when do I start negotiating salary?

by Alison Green on May 21, 2014

A reader writes:

I have a question about negotiation. For context, I should mention that I’m currently a teacher whose salary and benefits are set by our union contract. Negotiation hasn’t really been a factor for me in the past, because we can’t individually negotiate on much.

Next week, I have an interview for a job with our district office. I think there’s about a 50% chance that I’ll be offered the job. If they do, at what point do I actually start the negotiation? When they call to offer me the job? Do I say I’ll get back to them in a day or so and negotiate then? As an added complication, I’m not 100% sure that I actually WANT the job. I mean, I do want it, but it will take me out of the classroom and I’m not completely sure that I’m ready to do that because I love what I do.

I guess my question has two parts: At what point in the process do I start negotiating, and do I do that before or after I figure out if I want the job in the first place?

It’s absolutely fine to start negotiating when you first receive the offer. There’s no need to wait a day just for the sake of it, unless you truly do need to think the offer over before you’re able to come back to them with a counter proposal. (If you do need that day, by all means take it. You just don’t need to do so artificially.)

If you do it on the spot, you can say something like, “I’m really excited about this role. On salary, I was hoping for something closer to $X.” (Then, stop talking and wait to see what they say.)

Regarding figuring out if you want the job in the first place, ideally you’d do as much of that as you can before you get called with an offer (or more accurately, “I’d want this just if the salary is at least $X”). You might not be able to fully figure it out before then, because you might have additional questions that you need answered before you can finalize your thinking — but you should at least get yourself all the way up to that point, so that by the time you get an offer, you know exactly what further information you need from them to help you make a decision. You don’t want to wait to start your thinking until the offer comes in, because you’ll probably have a limited window of time to make up your mind — and you don’t want to spend three days thinking about whether you even want to do this work, only to have to ask a basic question about the work or the culture on day 4.

Do your thinking now, as much of it as you can.

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it’s not just helicopter parents — it’s helicopter professors too

by Alison Green on May 21, 2014

A reader writes:

I’m fairly new to the workforce – just a couple years of experience. I’m the internship coordinator in my department at a cultural nonprofit, so I field a lot of questions from students (applicants and general interest) about how to make it in our industry. At least once a month, I get an email with questions, and I’m always happy to help – I remember being in their shoes!

However, sometimes a student will email me, and before I have a chance to reply (within a couple hours!) their professor will follow up and ask if I received the email and if I’m going to answer. This is usually accompanied by some guilt-trip language about how they asked because of a homework assignment and I’m affecting their grade if I don’t reply. (This has happened twice in the past three months, and from different schools so it’s not an isolated incident. Ick.)

Here’s the one I got today, after a student emailed asking for an informational interview (and I had already agreed!):

“I have been notified by Jane Doe that she asked you to be her Ask-A-Designer for my summer class, Advanced Design. She is required to ask a professional designer 10 questions I wrote and 5 of her own for a homework assignment. Did you receive her email? If you agree to be her Ask-A-Designer, please download the attached assignment sheet and read the instructions. I need you to return the sheet to me if you agree to participate.

Jane’s grade is dependent upon this assignment, so it’s important that you do it. Let me know if you have a question.”

It occasionally happens with internship applicants, as well, and unfortunately for the students, rules them out of the first round. We love our interns but we don’t have time to deal with weird needy professors.

I sometimes also receive emails from faculty advisers asking why I didn’t choose their student for an internship or trying to verify if their students’ application materials were received. Those are easier to answer – we only communicate about applications with the candidates themselves and cannot confirm or deny receipt to outsiders. I have been debating whether I should tell those professors that their actions reflect poorly on those applicants, and generally get them disqualified. But the ones that come from professors about homework assignments are baffling to me…. I have no idea how to reply.

It’s really off-putting and frankly feels strange. I don’t want to feel like I’m getting homework assignments from random professors I’ve never met. On the other hand, our industry is very small and I feel I’m sort of representing the company with my reply. What should I say back? (Or am I overreacting by thinking it’s weird?)

Whoa. No, you are not overreacting by thinking it’s weird.

It’s very, very weird.

What the hell, professors of the world?

Professors are not their students’ assistants, and they should not be facilitating this type of correspondence on their behalf. Nor should they be acting as if total strangers are in any way obligated to them or their students. Their students are requesting a favor, and they should do it in the most gracious, least time-consuming way to you possible — which means that you shouldn’t get double emails, you shouldn’t get an email from anyone but them, and you certainly shouldn’t be presented with demands.

If I were you, I’d write back to this professor and say: “I’m glad to talk with students who contact me directly, to the extent that my schedule permits — but I’m confused about why you’re reaching out as well, rather than allowing Jane to manage the contact herself (as someone asking for a professional favor would normally do).”

It’s pretty screwed up that in the very process of encouraging students to learn about the work world (hence the assignment to talk to someone in their field), they’re hand-holding them as if they’re third graders, undermining the way they come across to potential networking contacts, and missing a major opportunity to help them practice basic professional skills.

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my coworker makes more money than me, but we do the same work

by Alison Green on May 21, 2014

Discovering that your coworker is paid a more than you can feel like a slap in the face, even if you were previously happy with your salary. Finding out about a pay disparity can feel profoundly unfair and can make you wonder if your employer doesn’t value you as much as you thought they did.

But before you get angry, take a look at these five legitimate reasons why your coworker might be getting paid more than you:

  1. The job market might have been different when your coworker was hired. The market worth of most jobs fluctuates. In tough job markets, it’s much easier for employers to find good people willing to work for lower salaries. If if your coworker was hired when there were more job openings and few candidates, and you were hired during a market that had slimmer pickings for job seekers, that could explain why you were brought on at different salary levels.
  1. You coworker might have negotiated better than you did when she was hired. Some people negotiate job offers far more aggressively than others – and some don’t negotiate at all. Your coworker’s salary could be higher than yours simply because she asked for more at the time of hiring or made a more compelling case for why she deserved it.
  1. Your coworker might have asked for a raise when you didn’t. At many companies, you need to ask for a raise in order to get one. If your coworker asks and you don’t, that could explain your different salaries.
  1. Your coworker’s performance might be better than yours. Ultimately, compensation is supposed to reflect value, and it’s possible that your coworker is contributing at a higher level than you are. It can sting to hear that, but people are notoriously bad judges of their own performance relative to other people’s. It could also be the case that you’re excellent at what you do, but your coworker is earning more because she’s great at bringing in new business or pinch-hitting when your manager is away, or some piece of her work that you don’t even see.
  1. Your coworker might be getting some form of hardship pay. If your coworker’s job is particularly difficult or unpleasant – because of her boss, or the hours required, or the particular customers she works with – your employer might pay more to compensate for that. It can be tough to attract and retain good employees who are willing to put up with crazy hours or an excessively critical boss, and many are willing to tack on “hardship pay,” even if they don’t call it that.

All that said, it’s also true that companies have an obligation to ensure they’re not paying particular demographic groups less than others. If a company ends up paying most men more than most women making the same contributions, it doesn’t matter if that came about because the men negotiated and the women didn’t; ultimately, they still have a gender-based pay disparity problem to address.

So, what can you do if you realize that a coworker is earning more than you but you’re both contributing at the same level? You’ll generally have a much better chance of getting a raise if you focus on the salary you deserve, independent of what your coworker makes.*

That means that you’ll need to research the market rate for your type of work in your field, in your particular geographic area (since salaries can vary dramatically from region to region). In doing this, you might discover that you’re actually paid reasonably well, relative to what you could command somewhere else – regardless of what your coworker is making. But if you do find evidence that you should be earning more, then it’s time to begin creating a case for a pay adjustment based on what contributions you’ve made to your organization above the basic expectations for your job. (Your market research can be part of that case, but it shouldn’t be the main foundation of it; that research is more of a reality check to help you decide if there’s a pay issue you should be addressing in the first place.)

* The exception to this is if you have a reasonable suspicion that sex discrimination is at play. If that’s the case, case you’d want to consult with a lawyer to help figure out the best way to proceed.

I originally wrote this article for publication on AOL.com.

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can I ask an interviewer if I would have my own office, my coworker is avoiding me, and more

by Alison Green on May 21, 2014

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

1. Can I ask an interviewer if I would have my own office?

I am in the process of interviewing for a new job and am wondering if there is an appropriate way to ask if I will have my own office to work in. I have found having an office with a door (to me) is worth quite a bit as it greatly improves the quality of my work life. Will this sound crazy to say directly to a hiring manager? Is there an appropriate or tactful way to bring this up?

If there’s a natural opening for it at the end of the interview, you could ask to see the space you’d be working in. Otherwise, once you have an offer, it’s fine to say, “Can you tell me about where I’d be working? Would I be in a private office or a shared space?” If it’s a shared space, you might be able to try to negotiate something different, but that’s going to be subject to factors like whether space is even available and whether they can do it for people at your level without causing issues with others at your level who would then also want it (or people higher up than you who don’t have their own space).

2. My coworker is suddenly avoiding me

My coworker, who I used to always have lunch with, has seemingly been avoiding me out of the blue, and no longer takes his lunch break at the same time as me. He seems to be avoiding me the rest of the time, too. His behavior has definitely changed. I wouldn’t say he’s unfriendly or anything, just suddenly not there. We work in a very small office (about 10 people), so I know it’s not a matter of workload or scheduling. We all choose our lunch breaks, and nobody else’s routine has changed except his.

I know this question may sound a little immature, but what’s a graceful/professional (and non-desperate) way to ask him why he’s suddenly shifted his lunch break? If there was something I said or did, I’d like a chance to fix the situation, and if it wasn’t my fault, then (selfish as it may sound) I’d at least hope for an explanation. We’ve been good friends since I started working here, so I’m really confused by his change in behavior. Suddenly not having anyone around has left me feeling pretty lonely.

“Hey, Bob, we hardly talk anymore! Is everything okay?”

Or simply: “Hey, Bob, I’d love to have lunch and catch up. Are you free tomorrow or Thursday?”

3. Manager tagged me on Facebook to handle a customer complaint

I work in a management position for a multi-national company (department head, not director level) and yesterday the venue that I run was slated by a customer on a social media site for poor service. The customer tagged the venue that I run in their comments, and their thoughts were viewable by anyone who could see. Another member of management (from another department) saw the post and tagged both me and the customer (linking to the original complaint), asking me to deal with the situation.

Although I have concerns about the complaint and am more then happy to deal with it, I don’t feel comfortable with someone who works for the company letting customers know who I am by tagging me next to complaints/comments made by strangers (especially since I wasn’t working that day and the customer has never seen me before). Am I right in believing that this is an incorrect practice?

Assuming this was your personal Facebook account, yeah, that’s weird. I assume she did it the same way you’d use the cc field in an email, because she wanted to draw your attention to something she was asking you to handle. But given that Facebook is a personal social networking site, not a business one, it was an action that I’d think would make most people uncomfortable — not so much because the customer now knows who you are, but because it could have ended up on your personal Facebook page (depending on what your settings are), and that’s inappropriate.

That said, assuming this is a one-time occurrence and not a pattern, it’s not worth raising a stink over.

4. Responding to feedback after doing terribly in an interview

I did pretty terribly in an interview for an internship. The interviewer gave me negative, but true feedback. Perhaps this is a stupid question, but can I acknowledge how I awful I was in the follow-up email? She was completely right with the feedback she gave me. How do I go about this? Thanks for your time and help.

Don’t feel like you need to browbeat yourself in the reply. A gracious response, and one that won’t sound defensive, would be something like: “Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with me and for being candid. I’m taking this to heart, and I’m going to work on the issues you identified. I really appreciate this.”

5. Checking “don’t contact my employer” on a job application

I’m applying to other jobs while still working at my current job. My boss doesn’t know that I’m looking for other jobs, so on job applications I’ve been marking “not okay to contact” next to his name in the current employment section. Does this make hiring managers suspicious, or is it normal/understandable? I sometimes worry that hiring managers might think I’m trying to hide something or keep my boss from saying negative things about me, when really I just don’t want my boss finding out I’m trying to leave.

It’s very, very normal to ask that your current employer not be contacted. Employers understand that it’s because you don’t want to jeopardize your job by having it known that you’re searching. If, however, you check that option for a previous job, that can raise questions — since at that point it’s generally assumed that it’s because you don’t like what they’d say.

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how long should interviews last?

by Alison Green on May 20, 2014

A reader writes:

I’m a relatively senior executive who’s back on the job market. Whenever I’ve been a hiring manager in the past, I’ve always made it a point to block out 60 minutes on my calendar for in-person interviews. They usually don’t take that long, but I want to give myself flexibility in case I really hit it off with the person and want to keep talking to them (or if we encounter any delays). But now that I’m interviewing for jobs myself, I’ve noticed companies are frequently allocating only 30 minutes, often with a hard stop at the end.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the old “this interview is a train wreck, so I’m going to use the excuse of another meeting to end it now” trick. Nor are these HR screens where they just need to check salary requirements and available start dates. I had a second-round interview recently that was scheduled for a half hour and ended with the interviewer getting pulled out of the room for his next meeting when I was in mid-sentence. The entire interview felt incredibly rushed, with 28 minutes of him firing questions at me and two minutes for me to ask questions of him.

This particular interview process was fairly disorganized from start to finish, so I may just be reacting to an overall bad candidate experience, but in general, I find the notion that you only give candidates 30 minutes — and no more — to make their case to be ill-advised from the company’s perspective, and borderline disrespectful to the candidate. Yeah, I know, everyone’s really busy, but shouldn’t hiring be one of the activities that’s worth allocating time for? And what sort of message are you sending to potential employees when you prioritize the Quarterly TPS Report Planning Meeting over their time?

Half an hour isn’t enough time for an in-person interview. It’s enough time for an initial phone screen, certainly, but not an in-person meeting with the hiring manager. Let’s say five minutes is taken up by getting-to-know-you pleasantries and 10 minutes is taken up by the candidate’s own questions at the end (and that’s not enough, but we’ll use it for the sake of example). That leaves 15 minutes for the interviewer to ask questions and listen to the answers. 15 minutes to decide on a possible hire. That’s ridiculous.

In-person interviews should usually be an absolute minimum of 45 minutes and ideally 60 minutes or more, to ensure that you can truly talk in-depth and that the candidate has time to ask their own questions. And that’s assuming that it’s one of multiple meetings in the process. If it’s the only interview you’ll be having with the hiring manager, it should be longer. (It still might wrap up earlier if it’s the wrong fit, but more time should be blocked out, since you can’t know that in advance.) There’s just no way any employer should be confident hiring someone without talking to them for longer than that.

What you’re seeing is people who don’t know how to hire and who don’t value the importance of the hiring process strongly enough.

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how to keep a “small company” culture as your business gets bigger

by Alison Green on May 20, 2014

When a company is just starting out, its leaders often don’t think that much about culture. After all, in a small business, the culture is generally simply you — your work style and preferences. But as a company (or a team) grows, it can become more challenging to preserve the very cultural elements that have been key to your success.<

And culture does matter. It’s the invisible force that sends signals about “how we do things here,” and as a result, it can have a major impact on what you get done and how you do it, whether you’re managing a single employee or a large team. So as that team is growing, it’s important to be thoughtful about how you can preserve your culture along the way. Here are three ways to do that.

1. Lead by example. Modeling the culture you want to create or maintain is easily the most powerful way to transmit the cultural values and behaviors you want your company or team to embody. In fact, your culture will look a lot like you. For example, if you mention in a meeting that you’re going to email a sales report around afterwards and then don’t follow through, your staff is likely to notice that and feel less obligation to take their own next steps seriously too. On the other hand, if you send an email saying, “I know I said I’d get this document out today, but I realized I should wait for input from a funder, so it’ll be tomorrow instead,” you’re modeling what it looks like to take details and commitments – even small ones – seriously.

2. Talk explicitly about your culture. Rather than relying on people to figure out your cultural expectations on their own, you can articulate your values through explicit discussion. For example, when you’re training new employees, you can discuss your values and what they mean in practice by talking through hypothetical scenarios and how the values would play out in them – as well as what behaviors wouldn’t be consistent with your culture’s values.

3. Reinforce your culture with feedback when you see cultural alignment – and when you don’t. If you see someone acting in a way that isn’t consistent with your cultural values – such as not paying attention to a client or dismissing their concerns – give feedback in the moment, and explain explicitly what you want to see instead. You can do the same thing when you see someone exemplifying what you want in your culture – for instance, you might praise people for strong examples of persistence or integrity or being extraordinarily helpful to a client or coworker.

4. Hire for culture fit. No matter how skilled someone might be, a hire is unlikely to be successful if the person it out of sync with key elements of your culture, such as treating people with respect, having a sense of humility, or being open to new ideas. That means that it’s wise to screen for candidates who are aligned with your organization’s core values and to include a discussion of your culture as part of your interviewing process.

Remember, too, that you’re sending messages about your culture from the moment a job applicant first contacts you: How responsive are you? Do you ask thoughtful, rigorous questions rather than typical interview fare? Do you convey a warm and positive tone during the interview? After all, the hiring process is a microcosm of your culture, and smart candidates – exactly the people you want to hire – will be picking up loads of messages about how you do things, and will carry those impressions with them if hired

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a parent asks: what’s wrong with my daughter’s rude, frustrating interviewers?

by Alison Green on May 20, 2014

A reader writes:

My daughter has a music degree (actually two) and, music jobs being impossible to find, is willing to do just about anything. So why am I frustrated?

She had an internship all last year, and applied for a job there this spring. The CEO called her into his office, told her how glad he was that she’d applied as they liked to hire from within and that he’d heard very good reports of her. Did she even get a phone call from anyone in the hiring dept? No.

She’s worked in the HR dept at her school for the past several years (work/study). She’s interviewed for two jobs there, one of which would involve doing many of the same things she’s already been doing. This was mentioned in the interview, along with the fact that everyone likes her, and that training for her would be minimal because she already basically knew the job. But did she get the position? No.

(I’ve been through this myself. I applied for job after job at a non-profit where many of my friends work. The only position I every got a call about was the one I was least qualified for.)

So, what advice do I give my daughter? She’s completely frustrated and so am I! I know she presents herself well, and she’s intelligent and articulate, so I don’t get it. Are hiring managers really this out of touch with reality??

I wrote back to this letter-writer and asked:  What’s leading you to assume they’re out of touch with reality (versus just being flooded with great candidates)?

She replied:

Maybe out of touch with reality is the wrong word. I just don’t understand why, in an interview, they would tell her how great she is, how much they like her, how they know she can do the job, etc., and then toss her aside without even a personal phone call or face to face interaction. She got rejected by email from a person she’d seen a few hours before at work. Sure, they may have other great candidates, but why act this way with someone they know and with whom they have a relationship? Do hiring managers just not get the impact their words and actions have?

Why not just say “We know you could do the job but we have tons of other great candidates and some may have better qualifications than you, so we’ll have to wait and see. Although we really like you, we just don’t know if we’ll be able to hire you.” If a potential employee can be sent packing for a misleading resume or faking job experience, why don’t the hiring people have to follow the same rules? No, it seems they can say whatever they want and it’s fine.

To be fair, she was never promised the job, but she knows they did hire someone from a completely different department in the university who had no experience in this line of work and turned down two people who already work in the department and knew parts of the job. This makes no sense to me. This leads me to wonder what universe hiring people inhabit…

Sadly, what she is learning in this process is that doing a good job, being a good team player, being prepared for an interview, knowing people in the company, etc. mean nothing in the end. It’s all a complete crapshoot and the hiring people can pretty much say or do anything they want.

Well, it’s possible that there’s something your daughter is doing that’s making them less inclined to hire her. You, as her parent, aren’t especially well positioned to know if this is the case, which is true of anyone who doesn’t work with her. So one thing she might try is asking her managers for feedback on what she could be doing better, and how she might better position herself to be hired in the future. Yes, she seems awesome to you and she’s getting excellent feedback in her interviews, but interviewers aren’t always forthcoming about concerns they have about candidates, because it’s not their obligation to do that.

But it’s also possible that she is indeed a very strong candidate, but someone else was just stronger. That’s a very, very normal part of job searching. Great candidates get turned down all the time because someone else was a better fit. That’s just how it works. This is true even if you’ve already doing the work and everyone likes you. It’s dangerous to ever assume you have an in with a particular job, because you just can’t know who else they might be talking to or what they’re really looking for. (The same is true of you when you applied somewhere that many of your friends work. That’s just no guarantee that you’ll be the best fit of everyone they’re talking to — especially since hiring shouldn’t be about who you’re friends with.)

Also:

* Interviewers might tell you that you’re great and they like you because you’re great and they like you. But that’s not an indication that a job offer is coming. Thinking a candidate is great and liking her isn’t the same as deciding to offer her the job.

* It’s dangerous to feel that interviewers are “doing you wrong” when they tell you that you’re great but then don’t hire you. Not only is that a fundamental misunderstanding of how hiring works, but it can make you bitter. That’s not helpful to you or your daughter. It will make her job search more stressful, and it might make it longer, too.

* You’re right that hiring managers aren’t held as accountable for their words as candidates are. But no one lied to your daughter here. No one misrepresented anything (that we know of). They told her they liked her, that she was a strong candidate, and that they were glad she applied. None of that is proven false by not hiring her, and you’re doing your daughter no favors by encouraging her to be frustrated by this. Interest is not a promise. She’s going to be far happier — and have a less stressful job search — if she doesn’t read into this kind of thing, doesn’t take it personally, and sees it as a par-for-the-course piece of job hunting, because it is.

* You’re also doing her no favors if you encourage her to think things like this: “They did hire someone from a completely different department in the university who had no experience in this line of work and turned down two people who already work in the department and knew parts of the job. This makes no sense to me. This leads me to wonder what universe hiring people inhabit.” The fact is, you don’t know why they hired that person. Maybe that person had other skills they wanted. Maybe that person had a stellar reputation. Or maybe there was something about your daughter’s skills or professionalism or culture fit that gave them pause. You just don’t know. No good comes of speculating about stuff like this or feeling angry about it.

* You’re doing your daughter a disservice by encouraging her to think that job searching is “a complete crapshoot.” That’s the kind of belief that leads people to put forward lackluster effort in job searching and make bad decisions for themselves. It’s not a crapshoot. I can tell you from the hiring side of things that not once have I seen a hiring decision made without thought and reason. If it looks like a crapshoot to you, it’s because you’re not privy to all the reasoning that’s going into the hiring decisions — but you not seeing that part of it doesn’t mean that the process is illogical or random.

I get that this is hard and frustrating. But the advice you give your daughter should be that it’s tough to tell from the candidate side everything that an employer might be looking for, and that as qualified as she might be, someone else might simply be a better match — and that it’s not personal or something to be upset over.

If she can get the right outlook on this now, it’s going to serve her really well throughout her career.

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my boss joined my Toastmasters club, why hiring managers look at LinkedIn profiles, and more

by Alison Green on May 20, 2014

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

1. My boss joined my Toastmasters club

I am a junior accountant, and one area that my boss would like me to work on is speaking up more in meetings. I am by nature shy, and this is something I have always struggled with. It is something that is extremely difficult for me, and I have a particularly hard time speaking up around authority figures. However, I am actively working on improving in this area and one thing I have done is join our company’s Toastmasters club. Almost immediately, my boss decided to join also because he said he wants to work on his public speaking skills also (I was confused by this because he is an excellent speaker). He asked me if I would mind, and I said “No” because Toastmasters is supposed to be a really supportive environment, and I thought it would be okay.

Well, it’s been a few months, and I dread going to the club meetings because it is so anxiety-provoking. My boss is a very outgoing person who doesn’t have a lot of problems with public speaking. And although he is not a terrible boss, he can be very judgmental about employees’ abilities. For example, he will often make statements about other employees’ weak areas, e.g. “He really needs to work on his organizational skills, etc.” For that reason, I am afraid of making mistakes around him. Consequently, Toastmasters meetings have become more like work meetings than a place where I can safely practice public speaking. I am extremely nervous before the meetings, and I don’t think I am getting much out of them.

I’d like to quit the club and find another place to practice my public speaking that does not feel so threatening, but I don’t want my boss to think I am flaky. Do you have any advice on how to handle this? One thought I had was to offer a replacement, e.g. tell him that I found a different club/class in which to practice my public speaking. But I think he may wonder why I am doing this.

Why not join a different Toastmasters group in your area if this one isn’t serving its purpose for you anymore? There should be some near you that aren’t affiliated with your company. As for what to say to him about why you’re switching, it depends on how comfortable you are telling him the truth. Ideally, it would be great if you could explain that you’ve found it harder to practice and make mistakes when you know your boss is observing you. But if you’re not comfortable doing that or think it won’t go over well, then you could explain to him that you found the other group was a better fit for you because of ___ (could be hours, mix of people, number of people, the overall feel of the group, you have contacts there, or whatever).

That said, there could be advantages to staying in the group your boss is in; since your public speaking fears are tied to speaking in front of authority figures, this could be a way to work on that — as long as your boss isn’t penalizing you for how you do there. But if you’re dreading the meetings and your anxiety is getting in the way of you improving your skills, then I agree that trumps the advantages of practicing with your boss, at least for now. (Although it could be interesting to improve your speaking skills in a different group and then return to this one when you’re feeling more comfortable, as a sort of “201” class — working specifically on your ability to speak in front of intimidating people.)

2. Should I tell my employee that I can’t promote her because of her poor interpersonal skills?

I have an employee who is absolutely great at what she does, skill-wise. She takes initiative, she gets her job done well and she’s very clever with what she does. The problem is, she has incredibly poor “soft skills” and we’re in a company culture and in a department that demands those types of skills.

She constantly puts people on the defensive, frequently focuses on overly technical details with people who don’t want them and just generally doesn’t know how to read a room. She’s been at the company just over a year and I’ve given her immediate feedback following each episode. I’ve seen no change or growth in this area and now she’s pressuring me for a promotion.

I think she’s great at what she does and would be happy having her on my team doing what she does. By constantly asking for a promotion though, she just shows me even more clearly that she’s both not ready for it and can’t read a situation properly. My question is — should I be very upfront with her and tell her she’s not in line for a promotion this year? Or should I continue to coach her along hoping she picks up the skills?

You should do both. First, you should absolutely be direct with her! Explain to her why and how these issues are holding her back, that she needs to tackle them before you can think about promoting her, and specifically what you need to see change. But you should also continue to coach her on the issues as well.

3. Will recognizing super stars make others feel left out?

We’re working hard on building a positive and cohesive team, and we seem to be on the right track. We want to start rewarding employees to show our appreciation when they go above and beyond to help out the team, like participating in optional overtime or changing their shift to meet company needs. Gifts and thank-yous sound like a good thing, but some team members have expressed guilt (or concern that others will “feel bad”) when we recognize our superstars, even just with donuts or team emails. If all staff are given equal opportunity to go above and beyond, but only a few actually do, should we even feel bad for those who are “left out” of the thank-you tokens? What’s the best approach here?

No. It’s completely reasonable (and normal) to reward higher performance with additional recognition, perks, and compensation. That’s what things like merit raises, promotions, public praise for a job well done, and other forms of recognition are about.

That said, you should tailor how you recognize people to what makes them feel good. If you have particular people on your team who are uncomfortable with public recognition, you should find another way to reward those people. But that’s about making your recognition individual to the people you’re recognizing; it’s not because there’s something wrong with public recognition in general.

4. Company wants me to repay professional membership fees since I’m leaving

You helped me a month or so ago with a question about a job offer. I took risk and landed the job with the bigger pay raise, more challenges and I am ecstatic. I am going to start next month, but my question is about professional development and my department demanding that I pay it back.

In January, my department purchased my membership to two educational guilds (about $350 total). I did not start to look for another position until late February. My department manager states that I need to reimburse them the total cost for my membership as they paid for it and it is theirs not mine.

I am totally fine reimbursing them (as I don’t know if they can just transfer the membership to my coworker instead), but I am wondering if they are wrong here. At the time I accepted the memberships/professional development, I was fully intending to stay at my current organization and using that knowledge to help my department. However, an opportunity came up that was closer to my family, paid more, better benefits, offered challenging work, etc. I haven’t said anything to my manager as this happened yesterday afternoon and I said I would get back to them this week.

Yes, they’re totally wrong. This was a business expense that they agreed to pay. Sometimes people leave after their employer invests in them; that’s a cost of doing business. You have no legal or ethical obligation to repay these membership fees.

I’d say something like this to them: “I understand the timing is bad, but this was a business expense that we incurred while I had no plans to leave. It’s not an expense I would have taken on myself, had I needed to pay for it personally at the time, and I’m not comfortable paying for it now simply because I’m moving on, just like I wouldn’t expect to have to reimburse the company for, say, a business trip that was booked but doesn’t fall until after I’m gone.”

5. Why do hiring managers look at LinkedIn profiles?

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I don’t understand why hiring managers look at LinkedIn profiles when they already have my resume since they say the same thing. Am I missing something?

Well, not everyone’s LinkedIn profiles are identical to their resumes. Some people craft a different (often less formal) profile than what’s on their resume. Some people have recommendations and other interests listed. Some people write articles and send out news items through their LinkedIn account. You might also have connections in common with the hiring manager, who might be people the hiring manager potentially asks about you. And hell, sometimes hiring managers are just interested in seeing your photo, because they are human and people like knowing who they’re talking to and they know it might be there.

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7 signs that your manager just doesn’t like you

by Alison Green on May 19, 2014

Ever had a coworker you just couldn’t stand? Your dislike probably biased you when it came to judging their work, right? Well, imagine what happens when it’s the boss who dislikes someone.

Your boss’s assessment of you carries significant weight and impacts everything from what projects you’re assigned to what development opportunities you get to whether you ultimately keep your job.

Too often, though, people miss signs that their boss doesn’t think highly of them – and then are frustrated when they can’t get high-profile assignments or aren’t recognized for their work.

Here are seven revealing signs that your boss just isn’t that into you – and what you should do in response.

Your boss doesn’t trust you to get your work done. She’s checking up on your work before it’s due, dictating details that she should trust you to figure out, and generally displaying a lack of confidence that you’ll do your job well. 

What to do about it: First, make sure that your boss doesn’t treat everyone else this way too. While that would still be a problem (because micromanagement is unpleasant to experience and will generally make you less productive), that would indicate it’s not about you at all, but rather rooted in poor management skills from your boss.

But if the behavior seems isolated to her relationship with you, ask yourself whether you’ve done anything to warrant the lack of confidence. Have you been dropping balls or making significant errors? If so, then realize that a good manager should get more closely involved—because ultimately her job is to ensure that the work is done well and you’ve given her reason not to take that on faith. But if not, then it’s time to ask her if there’sanything you’re doing that makes her feel she can’t trust you and how you can work with more autonomy. Try suggesting other ways to keep her in the loop, such as weekly reports or weekly meetings, so that she doesn’t feel she needs to check in as much. And if she’sresistant to that, ask if she’d be willing to experiment with giving you more autonomy on one specific project to see how it goes.

You imply you’re looking at other jobs and your boss doesn’t seem to care. Smart bosses will go to great lengths to keep an employee they really value – but they won’t object when an employee they don’t much care for considers leaving.

What to do about it: If your boss doesn’t value you much, you’re less likely to get the kinds of mentoring, raises, professional development opportunities, and high-profile or interesting projects that a boss who was firmly in your corner might offer. It can also make you more likely to end up at the top of the list if your company has layoffs. However it manifests, working for a boss who doesn’t care if you stay or go isn’t great for your career, so this is something that you should factor into your thinking as you consider your timeline for your next career move.

Your boss gives positive feedback to your coworkers, but not to you. Some bosses are just bad at giving positive feedback, but if she praises others and leaves you unrecognized, that’s a sign that it reflects something about her assessment of you. 

What to do about it: Try asking for feedback directly, saying something like, “I’d love to hear where you think things are going well and where I could focus on doing better.” Or, if that feels too daunting, try a smaller version; for instance, ask to debrief a recent project, share your assessment of what went well and what could have gone better, and ask for your manager’s thoughts. Then, listen to what she says. Her response will give you more insight on how she sees you – which is helpful information for you to have, whether or not you agree with her assessment.

You ask for a raise and get turned down without much explanation. Turning down your raise request isn’t the sign of a problem on its own, since there can be reasons for that that have nothing to do with you, like budget constraints. But if your manager values you, she’ll explain why she can’t grant the raise, and often explain when you can expect an increase in the future or how to earn one.

What to do about it: Ask something like, “What would it take for me to earn a raise in the future?” A manager who’s invested in retaining you and who believes in your value should be willing to talk with you about specifically what you’d need to do to hear “yes” next time. If that doesn’t happen, then as with some other flags on this list, this is a data point for you to factor into your overall thinking about your tenure at this job.

You have trouble getting your manager’s attention. She regularly cancels your meetings, forgets to return your calls and emails, and generally doesn’t seem to have you anywhere on her priority list.

What to do about it: Does she treat everyone like this or primarily you? If the former, she’s probably simply flighty. But if you’re a particularly low priority, talk to her. Tell her that getting a chance to talk every each week is important to you, and ask if there’s a way to have the meetings happen more reliably. Would it help to change the day they’re scheduled for? Or would she be more able to make them happen if you both committed to a particular day without nailing down a specific time period, so that she has a larger window of time to make them happen? Or something else?

You can also be more assertive about following up when the meeting doesn’t happen. The day after a missed meeting, go back to her: “Jane, we didn’t get a chance to meet yesterday. Do you have a few minute to talk this morning?” 

You’re left out of important meetings. When your manager meets with your colleagues to discuss key updates or projects that you’re a part of, you’re not there. You might even hear after the fact about decisions that were made that you should have had input on.

What to do about it: Approach your manager directly to address the problem. But don’t be accusatory; you’ll get better results if you work from the assumption that it was an oversight to be corrected, rather than an intentional exclusion. For example, you could say, “I would have liked to have been included in the meeting this morning on the Smith account, since I’m working closely with them. I noticed I haven’t been included in several account meetings recently. What can I do to ensure that I’m part of those discussions in the future?” 

Your manager finds fault with everything you do. Everyone hears criticism sometimes. But if your manager regularly and harshly takes issue with your work and nothing you do seems to please her, that’s a big red flag for the relationship.

What to do about it: In the short-term, you can try a direct conversation to try to understand what’s going on. Say something like this: “I want to have a strong working relationship with you, and I hoped you could give me some feedback. I have the sense that you might not be happy with my work, and I wonder if we can talk about where I’m going wrong.” This might bring to the surface issues that you can work on changing. But in the long-term, if your boss truly dislikes you or your work, you’re probably better off going somewhere where you’re valued.

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should you go to graduate school?

by Alison Green on May 19, 2014

Thinking about going to graduate school?

Before you get too far in your planning, make sure that grad school makes sense for you and your specific career aspirations – and that your investment of time and money will pay off in the ways you hope. Too many new college graduates turn to grad school because they’re not quite sure what else to do or because the tough job market makes them think any additional credentials will be helpful. Neither of these are sufficient reasons for grad school, and they can in fact make a job search more difficult rather than easier.

First, let’s talk about when grad school is a good idea. Grad school makes sense when you’re going into a field that requires or significantly rewards a graduate degree, and when the program that you would enroll in has a high track record of graduates getting jobs in their field.

But you shouldn’t go if you don’t know what you plan to do with the graduate degree afterward. And you certainly shouldn’t go to grad school out of a vague idea that it will make you more marketable. Not only will it often not make you more marketable, it can actually hamstring your efforts to pursue the career you want.

Sound counterintuitive? The problem is that if you go to grad school even though you don’t plan to go into a field that requires or significantly rewards advanced degrees, the following is highly likely to happen:

  • Employers will think you don’t really want the job you’re applying for, since it’s not what you went to school for. They’ll assume that you’ll be dissatisfied and leave as soon as something in the field you studied comes along. That concern can end up being a reason they don’t hire you for the same job you might have been a strong candidate for before you got your graduate degree.
  • While you’re in school, you won’t receive full-time work experience. That means that when you finish your program, your peers who have been working full-time while you were in school will be more seasoned and thus more competitively positioned than you.
  • You’ll often rack up significant student loan debt. That debt will then limit your job prospects by requiring you to find a higher-paying job than you might otherwise need, in order to pay back those loans – and without actually increasing your earning power. When the job market is already tight, having a whole range of jobs that you’d otherwise be interested in end up off-limits to you because they won’t pay enough to pay off your students loans is a tough spot to be in.

So if you’ve been thinking about grad school, what does all this mean for you? Well, the next step should be to find out whether the career path you want to follow truly requires or rewards graduate degrees. If you’re not sure, start talking to people who do the type of work you want to do. Find out from them how useful a graduate degree will be. You might hear that it won’t have the payoff you’re looking for or that work experience will be just as or more valuable. Or you might hear that the graduate degree will be very helpful, in which case you should move to the next set of questions: Are there certain programs or schools that will help you the most? Are there some programs or schools that won’t help you much at all? If you enroll in a lower-ranked program, will it still provide the benefits you’re looking for? These are the questions you want to get solid answers to before you start making decisions.

And if you don’t know what you want to do with the graduate degree once you have it, that’s a sign to drop the grad school plans for now. There are much less expensive and time-consuming ways to figure out what you want to do for a living: internships, talking to people in your network and just trying out jobs that sound interesting. Grad school shouldn’t be one long and expensive career counseling session. Instead, get out and start working. If you eventually realize you want to pursue a career path that requires more schooling, you can get it then.

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

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