Ask a Manager

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

1. I can’t give my employee a good reference, but I don’t want her to stay in her job

I have an employee who has not been doing a good job for a while. This person has clearly been unhappy (grumpy at work, calls in sick all the time and may very well be ill) and is looking for another position within the same company. I would be happy to be rid of them. I cannot give them a good review (ethically) and have been avoiding the calls/emails of their potential new manager. Any advice?

If you’d be glad to get rid of this person, then you need to start the process of making that happen — or, in this case, talking to the person about what’s going on with them and what your expectations are for their performance (including attendance and demeanor). In general, when you’re not happy with someone’s performance, you should be giving them clear feedback about the problems, and then if things don’t improve, giving her clear and direct warnings about their performance and eventually letting them go if they don’t resolve the issues. In this case, however, you have a possibly sick employee, and the illness could certainly be causing the attendance and grumpiness problems. So step one here is to talk to her, tell her what you’ve noticed and that you’re concerned, find out what’s going on, and see what can be worked out.

As for the reference — which seems like the smallest of the issues you — you need to get back to the manager. It’s one thing to avoid reference calls from outside your company when you can’t give someone a good reference. But this other manager is a colleague from within your company; you really need to get back to them. But before you do that, you need to find out what’s up with your employee; it wouldn’t be fair to give a bad reference to someone for being sick if her work was good before this. (If her work wasn’t good before the health issues, then of course you can explain that.) In any case, it means you need to talk to the employee today, because continuing to put off your colleague will reflect badly on you.

2. Encouraging rejected candidates to apply again in the future

I’m in the process of hiring for an entry-level assistant to serve two departments here. I’ve come across a number of applicants who are wrong for this position but who might be strong candidates for a position or two we expect to open in other departments in the next 6-12 months. I do normally send all rejected candidates a “thanks but no” email, but is there any reason not to send these particular applicants an emails encouraging them to keep an eye out for those other possible openings or just other openings here in general? A colleague is suggesting that this may encourage unrealistic expectations, especially since I will not be the hiring manager for those other positions, but that strikes me as overly cautious. Thoughts?

It’s overly cautious. It’s fine to send that kind of email; there’s nothing in it that sounds remotely like a promise of employment.

3. What does it mean when job postings say “women and minorities encouraged to apply”?

What does it mean when job postings say things like “women and minorities encouraged to apply,” or when online applications request information about race and gender? Why would companies ask questions that could potentially introduce new biases so early in the application process? I’m a female minority in engineering and I have a gender and race neutral name. I suspect that many hiring managers reading my resume probably think I’m a white male, and that disclosing any information about my race and gender could only hurt my chances at getting an interview. Do companies that claim they are “affirmative action” actually use the answers to these questions, or do companies just ask for this information in case a disgruntled applicant complains about discrimination later on?

Statements like “women and minorities encouraged to apply” are there because either it’s true and they want you to know it, or they want to look like it’s true. Either way, U.S. employers can’t legally consider race in hiring (but they can make an effort to recruit a diverse pool).

As for applications that ask for that information, it’s generally separated from the information that hiring managers see and use to report in the aggregate on the composition of candidates and hires. (Companies with more than 100 employees or government contracts over a certain dollar amount have to report the aggregate demographic makeup of their applicants and employees to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.)

4. Should I get two bachelors degrees or one masters?

Is it better to get two bachelors degrees or one masters?

Two bachelors degrees is weird in most cases (with some limited exceptions). But that doesn’t mean you should get a masters either. Figure out what the career you want requires — which may be experience rather than degrees, particularly if you already have one bachelors — and then make decisions from there.

If the point here is to make yourself more marketable to employers, figure out what actually does that before making any plans. Too often people just assume that more education will do that, when in fact in many circumstances it won’t (and can even make your job search harder).

5. Can my employer ban jalapeños?

Is it legal to ban employees from eating anything containing jalapeños in the building due to one employee being allergic to them?

Yes, that is legal. A terrible tragedy were it to need to happen, as jalapeños are my favorite food, but legal nonetheless.

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

1. Are ads that target “recent college grads” age discrimination?

I am job-searching and keep seeing some really great jobs that I qualify for, posted by this same staffing company on job boards. ALL of the positions require a 4-year degree and most specify the applicant must be a recent college grad. I have actually seen this company go as far as to specify “must have had great grades in high school” or they sometimes ask for a specific college GPA. The ads will emphasize 2-3 times within the description that you must be a recent college grad. I actually applied for a position anyway, leaving off college dates on my resume and was contacted by a recruiter. She wrapped up the phone screen quickly when she learned that I had completed college 20 years ago. The fact I had strong experience in the industry for which she was recruiting seemed a moot point.

It’s is obvious to me they want 22-24-year-old applicants only. Isn’t this age discrimination? And if this is not age discrimination, can it really be considered a good hiring practice?

There’s nothing illegal about requiring a particular GPA since that doesn’t screen out people over a certain age, but a preference (or requirement) for recent college grads does violate federal laws against age discrimination.

In fact, the EEOC says clearly: “It is illegal for an employer to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for or discourages someone from applying for a job because of his or her race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. For example, a help-wanted ad that seeks ‘females’ or ‘recent college graduates’ may discourage men and people over 40 from applying and may violate the law.” More here.

2. Job application wants me to list contact info for friends who can verify my activities

Currently I am searching for jobs in the air travel industry as a flight attendant. While in the process of filling out an application for one company, in the Employment Gap Explanation section while listing my job history, it asked that I explain any employment gaps of one month or more. That’s all fine and good. But the fine print went on that I must list the name, address and phone number of the person(s) that can verify my activities during those times of unemployment. The kicker is they can’t be relatives!

I can understand their reasoning for asking that, as they have to be concerned about terrorism, but I can’t be the only one who thinks it’s just plain ridiculous! How can I explain a 6 month period of unemployment after I graduated college and I lived at home with my family during that time, while friends were still in school or out of town? I also don’t feel comfortable offering such personal information about my friends and acquaintances to the company, either. Am I overreacting?

That’s weird as hell. If it’s a security requirement and you want the job, I suppose you have to comply, just as you’d be giving similar information about family and friends for a security clearance. But yes, it’s bizarre.

3. Can I ask my old company about the results of a project I did?

I just left the company where I was working without a job in my field because the work environment was not healthy. I currently have a part-time job that pays well, so I’m not worried about the bills for a couple months at least. Before leaving, a person from another department told me about a challenge that they were having in their day-to-day work. Before I left, I finished implementing the solution to that challenge. I was the owner of that project and my manager knows that I worked really hard on it. However, I was not able to witness firsthand the results that the solution generated.

I now want to send an email asking if the results were positive or negative to the person who initially had the challenge. Even though it would be better for me to have numbers to evaluate the possible success rate, I understand that this person as a current member of the organization might need to keep the numbers confidential and might only be able to give me a general sense of the success rate. Do you think that I should send this email? I am also not sure how my former manager might take this if the person forwards the email to my manager? Should I cc my former manager on the email?

I don’t see anything wrong with reaching out and saying that you’ve been thinking about the project you did and wondering how it turned out for them. It’s unlikely that they’re going to respond to a casual inquiry like that with hard numbers though, so if that’s what you really want (for resume purposes), I think you’ll need to ask directly if it’s something they’d be willing to share and explain why you’re asking. I’d do that in a second email, though, once you hear back about how it went generally. No need to put them on the spot with that question if the first answer is “it hasn’t made a difference yet,” “it’s too early to tell,” or “it caused our network server to catch fire.”

I don’t think there’s any need to cc your former manager on the email, unless she’s in a particular position to answer the question too.

4. Will a job offer come from HR or from the hiring manager?

Will the hiring manager set up a meeting to offer me the job or will HR make the offer? I’m asking because the hiring manager sent an email to set up a meeting later in the week to talk about the job interview… but I thought HR would call or email me?

It totally depends on the employer. There’s no one playbook that every employer uses for this stuff. That said, in most cases, job offers are made over the phone, not in face-to-face meetings. That doesn’t mean that absolutely no one sets up a face-to-face meeting for it, but that’s a fairly unusual approach.

As for who makes job offers, smart managers make their own, because they want the chance to sell the candidate on the job and to have a personal connection. But plenty of managers let HR do it for them.

5. What does it mean when an employer takes down a job posting and hasn’t called my references?

What does it mean when a prospective employer takes down a job posting?

A hiring manager asked for my references but my references never got a phone call. Is this bad news?

Taking down a job posting can mean all sorts of things: They filled the job, they’re no longer accepting new applications but are still interviewing, they’re about to make an offer, they’re confident that they’ll hire someone from the current pool of candidates, the job ad expired from the site and no one noticed, they wanted to make a change to the job posting so took down the old one and haven’t put the new one up yet, or loads of other possibilities. You can’t know from the outside, and it’s pointless to try to read into it.

On the references issue, it’s possible that the manager hasn’t called your references yet but still plans to, or that she’s one of those managers who asks for references because she knows she’s supposed to but doesn’t always call them, or that they plan to make an offer to someone else (but might call your references if that falls through). Again, no way to know, and your best bet is to just move on and focus on other jobs until/unless you hear something from this employer.

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

1. I feel guilty about making my boss’s life harder if I leave for a new job

I’ve been passively looking for a new job for about a year now, but really only half-heartedly. I don’t have any huge complaints with the day-to-day of my current job, but the company is a mess and I was always certain that I would be jumping ship immediately if my boss quit.

Cut to last week, when my boss informs me that he’s fairly certain he’ll be gone by the end of the year, or by next summer at the latest. A few days later, I was headhunted by a company, and it seems really likely that I’ll be offered a position, based on how the interviews have gone.

Now that I’m considering leaving BEFORE my much-admired boss leaves, I’m finding that I’m having real trouble with the idea of quitting. I made a list today of the things I do each day, and the thought of putting all these tasks back on my boss (we’re the only two people in our department) is causing me real distress.

This new job pays around 10%-15% more annually, is non-exempt (I currently work 50+ hour weeks, so this is a benefit to me), and is much closer to my house. Plus, it’s a specialist position, so I’d be focusing on around a quarter of the area that I currently deal with as an HR Generalist. I would be crazy to turn down the new job, right? I just don’t know how to accept the fact that I’ll be sticking my boss with 80+ hour workweeks for however long it takes for him to find a new job.

Your boss will deal with it. People leave jobs; this is a normal part of doing business. If the department will fall apart without you, then your boss has mismanaged things pretty badly. But it’s more likely that he’ll have a crunch time and then things will be fine.

You need to leave on a schedule that makes sense for you. (And there’s rarely an easy time to leave a job. In fact, it might be better for you to leave now, rather than waiting until your boss leaves and sticking your company with no one seasoned left in the department.) It’s good that you care — it shows you’re conscientious and care about things running smoothly, but really, this is a normal thing that businesses are set up to be able to handle. Your boss will not be working 80 hours a week; he’ll bring in new help, or push projects back, or bring in temps, or do any of the myriad things people do in this situation. It will be fine.

2. My interview included a random person who didn’t identify herself, even when I asked

Is it appropriate for an interview to include an interviewer who is not affiliated with the business you are interviewing with?

I just applied for a management position with a local humane society. I sent my solicited resume to the president of the board, who had contacted me, and scheduled an interview. Present during the interview were a manager, the president, a volunteer, and “an interested party.” When I asked if she was a board member or worked for the shelter, she said no and that she was just “an interested party.” It was strange. It made me very uncomfortable that she was given access to my resume and was included in my interview without my consent. Weird. Am I overreacting?

There are cases where it would be reasonable to include an outside in an interview process — if she were a consultant, for instance, or coaching the board president on hiring, or who knows what else. But her role should be explained to you — and it would have been perfectly appropriate for you to say, “Can you tell me more about your role with the organization and in the hiring process?”

I don’t think I’d bristle at her having access to your resume. The universe of people who might see your resume when you apply for a job is pretty large (volunteers, admins helping with hiring, board members if it’s a very small organization, someone the hiring manager checks with to see if you’re the same Jane Smith who used to work for her, and lots of other possibilities). But it’s certainly reasonable to want to understand who you’re meeting with and why.

3. My former boss’s boss is carrying out a weirdly slow trickle of LinkedIn endorsements

I left a job nearly six years ago and completely changed fields. Now my boss’s boss from that job, who I don’t keep in touch with, is endorsing me on LinkedIn for skills that she has no way of knowing about. She doesn’t do this all at one time; she endorses about one skill a week. It’s making me feel a little odd – an equivalent on Facebook would be a person I once got to know at summer camp “liking” every single one of the pictures I’ve ever posted. Should I do anything about this? At the very least I feel like it waters down the endorsement’s I’ve received, but I don’t know how much they really matter.

That’s bizarre behavior, but I would just ignore it. No one else will notice or care.

That said, totally aside from this, I’d turn off LinkedIn’s skills endorsements altogether. They don’t carry any weight at all and have zero credibility since anyone can endorse you for anything, whether they know you and have worked with you or not. They’re an inexplicably ridiculous feature of the site.

4. Should I leave my new job for another one?

I started a new job in December with a great company, in the top 10 of the Fortune 500. I really like my job and see great potential for my future. This week I got a call from an outside recruiter with a firm asking if I would be interested in another opportunity. I checked her out and she’s legit. I’ve spoken to her a few times and the position is similar to my current position. She thinks I’m a good candidate and wants to present me for it. I’m really torn. While I’m very happy with my new job, I hate to pass on something that could be even better. She said my current salary and bonus was in line with what this company would offer. What are your thoughts on this?

Why would you leave a job that you just started less than a year ago and that you’re happy at, without a really compelling reason?

You can get away with one short-term stay, but it’ll pretty much lock you into having to stay at the next one for a good long while so you don’t look like a job hopper. Why do that without a lot more incentive than it sounds like you have here?

5. Salary negotiation when moving from non-exempt to exempt

I am in a salaried non-exempt position at a large non-profit, and recently applied for a role in another department which better suits my skillset (with the support and blessing of my current manager and the new role’s supervisor). I know that this new role would be offered at the same salary that I am currently on, but it would be an exempt position.

If I were to get this job, could I negotiate the starting salary up based on the fact that I would be “losing” overtime? I don’t work overtime every pay period, but during particularly busy times for the organization I do clock up a fair amount, about an extra $2,500 over the course of a year. This new role would be just as much work, so I feel like I’d be taking a pay cut of that extra $2-3K…but maybe that’s just the trade-off for the added responsibility and authority of the new role. The company is responsive to salary negotiation (I did it when I started my current job), so I’m not afraid of asking, I just have no idea if this is a normal basis for negotiation or if I’ll be laughed out of the office.

Well, ideally, you’d negotiate the salary totally independent of what you’ve been making; you should negotiate based on the market rate for the new role. But if you get the sense that that their salary offer is going to be based on your current salary, then yes, it’s totally reasonable to say, “While my salary in this role has been $X, I typically earned an additional $Y each year in overtime, bringing the total pay to $Z. I want to be sure I’m not taking a pay cut at the same time that I’m taking on additional responsibility.”

Also, about this: “maybe that’s just the trade-off for the added responsibility and authority of the new role.” Added responsibility and authority is supposed to bring additional compensation, not less. If you’re taking on more responsibility, make sure you’re being paid appropriately for it. That means an increase, not a lateral move, and definitely not a cut.