. Severance agreement stops payments once new work is found

My wife has a severance agreement from her employer where she is paid on leave for a specific amount of time (a week for each year she was at employer). I believe she can not get a new job, and if she does this pay will cease. How would her old employer who she technically is still getting paid by now? They have never sent her anything where she verified she wasn’t looking and/or had other employment.

Does she have a written severance contract that clearly states that the severance will stop if she takes a new job before it’s set to run out? If so, she has signed a legally binding contract and should inform them herself if she accepts new work before the severance payments stop. Otherwise, if they later find out, at a minimum she’s likely to have burned that bridge with them (and possibly impact the kind of reference she gets from them in the future). Worse case scenario, they could take her to court to get the money back.

And they could certainly find out — through LinkedIn, the grapevine, knowing someone at the new company, or who knows how. Plus, there’s the whole acting in good faith thing — she made an agreement that she should honor.

5. Employer keeps tweeting about a job opening

I applied two weeks ago to a job that seemed tailor-made to my skill set. It’s also a job with a company that I’ve been following quite extensively for a few years now.

They tweeted the job out on their Twitter page for the first time on April 27. The job posting itself was first listed on their company website on the 27th. Since then, the job has been tweeted out once every couple of days. It was tweeted out again this morning.

Should I already assume I’m out of the running? After applying I received an automatic reply, the standard “HR will contact you in 2-3 weeks if interested,” and I understand that I should consider a job out of sight out of mind after applying, but… is there any way I could know what this means? Does tweeting the job posting out multiple times mean they aren’t getting applicants they want? Does it mean maybe they haven’t even started interviews yet? Is there any way to know if this means anything?

It means nothing.

It’s no different than companies that keep refreshing job ads until they’ve hired someone. It doesn’t indicate anything about the quality of candidates in their pool or whether or not you are still under consideration; it indicates only that they want to keep the flow of candidates coming until they no longer need to, because they’ve hired someone and closed the position. Smart companies keep recruiting actively no matter how much they like the candidates in their pool, because they have no way of knowing if things will ultimately work out with those candidates or not.

Plus, the person handling their Twitter may have zero interaction with the people doing the hiring and have no idea where the hiring for the position stands, other than the fact that there’s an open job.

I think you’re taking the tweets to mean “we’re increasingly concerned that we need more candidates because we definitely don’t see the right one in the existing applications,” but it really means nothing more than “we have a job opening that has not been filled as of today.”

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Colleague is dressing down on charity dress-down day but refusing to pay

I have a bit of an unusual situation. In my office, we’ve started having a “charity dress down day” at the end of every month. Each employee can donate £1 in order to dress down for the day, and a different department each month gets to choose which charity the donations go to. They usually organise games related to their charity as well to raise extra.

There is one guy who dresses down every single time, but refuses to donate the £1. He says that he was under the impression that the company would match all donations and as that hasn’t happened, he won’t donate till they do. The thing is, I send out the emails about these charity days and I remember that I told him it wouldn’t be matched the day before the first dress down day. So he knew in advance that it wouldn’t be matched and chose to dress down anyway – and has carried on doing so every month since.

Now other departments are getting more and more upset/angry about it every month that goes by. I have people coming up and asking whether this guy has donated. They feel like he’s getting away with something that no one else would be allowed to (which is true). His manager is a lovely guy but seems completely unable to force him to either stop dressing down, or start paying his £1.

What’s the solution here? Are people being too sensitive about a £1 donation, or should we push harder to make this be taken seriously by management? What can realistically be done even if they do look into it?

Someone in your company needs to decide how serious they are about this whole set-up. If they’re serious about it, then his manager needs to tell him, “Hey, what you’re doing isn’t cool and you need to either participate in the charity drive or quit dressing down.”

If you’re the person who’s organizing all this, or if you otherwise are in a role where you have standing to raise this, you should talk to his manager and point out that this guy is undermining the charity drives and needs to be talked to. Or you can talk to him directly yourself and say, “It’s fine that you don’t want to donate, but you’re continuing to dress down without donating, and it’s removing the incentive for other people to participate. If you don’t want to participate with a donation, can you please ignore the program entirely and stop dressing down on our dress-down days?”

For what it’s worth, I’m no fan of the whole concept, for the reasons here.

2. Should my cover letters extend sympathies to the company CEO, whose daughter just died?

I am working on a job application for a nonprofit organization of about 15 staff. The position reports to a vice president.

The organization has announced that among the victims of the train crash in Philadelphia was the daughter of the organization’s president and CEO. Would it be respectful or distasteful to mention that in the cover letter – i.e., “Please extend my sympathies to Ms. Jones” or something along those lines? Should I remain mute?

Do not mention it in your cover letter. It’s not the place for it, they’re not actually going to mention to the CEO that a job applicant she doesn’t know sends her sympathy, and it risks coming across as if you’re using her tragedy to create rapport (although I understand that’s not at all how you intend it).

Read an update to this letter here.

3. Is this hiring process fair?

There is currently a manager post open at my organisation which has been advertised externally and internally. Myself and several colleagues are applying for the role which will be a promotion. The interview process starts with an assessment day which I’m assuming will be group work on scenarios.

If you are successful at this stage you then move forward to the interview round. I have found out that one of my colleagues who is currently acting up as a temporary manager covering maternity leave has also applied but will skip the assessment round and go straight through to interview. The justification for this is that she is already operating at this level.

Is this fair? I feel it shows favouritism and am two minds whether to do something as I shouldn’t officially know this information.

Sure. If they’ve seen her actually doing the work that the assessment round is designed to assess, that’s far more useful in terms of evaluating her candidacy than even the best-designed assessment can ever be. Assessments are designed to see candidates in action; if they’ve already seen her doing that work, there’s no reason to spend her or their time making her jump through that hoop.

4. Do I have to give info to a skip tracer who’s looking for an employee?

This morning my voicemail had a message from someone claiming to be with “Verifax,” wanting to “confirm a payroll address.” I Googled the company and discovered they do skip tracing (locating people who can’t be easily tracked down). I assume they’re attempting to track down one of our current or former employees for debt collection.

If they call back, do I have to give them the employee’s address? What are my requirements and liabilities in this situation? I’m leery of giving out any kind of personal information about our employees; my preference would be to tell them nothing (how do I know they’re really legit, and not a crazy stalker ex?).

Nope, as far as I know, you have no legal obligation to assist them. If they had a court order, that would be different — but without one, as far as I know you’re free to say, “We don’t release personal information about employees so I’m unable to help you.”

5. My boss introduced me with a dramatically wrong title

I am currently employed as finance manager (which is the job I accepted), but during a major meeting I was introduced by my boss as an admin. Can a company change my job title so dramatically without informing me?

Sure, they can change your title. The bigger issue here isn’t whether or not they’re allowed to, but what’s actually going on. Is there any other reason to think that your role and title is so different from the one you accepted? Are you doing the work of a finance manager or of an admin? What’s your role been thus far?

Assuming that you’re doing the work you were hired to do, I’d say this to your boss: “I noticed you introduced me in the X meeting as an admin, and I wanted to make sure I’ve got my title right — we agreed on finance manager, right?”