Ask a Manager

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

1. My new job won’t notify a school about an apparent pedophile

Part of my new job involves finding volunteers to work in schools. Last year, one of those volunteers (mid-40s, married with children) became infatuated with an underage girl in his daughter’s class. He sent her inappropriate messages and photos until she sought help. The man was obviously banned from the program by the person who previously had my role and the school escalated issues.

This week I received an email from that man telling me he had been approached by a school to be a coach for the program and registering his interest to be a volunteer again this year.

I immediately told my employer, assuming we would notify the school. However, my work is worried about a defamation case and is refusing to notify the school. I think the safety of the students is FAR more important. What should I do?

What?! I’m no lawyer, but I’d think that if anything, they could get in more trouble for not speaking up than for speaking up. The only thing I can think of that would explain this is if the allegations were never proven and they think there’s some possibility of innocence, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case.

Personally, in your shoes, if I was sure that I had the facts correct, I’d consider discreetly reaching out to the other school on my own.

2. My boss is insisting that all interview feedback on candidates be in writing

My office is currently in the process of hiring a new office manager. My associate dean subscribes to the idea that everyone in the office should be involved in the interviews and then provide written feedback. Due to schedule constraints, I was only able able to sit in on one candidate’s interview for about 20 minutes. The candidate is currently temping in this role and I have serious concerns about her work performance. I ignored my associate dean’s initial email asking for feedback since it had been clearly sent to the whole group of 20+ people. Yesterday she sent a personal follow-up email to me asking directly for feedback. I replied that I was uncomfortable providing written feedback but was more than willing to provide verbal feedback. She answered me today with “Written feedback is an important component of our hiring process. Please provide your feedback in writing.” How should I proceed? I was thinking about either asking HR (notorious for just forwarding emails to your supervisor) or writing very general feedback on a word document without my name attached and handing it to her.

Well, first, this interview process sounds absurd. Everyone in the office has to do this? Unless your office is three people, this is weird. And there’s no reason to require it to be in writing.

I’d write back: “I have some concerns about Cordelia that I’m not comfortable putting in writing but that I think are important to share. Could we talk about it briefly?” If she refuses, then put it in writing. There’s no real reason to reuse that if she insists, weird and annoying as it is.

3. My father is pushing me to recommend him for a job and I don’t want to

My father works in construction, specializing in disability renovation for homes. I’m disabled, and recently two places that I work at have begun renovating part of the buildings for disability access (partially because of me). The problem is that my father keeps pushing me to reach out to the people in charge of the project and tell them to give him the job.

I’m having trouble articulating an acceptable reason why I don’t want to do this. I don’t want my father working around me; part of the reason I have two jobs is to get away from him (I live with him, and we often don’t get along). Plus I think it would be incredibly unprofessional to recommend him for it, because I don’t even know if he’s qualified for this type of work, I don’t have confidence in his ability to do the project on time and on budget, and it seems like a shakedown (I’m disabled, so they legally have to renovate, and oh! how convenient that I happen to have family who can do the project).

Am I right in thinking it would be unprofessional to recommend him for this? What would be the most professional way to make this recommendation if I wanted to do so? And, of course, is there any way you can think of that I can explain to him why I won’t recommend him for this (or future) projects at my place(s) of work?

Yes, you’re totally right. He’s putting you in an awkward position, and what he’s proposing would be a conflict of interest. Plus, you plain don’t want to, and that on its own is enough. But the conflict of interest reason will carry the most weight. I’d say this: “Dad, I can’t. It’s a professional conflict of interest and would reflect poorly on me. It’s not possible.”

4. Can I refuse to train coworkers with skills I learned on my own?

I have worked at my company now for 4 years. In that time, I have learned and developed new skills and methods to do my job. I’m considered as a senior and worked very hard to get where I am. But now the company is not doing so well and some people have decided to jump ship. Our manager has made it very clear that anyone is replaceable. And this is where I have a problem.

I have been doing all the training for the new guys and showed them what was needed from them and how to do this. The software we use is not very popular in our country and there are no training courses offered for it. Everything I’ve learned, I did myself at home.

I no longer wish to share my skills with anyone as I’m now replaceable. Do I have the right to do so?

The right legally? Sure. But your company has the right to then fire you and give you a bad reference, and would be justified in doing that. (How do you see this playing out, exactly? That you’d just suddenly refuse to do part of your job and your manager would say, “Oh, sure, that’s fine”? That’s not usually how this goes.)

5. Explaining to employers that my school shut down

I’ve just received news that my undergraduate school will close its doors this year. As a recent graduate, I am concerned about his this will affect my job prospects moving forward. My school is a private, single-sex institution and it just couldn’t compete with larger, co-ed schools. How can I explain this to a prospective employer? I achieved many things in undergrad and I am worried that this news, which is beyond my control, will affect the way employers will view me.

This will have no impact on how employers view you. It’s not your fault, and it doesn’t reflect at all on the quality of your education. (I’m assuming that we’re talking about Sweet Briar.)

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

1. I’m getting collection calls for my former coworker

I took over from someone who left my company roughly 18 months ago. She had been in this position for a long period of time, and the decision was made for me to keep her phone number so that vendors wouldn’t have any issues with getting in contact with our department. I have had no issues with this, except for the fact that she apparently fielded collection calls on the regular.

While I’ve had a lot of success over the last 18 months in telling these creditors that I am not Jane Smith, I am now getting robo-calls about litigation being taken against this former colleague. I want to reach out to her via LinkedIn to tell her that she’s getting a call about a case being pursued, before I go forward with telling this creditor to stop calling me. At this time, I do not have her personal phone number or email, since I had been advised to not contact her at all regarding the job after she left.

Would this be a breach of professional etiquette to reach out to her? Should I just tell the collection agency that I’m not her instead of reaching out?

I don’t think it would be a breach of etiquette to reach out to her, but if your company has explicitly told you not to contact her, you should clear it with your manager first. Their instruction about that might just be a “don’t bother her now that we’re not paying her” kind of thing (in which case an alert like this would fall outside of that), but there could be other reasons for it that could be in play. So check first.

But if these creditors are aggressive enough to call her at work, they’re probably also aggressive enough to track her down at home or elsewhere too; it’s likely they’ll find her regardless. I think if you prefer to just tell them to stop calling, that would be perfectly fine and not shirking any obligation or courtesy to her.

2. Rewarding employment milestones

Our organization would like to begin recognizing employees for their length of service with a tasteful gift presented at each 5- or 10-year employment milestone. However, we have several employees with over 20 years of service, which leaves us unsure of how to begin an award program. If an employee with 20 years of services receives a watch and an employee with 10 years of service receives a pin (with the understanding that she would receive a watch in 10 years) the 20-year employee may have hard feelings about missing out on the awards for earlier years of services. This could become particularly difficult if we choose to award service in 5 year increments and a person with 25 years of services expects a pen, a pin, a watch, etc. How would you proceed?

I’d skip the pins and watches all together; most people won’t care about them and will see them as a gesture from another time. Give people an extra week of vacation time instead — that’s something that everyone, no matter their taste in watches, will greatly appreciate.

If people complain that they didn’t get particular rewards at their earlier milestones, before the program existed, your choices are basically to (a) offer them to them now — not totally crazy if you’re talking about something like vacation, especially if you spread it over two years, or (b) acknowledge that benefit packages sometimes change, and that you hope they’ll be excited with what you’re giving them now.

3. What to do when a recruiter is blocking you for a job you know you’re right for

What do you do when you know you are right for a job ( know company/know you can implement every responsibility.etc.), but an executive recruiter for all kinds of reasons might be a block?

You move on, because in fact you can’t know that you’re really right for a job from the outside. You don’t have the same information that the employer does about what they’re looking for. So you respect the decision of the person they’ve put in charge of hiring and move on.

The only exception to this is if you have a personal connection to the hiring manager, in which case you could apply with them directly.

But the vast majority of the time when rejected candidates are sure that they were right for the job, they’re actually wrong. And it’s not because they suck or anything like that; it’s because they’re not sufficiently familiar with the nuances of what the employer is looking for, or what qualifications other candidates in the applicant pool bring. (In fact, you could be great for the job, but other people are just better for it. In that case, you’re still getting rejected.)

4. Referring a friend for a job when I’m still new

I started a new job that I’m really excited about. It’s especially refreshing after working in a toxic work environment.

I want to refer my former coworker (who is still working for my old toxic company) for a position that just opened up at my new company. I wanted to know the best way to do that, as I just started this job literally a week ago, and don’t want to look like I’m asking for favors so soon. Should I wait a while to ask?

Well, you’re not asking, “Will you give my friend a job?” You’re suggesting a candidate who you think will be an excellent solution to a problem your current employer has (a job vacancy). So if you really think she’s outstanding, there’s no reason to wait. But you’d want to be really, really sure that she’s a strong candidate — otherwise it can reflect poorly on you.

5. Is it unethical to have students write letters of recommendation for professors to sign?

I work at a college and my colleagues and I have students asking us for letters of recommendation all the time. We’re actually in the busy season for that right now. Of course, they need to be done, and we do them, but they tend to pile up.

A colleague of mine said he stays on top of the letters by asking the student to write the letter themselves, and if my colleague agrees when he reads it, he will sign the letter as if he wrote it. I told him I thought this was very unethical and not what employers or search committees are asking for, and plagiarism. He was honestly shocked. He thought since he learned this from a mentor that it was okay.

He started to ask where the unethical line is: asking the student to make an outline, asking the student for points to highlight, etc. I didn’t know how to answer since I write letters from scratch and have never done it another way. Am I overreacting? Where is the ethical line?

It’s actually pretty common for employers to do that (although generally with employers the whole effort is wasted since few employers care about letters of recommendation outside of academia and apparently law). I don’t know how common it is for academic letters though. I tend to agree with you that it’s not what search committees are asking for (although it still might be common practice — maybe others in academia can weigh in here?) but I don’t think it’s plagiarism; it’s more like ghost-writing.