5 ways to lose your team’s respect

by Alison Green on April 28, 2015

If your team doesn’t respect you, you’ll have a hard time getting things done. They’re likely to doubt your decisions, push back when you need them pulling in the same direction, and even eventually leave. And when you’re in a leadership position, trust can be easy to lose – it only takes one or two instances of troubling behavior to end up with a team that’s lost faith in you.

Here are some of the ways managers risk losing their teams’ respect – and things to be sure not to do:

1. Hold your staff members to a different standard than you hold yourself to. As a manager, you should have high standards; you should expect excellence from your team and hold people accountable for meeting ambitious goals. But if you don’t hold yourself to those same standards, believe me, your team is going to notice it. If you don’t cut your staff any slack on deadlines (when the situation allows for it) but routinely don’t meet your own deadlines, or if you regularly show up late and unprepared for meetings while holding a hard line on that behavior in others, or come down hard on them for the same types of errors that your own work sometimes has, it’s going to be hard for your team to take you seriously.

2. Be a source of drama, rather than the calm in the storm. If you overreact to tough news, lurch from one crisis to the next, gossip about colleagues, and/or regularly have interpersonal conflicts, your team is going to have trouble seeing you as a figure they respect. Moreover, that kind of drama tends to trickle down to the rest a team as well; it’s hard to maintain a calm equilibrium when working for a manager who’s constantly riled up. Good managers model a no-drama approach for their staff, and that ethos will usually end up permeating the rest of their team, which benefits everyone.

3. Get defensive when questioned. There’s almost no faster way to look insecure in your knowledge and position than to become defensive when someone questions your decisions. You’ll gain more respect by welcoming input and dissent and considering push-back with an open mind, and by being willing to explain your decisions, than you will be acting as your word is unquestionable and final.

4. Don’t keep your word. If you’ve ever worked with someone who regularly didn’t follow through on her commitments, you probably know what happened next: People stopped taking that person’s word for much, and greet future commitments with skepticism. As a manager, you don’t want your team secretly thinking “I’ll believe it when I see it” or “yeah, right” when you agree to review a document by Thursday or call that difficult customer or go to bat to get them a raise.

5. Neglect to deal with tough issues. As much as your team might like you, they’ll start to lose respect for you if you develop a pattern of not taking on the hard parts of your job, like breaking bad news, giving difficult feedback, or letting a low performer go. It’s hard to lead a team when you’re not doing the things that your position requires you to do (and which, usually, you’re the only person on your team who can handle). But when your team sees you handle tough challenges with fairness and transparency, you’ll earn their respect, and often their loyalty too.

You may also like:
{ 83 comments }

is it worth making an issue over this employee’s lateness?

by Alison Green on April 28, 2015

A reader writes:

I manage an exempt employee who is frequently late: 15-20 minutes late at least once a week. He has a long commute that can be unpredictable when it comes to traffic, but after a year working here I don’t consider traffic a valid excuse. When I mentioned the lateness, he said in his defense that he stays late, which he does — but at the same time, he works slowly and cannot always finish his work within regular hours. I’ve started documenting these late arrivals and I offered him the opportunity to change his start time, to which he gave a noncommittal answer. This employee is not a top performer and I’ve recently talked to him about performance issues.

My question is whether it is worth making an issue over 15-20 minutes when an employee is exempt. There are no time-sensitive tasks that require him to be at his desk at a specific time, but I find lateness annoying. In the context of other performance issues, small things that annoy me seem magnified, so I wonder if I am making this into a bigger deal than it should be.

Does it impact his work or other people, or does your office have a cultural value around showing up and being available at a certain time? Any of those are reasons to say, “Look, you need to reliably be here on time because of X.”

But is this something that wouldn’t be a big deal if he were otherwise doing a good job? Is it something you’d let go if someone else were doing it?

In some jobs, time of arrival matters for valid, work-related reasons (like clients needing to reach someone then, or morning meetings you need to be present for, or colleagues who have to cover for you until you arrive). In plenty of other jobs, it really doesn’t matter, other than perhaps triggering the lateness antenna of people who care for no reason other than You Are Supposed To Be On Time.

If you determine that it does matter in this situation, say this: “I do need you to be here reliably on time in the mornings. I need you to either commit to that going forward or we can talk about changing your start time — which one makes sense?” And then if it continues after that, you address that as part of the overall work issues he’s having.

But it sounds like there are much bigger issues here, and that’s where I’d keep your spotlight. Paint a clear picture of the bar that he needs to meet, performance-wise, and give him a timeline to show that he can meet it. Punctuality may or may not be part of that, but that’s the place to keep both of you focused.

You may also like:
{ 254 comments }

people are stealing my tea, do I have to respond to recruiters on LinkedIn, and more

by Alison Green on April 28, 2015

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

1. People are stealing my tea

I have a cute tea display in my cube. A few weeks ago, I noticed two boxes were gone from my display. I later found them in a kitchen cupboard. Then an few weeks later, I saw an empty tea box in the kitchen trash. Sure enough, that exact box was missing from my display. Then I have received reports of a specific coworker who comes into my cube when I am not there and takes my tea bags. Out of politeness, I have told people that they can help themselves, usually when they have asked. Is it me or is it understood that you don’t take all of an item just because you used it once? (And this particular coworker never asked and I never OK’d her taking any.)

No, you’re not wrong. It’s rude for people to come into your office and take your tea if you’ve never given them permission to do that — and it’s even ruder for them to take entire boxes and relocate them into the kitchen!

On the other hand, “help yourself” is sometimes interpreted as “help yourself anytime.” That doesn’t excuse the box relocation, but it might have opened the door to people grabbing a tea bag when they want one and you’re not there.

You may need to put your tea in a drawer.

2. Do I have to respond to recruiters on LinkedIn?

How bad is it not to answer recruitment messages on LinkedIn? I get maybe one every couple of weeks lately and I almost never respond. Every once in a while if it’s in another state, I just tell them I’m not looking to relocate but to keep me in mind in the future, but sometimes I don’t even do that.

I’m torn because I don’t want to appear rude, but they’re so low priority for me that I’ll forget about them for weeks, which is when it gets into that weird area where responding could look worse. So, I need advice! Is it okay to not respond at all? Am I potentially undermining my chances with future employment at those companies by not doing so? Should I respond even after weeks? Am I over-thinking this? (Probably).

It’s totally okay not to respond at all. Recruiters send out tons of those messages every day; it’s basically the equivalent of cold-calling, and they’re used to not getting replies. They’re highly unlikely to remember or care that you didn’t answer them if you happen to apply for a job with their company in the future.

The only exception to this would be if it’s clear that someone took the time to really understand your work history and sent you a truly personalized message. In that case, you should probably respond — that’s a recruiter who might be worth working with in the future.

3. My manager wants to keep trainees “hermetically sealed off” from other staff

I am one of about 20 designers for a very technical company and also one of the trainers for new designers. We have a lot of turnover, partly because the only jobs we offer are contract, and partly because training is so intense that only about one in four trainees make it. To try to increase the percentage of trainees that succeed, we’ve implemented a bunch of effective strategies. The latest, however, is concerning to me; my manager decreed the other day that in addition to the trainees only being allowed to direct questions to the trainer/designers (which sort of makes sense), they are also only allowed to have lunch with the trainer/designers, specifically, the person assigned as their trainer. Other designers and members of the team are not allowed to join the table. Usually most of us eat lunch together, so this is huge departure from the norm.

My manager said it was to keep trainees “hermetically sealed” (presumably from “contamination” from other designers, with something vague about so we wouldn’t have to un-train bad design habits picked up from lunchtime conversation).

I am really uncomfortable with this, but I can’t really put my finger on why, other than I think it’s just going to make the turnover worse (I’d certainly bail if I were a trainee presented with this and had other options). I am going to speak with my manager about this, but I wanted to see if I am off base in pushing back on this. Am I?

You’re uncomfortable with it because (a) it’s treating adults like children whose social relationships can be managed, and (b) in addition to making trainees feel infantilized, it’s going to make them feel like your company is hiding something.

You’re not off-base in pushing back.

Read an update to this letter here.

4. Cover letters for a stay-at-home father returning to the workforce

My husband has been a stay-at-home dad now for most of the last six years and is beginning to look for work outside the home now that the kids are older. He would of course never think to put his role as a stay-at-home dad on his resume and in fact has plenty of other experience and achievements to detail (high-profile/responsibility community volunteering and a personal business he does part-time from home). I know it’s usually not a good idea to mention kids/family in cover letters either, but you’ve also shared at least one cover letter example where you thought it worked. That made me wonder whether addressing staying home with the kids in his cover letters could be a good idea under some circumstances, and whether it you think something like that may even be perceived differently by hiring managers (either more positively or more negatively) when coming from a man instead of a woman.

If he’d spent time out of the workforce, it would be smart to explain in the cover letter, saying something like, “After taking some time away to care for my kids full-time, I’m now eager to return to full-time work.” But in his case, it sounds like there isn’t really a gap — he’s been running a business, after all. So he might not even need to explain the whole context, unless the business is far afield from what he’d been doing previously and what he wants to return to now.

I suppose it’s possible that some people are still weird about stay-at-home dads. Where I live, it wouldn’t raise many eyebrows, but different areas of the country can be different on this and you’ve got to know your own area on this one.

5. I was fired for lying about a degree and now they won’t pay me

I landed my dream job, but I lied on my resume and said I had a degree (which had nothing to with actual job function; it’s just what employers look for). For whatever reason, they had me start my job, then did a background check after I was employed for two months. I was asked to resubmit paperwork, and I fessed up. They terminated me on the spot. Then they with held my final two weeks pay, even though I had worked. I get why I was fired but can they withhold my pay? And no one had a problem with the quality or content of my work.

Yeah, you will absolutely be fired if you lie about having a degree that you don’t have (or lie about other pieces of your background). It doesn’t matter that they didn’t have a problem with your work; they had a problem with your integrity, and that’s huge.

But no, they can’t withhold your pay. They’re required by law to pay you for all time worked. If they won’t, contact your state department of labor for help.

You may also like:
{ 479 comments }

my coworker follows up on emails in person if he doesn’t get an instant response

by Alison Green on April 27, 2015

A reader writes:

I have a coworker (mostly a peer, but depending on the project, I’m sometimes his supervisor) who always follows up electronic communication verbally (coming over to my office to ask me if I’ve seen it, or something like that) or through interoffice messaging if I don’t acknowledge it within like 15 minutes. With work turned in through our team’s online tools, he’ll frequently send me a notification via the app, send an email or IM, and tell me verbally.

There are even times when I specifically go into “Do Not Disturb” mode on our messaging and email system, anticipating this. But that’s when he stops by my office instead.

This is never for anything urgent, and he’s aware that I go through my email at certain times of day, and what those days are. I’ve also spoken to him about the frequent following up is stressful to me and sometimes breaks my concentration when he comes over to talk while I’m in the middle of a task. My manager has led me to believe she’s spoken to him about it as well.

What else can I do? This nudging is really starting to feel like it’s affecting my productivity, and my sanity since it can get quite annoying.

I was about to tell you to talk to him directly about the problem, but you’ve already done that and it’s still happening. And your manager has talked to him too, and yet it’s still happening!

Your coworker is violating all appropriate norms. And he apparently doesn’t care!

I would do two things at this point:

1. Talk to him about it again, and be very, very explicit. It’s possible that your wording last time wasn’t direct enough, or that you softened your tone in a way that allowed him to not take it seriously, or who knows what. So make one more attempt to be sure you were clear — and do it as its own separate conversation, not when he’s following up with you. As in, sit down with him at a time when this isn’t happening and say something like this: “Cecil, I need to ask you to change part of the way we’re communicating. You often send me an email and then come by in person or send an IM to check whether I’ve seen it. I need you to please stop doing this. It’s making it hard for me to focus, and it’s making me less efficient. Please do not follow up on emails you’ve sent me unless X days have gone by without a response. Can you agree to that?”

2. Then, if it continues to happen, refuse to give him what he’s looking for in the follow-up. If he shows up in your office to ask if you saw the email he sent 30 minutes ago, say, “‘Remember that we agreed that you wouldn’t follow up on emails like this? I can’t respond to you now, but if you emailed me, I’m sure I’ll see when I next look at my email.” And then turn back to your work.

Hopefully, by denying him the satisfying confirmation he’s looking for here, you’ll eventually train him to stop sniffing around looking for it.

And ugh, if anyone out there is doing this, stop immediately.

You may also like:
{ 170 comments }

how to know what salary to ask for

by Alison Green on April 27, 2015

At some point in your job search, you’re going to be asked what salary range you’re looking for.

You’ve probably read that you should try to avoid naming a number at first, but the reality is that employers are going to ask, and you’ll usually have to answer. In fact, many online applications these days won’t even let you apply without naming your salary expectations.

This is typically nerve-wracking for candidates who worry about lowballing themselves or pricing themselves out of consideration. So it’s important to research your market valueahead of time. That way, you can give an informed answered based on what comparable positions pay in your geographic area.

But how do you actually do this research?

The most obvious answer might seemingly be to consult the many websites that purport to provide salary information. However, many job seekers report that these sites aren’t very accurate, particularly since they generally don’t account for the fact that job titles frequently represent wildly different scopes of responsibility or vary significantly by field or type of company. (They’re particularly unhelpful for very specialized roles).

Here are seven more reliable ways to get salary range information:

1. First and foremost, ask other people in your field for their opinions. Most people don’t want to be directly asked what their salaries are, but you can bounce figures off them and benefit from their knowledge that way. Try asking: “What would you expect a role like this to pay?” Or: “Does a salary of around $X sound about right for a role like this, or does that seem too high or too low?”

2. Ask professional organizations in your industry. Professional associations and trade groups often do periodic salary surveys they can share with you, and even if they don’t, they can often give you general information about what range to expect. They may also be able to connect you with others in your field who you might be able to bounce numbers off of.

3. Look at similar positions on online job boards to see if salary ranges are listed. Many job postings don’t list salary information, but some do, and you can get at least some market data that way.

4. Ask agency recruiters what similar positions are paying. Recruiters are some of the best people to give you information about what jobs like the ones you’re interested in are paying, since they deal with salary negotiations every day as part of their jobs. They’ll generally have the inside scoop on the going rate for different jobs, and they may be able to advise you on which companies pay particularly well (or particularly poorly).

5. Ask around about a specific company’s reputation when it comes to compensation. Are they known for paying well? The opposite? Particularly with larger companies, you’ll probably find that people in your field have a general impression of their pay scales.

6. Look at government salaries, which are required by law to be publicly available. While they’re not always a perfect parallel to private sector jobs, they can give you additional data to factor into your research.

7. Nonprofit job seekers should consult www.guidestar.com, where they can see any nonprofit’s tax reporting. These forms contain a lot of info about the organization’s finances and will show you the salaries of key employees there. This can help you get an idea of the organization’s pay scale overall. (However, factor in that what the leaders are being paid may not tell you much about what junior staffers are earning.)

Look for patterns, not a single figure.

As you conduct your research, remember that you’re looking for patterns and trends to inform your thinking; you’re not after one single figure. That’s especially true because salaries are only one piece of a compensation package; many companies factor in other elements as well, such as benefits, bonuses, quality of life issues and so forth.

Of course, that’s precisely why it would be a lot more logical for employers to just tell job seekers what they intend to pay, rather than playing coy and pushing candidates to throw out a number first, right? But that doesn’t usually happen.

I originally published this article at U.S. News & World Report.

You may also like:
{ 78 comments }

asking a prospective client to pay travel expenses

by Alison Green on April 27, 2015

A reader writes:

We are a small company that offers a unique and valuable product. We have a very tight travel budget and have relied on teleconferencing for many cross country and overseas initial conversations. Though we believe in face-to-face connections, we have to be mindful of the cost vs. benefit of the travel. Sometimes we are able to charge travel travel and expenses to some of our bigger clients, which is all in a contract.

Recently, we were requested to travel to another city to meet with a member of a foreign royal family. The emailed letter indicated they wanted to partner with us. Without offering too much detail, we can say that the assistant of the inviting party was very helpful but not so forthcoming with detailed information. After some due diligence and fact checking with the State Department, we realized the invitation was indeed authentic.

As you know, one of the biggest assets we own is our time. We have no idea what the inviting party would particularly like to discuss yet were offered an opportunity to respond with a formal letter to offer dates and times we would be available and to ask any questions prior to the meeting.

Was it rude or outside of business etiquette for us to ask them to pay for our domestic flights?

Please see the letter we sent; I have removed all names for privacy purposes:

Thank you for the business invitation to visit you at your home office in ___. My short answer: We accept the invitation. In addition, we have some initial questions and request more information.

As you can imagine, our modest yet lively business has never received a request such as this. My apologies for the speculation and due diligence at the start. Founding and running a relatively new and innovative company, the biggest asset we own is ‘our time’, which I’m sure you can appreciate. We have chased a few unicorns in the past and our experience becomes a wise lesson learned. Now that we understand this is an authentic invitation, we would like to proceed with transparency, candor and diligence.

Timing
We have discussed dates in the near future that we have open in our schedules. Please indicate if any of these work for you. If not, please offer alternatives.
(3 dates)

Resource
The ___ team will provide 2-3 executives (including myself) that have authority to make on-the-spot decisions for Asia, Europe and North America if necessary. We will come prepared to offer an initial introduction of the business and product. If you feel a Mutual Confidentiality Agreement is necessary for the first meeting, please provide one that is suitable to the needs of your business. We try to keep the first meeting packed with information and visual examples. Detailed information we consider confidential can be discussed in a follow-up meeting if required. We typically charge for initial consultations and out-of-state or out-of-country meetings. In this case, we have decided to cover our own human allocation costs.

Travel
When our clients and partners call us, we make all reasonable attempts to support their needs. In this case, since we have not established a formal business relationship, we ask that you please arrange flight accommodations for us from our local airports to your local airport. By agreeing to this, we will see that you value our time and that you are serious about the nature of a potential relationship. If overnight accommodation is necessary, we will cover those costs. You will see that every minute and every penny counts.

Questions
Please see the attached list of 3 questions that we have chosen to understand your interest in ___. We do not intend for them to be personally or professionally invasive. We ask that you consider them and provide candid answers.

Thank you for taking the time to read this response, we are honored by your interest in our business and will repay your consideration with honesty and integrity.

I don’t think it was rude to ask to have your flights covered. Some consultants consider travel expenses to meet with prospective clients to be part of their own business costs and shoulder that expense themselves (ultimately rolling those costs into their overall fees). Others ask clients to cover those expenses. It tends to depend on the business, but I don’t think the mere act of requesting it was wrong.

But I don’t love the way it’s framed in this letter. Giving so much explanation for the request ends up feeling almost defensive. If you could re-write this, I’d tell you to take out the stuff about how covering your costs will show that the client values your time and is serious about working together, and that “every minute and every penny counts.” You don’t need to say any of that. It’s perfectly sufficient to just say, “Because we’ll be coming from City X, we’d ask you to cover our flight expenses, which we estimate will be $Y.” Adding in all the rest of that explanation will make you look a little less seasoned and like you worry that your reasons for asking aren’t self-evident.

For what it’s worth — and I’m interested to know others feel about this — to me the letter as a whole feels a bit … well, obsequious. It’s okay to just be direct and straightforward; there’s no need to pad it with deference or over-explanation.

Of course, some of this just goes to personal style, and if this style has worked well for your company, keep it! But that’s my take, as an outsider reading this.

You may also like:
{ 127 comments }

who can managers talk to, my boss only gives gifts to women, and more

by Alison Green on April 27, 2015

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

1. Who can managers talk to?

One of the things I haven’t see much written about is who managers _can_ talk to about management-specific issues. Like all other humans, they need to bounce ideas off of others, discuss challenges and problems, feel connected and heard, and try out solutions.

Who can a manager talk to if they are having a particularly trying time? All the management advice out there seems to be saying “Keep everything confidential” and of course there’s no way that discussing a lot of management issues with their direct reports is appropriate, but who is left?

I think keeping all the things that managers come up against “under your hat” must be excruciating at times. I’m wondering if this is why some managers really aren’t that great – they can’t get good mentoring and they can’t relieve the stress because they are trying to keep all of that inside. It’s got to add up.

Well, you can talk to peers — other managers at your level — and people above you, like your own boss. If you’re at the very top, you can talk to other CEOs and in some cases your #2 (if you have a deputy or COO). But yeah, it can be tough, sometimes very tough, when there aren’t many people around who you can let off steam with or simply talk freely and openly with.

2. Can I suggest canceling the daily meetings my team no longer needs?

My company had a many years-long project that necessitated two shifts of employees using a shared set of equipment. The two shifts had a 15-minute overlap: we used this time to fill each other in on minor workflow changes and project updates.

The big project ended, over half of the employees were laid off, and there are no longer two shifts. Yet the daily meeting has continued out of habit, only now my supervisor uses it to convey irrelevant administrative items or hold one-on-one conversations while the rest of the team just sits quietly and waits. The meeting no longer deals with technical details or other topics relevant to our projects.

This meeting is an anachronism from the big project days, we could all be using the time for billable projects instead, and frankly it’s almost always the low point of the day. I know that nobody on the project team wants to attend this meeting, but I sense that my supervisor still feels it’s important or doesn’t realize how much it has changed. Should I say something to ask him to restructure or cancel the daily meeting?

If you have a decent rapport with your manager and/or your manager is reasonably open to input, speak up! I’d say this: “I know we started these meetings back when we needed them for Big Project. Now that that’s over, I wonder if we still need them or could switch to a less frequent schedule.”

3. My boss only gives gifts to women

For some reason my boss used to give birthday gifts and also on administrative professionals day he would buy the each person office staff a gift, but lately he is only giving gifts to the female workers. One of my coworkers is saying that this is discrimination, but I said that he does not have to give gifts to everyone and he can give gifts to whoever he wants to. Can you please clarify if I am correct or give me your opinion?

Discrimination in the legal sense? Highly unlikely — to meet that bar, you’d have to be able to show actual adverse employment impact on people connected to the gifts. If people were being denied promotions or wages or professional opportunities based on sex, that would be illegal. Gift-giving based on sex is gross, but not illegal.

4. Professional societies on a LinkedIn profile

I had a question re: work/skills-related societies. A lot of them are really expensive (ie. $150 up to $400 for yearly membership of International Teapot Society), but I still think they’ll look good on my LinkedIn profile. (Assuming that you’re a teapot contractor and the payment is solely out of pocket, and the cost is too high to afford by yourself). Which leads me to this…..

If there’s an International Teapot Society that has private membership on LinkedIn and the administrator allows you in after requesting membership (because you do highly-advanced relevant work) can you put that on LinkedIn that you’re a Member of International Teapot Society and put (LinkedIn Membership)? Seems like a gray area, and wanted to check in case.

You’re putting way more weight on these than you should. No one is really that impressed by seeing society membership on your resume or your LinkedIn profile — and they’re going to be even less impressed by seeing “LinkedIn membership” in one of them.

People really don’t care, so you definitely shouldn’t be paying money if you’re only joining to make a profile page look better!

5. Should I tell other employers that I’m a back-up candidate for another?

I am a current job-seeker. Today I heard back from a place I interviewed at about three weeks ago. They’ve offered the position to someone else, and reading between the lines that person is playing some negotiating hardball, so they’re reached out to me as the backup candidate. They want me to come in to meet with the third member of their team (unavailable when I was in the office three weeks ago), and I’m looking forward to the second meeting and reinforcing my position as a solid candidate (after all, offers can fall through, and these folks may be hiring in the future). I also have been working with recruiters, and I’m in the post-in-person-interview waiting space with another great place. Am I obligated to let these people know that I’m a backup candidate? Just the recruiters? No one? Thanks in advance for any guidance and advice you have.

Nope. If you get an offer, at that point you should alert anywhere else that you’re in the process with, but telling them that you’re a back-up candidate doesn’t really convey anything particularly actionable for them.

You may also like:
{ 95 comments }

weekend free-for-all – April 25-26, 2015

by Alison Green on April 25, 2015

Olive on bean bagThis comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. (This one is truly non-work only; if you have a work question, you can email it to me or post it in the work-related open thread on Fridays.)

Book Recommendation of the Week: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. This is a perfect book. I will tell you nothing else about it. Just read it.

* I make a commission if you use that Amazon link.

You may also like:
{ 956 comments }

should I share my resume, should I call out a rude hiring manager, and more

by Alison Green on April 25, 2015

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

1. Should I share my resume with people who might want to base theirs on it?

I am starting to get requests for informational interviews about my current position and the path I took to get here. As we’re ending, I’ve had people ask both A) “Could I take a look at your resume?” or B) “Would you mind if I sent you my resume for you to critique?”

The latter takes more time because this involves more than the verbal “Focus on these strengths” or “Cut it down to 2 pages” that I can say over the phone after a quick glance, but instead some (general) changes via Track Changes. However, the former also feels wrong, like they can “copy” my resume, which I’ve worked hard on over the years. Should I just get over that feeling and simply send them my resume, especially because it’s less work for me?

I’d like to say that you shouldn’t have to worry about people copying your resume because resumes are such personalized documents, but I’ve seen enough of it happening to know that people do, indeed, copy other people’s resumes.

That said, most people aren’t going to do that, so I’d make a judgment call about whether the person you’re talking to is lazy/naive enough to try it. If you think they are, you could always say you don’t have a current version. But otherwise, I don’t think you really have to worry too much about it — and it doesn’t sound like these people are your competition, if you’re giving them informational interviews about your field.

2. Should I call out this hiring manager for being rude?

I recently applied for a management position at a company I worked for four years ago as a full-time team member, before going back to school to earn my degree. I received a response saying that I might be a better fit for a different managerial position. I thought, hmmm, not what I was hoping to hear, but definitely not that big a deal either. So, I emailed the hiring manager back and reiterated my enthusiasm for the original position I applied to, but I also asked if he could clarify the differences between the two positions so I might have a better understanding of why I was deemed a better fit for one over the other.

The reply that I got was very curt, saying that his decision to not consider me for the original position was final, and that I could just read the job description to find out more. Obviously, I’m not an idiot and I’ve already read the job descriptions, on top of having knowledge as a previous employee. The corporate culture has definitely changed since I was employed with this company.

Was I wrong to reiterate my preference for the original job? Was I wrong to ask for a comparison between the two roles? Is it worth emailing back this hiring manager and calling him out for being rude?

No, you weren’t wrong to reiterate your preference, unless he had given you a clear “no” for that first job in his original email. (It’s not clear to me whether he did or not.) But ultimately he just sent you a brusque response, right? You might decide he’s not someone you particularly want to work with, but it doesn’t sound like it’s worth calling him out for rudeness (especially since doing that risks harming your ability to return to that company working a different manager).

3. Can I still accept severance if I’m about to take another job?

I originally really liked my current job, but for the last six months or so things have been very unstable — and getting worse. I’m talking about multiple moves across divisions, rollover of the entire senior management team, and contracts falling through. In just the last two months they have had us start on two separate projects — throwing out our previous work — and then changed their minds after only a week or two and start something completely different.

You can imagine how scary it is to work with this kind of uncertainty, especially because this is a large company that has laid off teams in the past without warning. So I started looking for a new job. This week I even flew out for an on-site interview and that company has indicated to me that they’d like to make me an offer, but we are still negotiating the details.

The problem is that this same week my current company announced ANOTHER reorg for my project and are moving most of my team to a new division entirely. They’ve said that they want a few of us in the same functional role to stay in the old division, but they don’t know what they want us to work on yet. My manager is flying out to our office on Monday, and to be honest, I suspect she is going to lay us off. (Having a manager come out and tell you in person is how this company handles layoffs.)

If I do get laid off, what are my ethical responsibilities, both to my current company, and to my new one? Can I still accept severance if I’m finalizing the details of my offer? Should I proactively let the new employer know that I was laid off since they’ve already made me an offer?

You can indeed still accept severance even if you’re about to accept another offer — in fact, even if you’ve already accepted another offer (assuming that there’s nothing in your severance agreement that prohibits that, which there probably won’t be). There’s also no ethical obligation to alert the new employer that you’ve been laid off (although you of course can’t lie if it comes up somehow).

4. I took a counteroffer but now regret it

A couple of months ago, I received a good job offer to go and work at a company I was really excited about. They were stable, had a great working environment and I knew a few people that already had ties to them with great reviews. Upon receiving my offer, I was ready to resign from my current company, where I’ve been for 12 years. My employers were shocked the next morning when I resigned and came back to me with a counter offer, including a huge raise and 2 employees to help spread the workload I had been bearing. After deliberating for hours, I decided to stay with my current company, hoping that this would satisfy the reasons I was leaving the organization. I contacted the HR contact at the new company and very politely told them that I had decided to stay put for at least 6 months, but that I would be open to any opportunities in the future that might be a good fit.

Now, nearly 3 months later, I am truly regretting my decision not to go ahead and accept the other position. Although my company did fulfill the promises they’d made in our agreement, I feel in essence that that structure and the management of the organization isn’t a good fit for me anymore. I’ve shown great loyalty over the last several years, but it’s time for me to move on.

I’ve noticed on the careers section of the new company’s site that they are currently looking for the position that I had received the offer for previously (a few slots actually). Would calling the HR contact at this point back and telling that I’d like to throw my hat back in the ring an option? Or is that door closed?

You can give it a shot but they’re pretty likely to be skeptical. No harm in trying though. But realize that if they do make you an offer, you’re pretty much going to have to take it this time or that bridge will be forever destroyed.

And yeah, this is why you shouldn’t take counteroffers.

5. Working with my new manager after a demotion

A couple years ago, I was received my first promotion within the contract company I work for, supervising the other professionals in my certification area. During the first year of a particularly large contract, my company realized that we needed more managerial staff than we currently had, and asked me to assist with this contract, as I had particular skills that met our company’s needs in this contract.

It became clear in my first few months working with the new contract that, due to the increasing demands of my newly adopted responsibilities, I would be unable to continue both managing both the professionals in my certification area and the new contract. As a result, we began training someone to take over my first set of managerial responsibilities, and were set for her to take that role in the fall.

At the end of the summer, the new, large contract abruptly ended. Most of the staff working with that contract (over half the company’s operations in this state), including all the contract-specific managers except me and one other person, were laid off. I was only spared because I would be able to take my pre-management role (displacing someone else with less seniority in that role). The person who I trained to take over my original managerial responsibilities kept that role; my boss and I agreed that she was better suited to it even though there were no specific complaints about my job performance.

So now, due to rearrangement of contracts, I’m working under someone who used to work under me, and my responsibilities involve sometimes consulting with her regarding the job performance of our co-workers in specific areas. There aren’t any particular problems, but it feels really weird, and I’m frequently worrying that I’m stepping on her toes (again, I know of no complaints or comments about this). Should I wait until a problem is mentioned to me, or is there another way to approach this?

If you’re fine with it and she seems fine with it, I’d assume everyone’s fine with it and move forward. It sounds like you’re assuming that there must be problems in such a situation, but if everyone involved is reasonably mature and doesn’t let ego get in the way, there’s no reason it has to be problematic. If you’re not seeing problems, assume you don’t need to worry.

Read an update to this letter here.

You may also like:
{ 38 comments }

update: my client constantly pesters me and micromanages my every move

by Alison Green on April 24, 2015

Remember the letter-writer in February whose freelance client was constantly pestering her and micromanaging her every move — and treating her very much like an employee rather than a contractor? Here’s her update.

I have a follow-up to a question you answered about a client who was treating me like an employee rather than a contractor, as well as not paying in a timely fashion. 

After drafting several emails in which I became increasingly nitpicky about the legal definitions of “contractor,” “employee,” and “invoice,” I finally opted just to loosen my ties with this client. I sent an email letting them know that I was going to be devoting more time to my in-house employment, that I’d need to reduce my time commitment to them by 50%, and that I would no longer be available as a de facto one-woman 24-hour call center.

Surprisingly, they took it pretty well — since then I’ve received assignments in appropriate ways and the all-day harassment about my whereabouts has stopped. The reduction in hours seems to have solved the pay issue, too; it appears that if I work more than XX hours/week I won’t be paid on time, but as long as I’m working fewer than XX hours I receive a check every week as promised. (I suspect this is an issue of income versus payable accounts.)

In sum, all is now well, and the advice I received from you and the commenters really helped me get a grip on the whole mess. I feel a thousand times better with this arrangement.

You may also like:
{ 21 comments }