Ask a Manager

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

1. Should HR let a manager know an employee is probably job-searching?

I am the HR department at my company. I post jobs, verify employment, etc. Recently two things happened: When I was posting a job on an internet job site, one of my current employees came up as a possible candidate, and I received an employment verification call on this employee. I am assuming they are looking for another job. Should I share this with their supervisor? I am not sure what to do. We may be raising the salary for this position in a couple of months. I do believe that pay is one issue for the job search.

Do you trust this manager to handle the information appropriately — i.e., not to push the person out earlier or otherwise penalize them (which would demonstrate to other employees that they should never be up-front if they’re thinking of leaving)? If you do, then sure — after all, part of your job is to work with managers to help them get the best outcomes possible. But if don’t, then I’d proceed with real caution (and would also do some remedial training for your managers about how to handle this kind of information, totally aside from this incident).

2. How can I use telecommuting as an asset in my cover letter or resume?

I have been in my position for 15 years, with over nine of those years being a telecommuter. My telecommuting set-up is definitely an exception to the rule at my company (and in my line of work).

Quick background: I moved back to my hometown, about four hours away from the office. Instead of quitting, I asked for a temporary telecommuting arrangement, which was agreed to. Nine plus years later, I have survived a major restructuring of the company, during which my boss and biggest advocate was laid off. Since then, I have been given more responsibility and now manage a team who work in the office.

Now I am searching for a new job, not necessarily telecommuting. I feel that my telecommuting situation is an asset to be discussed in either the cover letter and/or resume. It shows a) my company thinks I am valuable b) I am a self-starter and I get the job done without a lot of guidance c) I have been very valuable during times when the office has closed for days for snow, hurricanes, etc. d) when applying for a telecommuting position, I have extensive expertise in this area. How can I best present this without coming across as a weirdo or someone who will demand a telecommuting policy?

Eh, I wouldn’t put a huge amount of emphasis on it. I don’t think employers are likely to read (a) or (b) into it, and your availability during extreme weather isn’t a huge selling point — definitely not something important enough to put in a cover letter. And there’s a downside to putting too much emphasis on the telecommuting: some people think that full-time telecommuters don’t work as hard or aren’t as accountable, and there’s no reason to raise that specter at this point. Focus on the things you’d focus on if telecommuting were off the table: why you’d excel at the job you’re applying for.

The one exception to this is if you’re applying for another telecommuting job. There, it’s useful to note that you have a track record of doing it successfully for nine years. But that’s like one line in your cover letter — from there, move on to the rest of your qualifications, which are going to matter much more.

3. Working for a fandom organization

I noticed you had a question last week about including fanfiction on a resume, and while I agree with you there, I was wondering if you had advice regarding working in fandom in a professional context.

I’ve been working at a nonprofit for over a year whose explicit, stated mission is the protection and preservation of fanworks and fan cultures. I do media outreach, posting, and drafting of press releases and other articles. I’ve been interviewed twice, once for a podcast and once for an academic paper. I’ve also written and published articles on a related website. However, we really don’t make any money, so our entire staff is unpaid. Which means I need I need paid work. Which turned out to be in a super conservative field.

I try to keep the two separate, but it’s sort of impossible at this point, and getting harder. Furthermore, I’m only about two years out of college, so it’s not like I have a bunch of professional work – everything I have done needs to be used just to show I’ve done something. Do you have any advice?

That’s really quite different! That’s not about putting fanfiction itself on your resume, but about doing work to support an organization, and work that highlights skills and accomplishments that are much more transferable to other employers. Plus, although you’re not being paid for it, you’re presumably accountable for the work in ways that you wouldn’t be just as an author. It’s like how you wouldn’t put, say, your weekend rice sculpting hobby on your resume, but it would be perfectly appropriate to include your job doing PR for the Rice Sculptors Union.

4. Recruiters who text

I was communicating via email and phone calls with a recruiter for two months and went through the interview process. After the last interview, I emailed her a thank-you, my thoughts, etc. and she responded back via email that she would “be in touch shortly.” Fast forward to about a week later, and she sends me a text message asking to schedule a phone call with me. Now, texting a recruiter or anyone in a hiring process seems strange to me, but at this point, I’m just excited because I think I may have landed the job or at least gotten to the next round. So we text back and forth and agree to chat Friday, but then I never get a response for a particular time on Friday. Friday comes, I still have no time scheduled, so I send her a follow-up text to which she doesn’t respond to until 8 p.m. that night. I text her back right away and she doesn’t respond again until the next day, which is Saturday at 9 p.m.

At that point, we agree via text to speak on Monday at some point in the afternoon and she said she will “text me a time later.” I wait to hear back and never do. I start to realize she probably has no intention calling me because I didn’t get the job. I finally found out by checking their job portal on my own that they did go with someone else and still never heard back from her via text or email or phone. Is there a reason why she was texting me and then just never followed through when she could have just as easily sent me a quick email saying they went with someone else? Do you think it’s unprofessional for a recruiter to use texting as a form of communication with a potential candidate?

I have no idea why she chose to do things that way rather than send an email explaining they’d hired someone else. It’s possible that she actually did have something else she wanted to talk with you about — another role, or maybe they hadn’t hired the other person at that point but did on Monday, or who knows.

As for texting from a recruiter in general, I’m Not A Fan. I’m not really a fan of texting in any business context, although I know that some people are — but particularly with something like hiring, it’s an incredibly informal medium (and limiting too, given the impracticality of sending anything more than short messages), and I just can’t see why someone would choose that over email, unless there’s a really urgent message to deliver like “I know your interview is in 30 minutes, but our parking lot is on fire so please park in the back.”

5. I was pressured into round-the-clock child care that I didn’t want to do

I work for a family that has four children, one with special needs. The mom is very demanding and expects me to do just about everything. But my job is to care for the special needs child. Just recently, she told me she was taking a vacation wth her husband, who was away for a numerous amount of months (deployment), and she needed me to stay with the kids a few days. She didn’t give me an option, just told me to clear my schedule and that she really need this time alone. She even told her husband that I would do this and they quickly made reservations. I was not happy.

Now the time has come for this trip, and she rattled off a list of things that needed to be done while they are away. I am stressed and overwhelmed. How do I tell her that I don’t appreciate her backing me into a situation I wanted no part of?

It sounds like it’s too late this time, but if it happens again, you need to give a clear “no” when she first suggests it. Even if you feel like she’s telling you to do it, not asking you, you still get to speak up and say, “I won’t be able to do that.”

If you feel like you need to head it off now before she brings it up again, you could say something like, “I was able to help out this time, but it’s not something I’ll be able to do again, so I want to make sure you know and can line up other help if you have a trip come up again.”

But the big thing is to speak up — not to let yourself feel like you’re being pushed into doing something you don’t want to do.

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

1. Would it be unreasonable to block people from walking through my office?

I’m the manager of a medium business, with 15 full-time and 6 part-time employees in addition to myself. Our building has just been renovated, and it has changed the layout a lot. Three doors now lead off the foyer: the bathroom, the hallway to the general work areas, and my office. The trouble is that our new break room is where an old storeroom used to be, with one door leading into a work area and the other directly into my office.

Staff will walk through my office on arrival to get to the break room, or will walk through to get to the bathroom in the foyer, instead of taking the longer way around. It’s distracting, and potentially presents problems when I’m working with confidential information. I’ve tried locking this door from my side, but people will simply walk through and let themselves in, leaving it unlocked behind them. Worse, it’s not uncommon for staff to simply knock on the door for me to let them through. It seems as though every time this comes with an apology, or a “this is the last time, promise!” so it’s clear the staff know that it’s a problem.

Is it unreasonable to block the doorway completely, such as pushing furniture in front of it, or am I being unreasonable in expecting the door to remain closed and asking staff to walk through a work area on breaks to use the bathroom?

It’s reasonable not to want people to use your office as a thoroughfare to get somewhere else; that’s distracting and can break your focus. It makes sense to just block off that door entirely, by putting a bookcase or desk or something in front of it so it can’t be opened — basically, turn it from a door into a wall. That’s sometimes the only way to solve this kind of thing, because the temptation otherwise does seem too great for people to resist.

2. Should my reference be my direct manager or a more senior manager?

I’m a mid-senior-level employee in the job hunting process. I’m trying to decide who I should use as a reference for my work at my current job. I worked for a firm that was acquired by another larger company, and my former team has been broken up and no one reports directly to each other any more, so I’m not worried about any gaslighting from a manager who doesn’t want to lose an employee. Here are my options:

1. Nancy: My direct boss before the merger. Her title (director) did not change as a result of the merger.

2. Simon: Nancy’s boss, formerly a VP but demoted to director level post-merger. (Almost everyone got a slight title demotion in the merger; Nancy was an exception.) I worked closely with him, and I believe he’d feel comfortable giving me a good reference.

Both Nancy and Simon know me well enough to give a well-informed (and positive!) assessment of me. I just wondered if some/most HR managers would think that a more senior person going to bat for someone would carry more weight, or if they’d prefer to hear from a candidate’s direct manager.

Good reference checkers will usually prefer to hear from your direct manager, assuming that’s the one of the two who worked most closely with you. That’s because they want to be able to get thoughtful, nuanced information, which a manager two levels above is less likely to have about your performance, at least to the degree that your direct manager has.

3. Applying for a different job only three months after starting my new job

I have been working in an entry-level job I enjoy for about three months now. The pay is low, but the hours, the work itself, and my manager are all wonderful. It is also an organization I admire with many prospects for advancing my career here.

However, I came upon a job posting at another organization (Org B) that is more focused on one of my passions (the arts), although it is a slight stretch for me experience-wise. But it is a higher-level job that I would love to be doing and is in line with my degree and ambitions. I figured it couldn’t hurt to throw my hat in the ring and see where it goes. I am not looking to change jobs, but a friend sent me this posting because she thought I’d be a fit. I don’t intend to apply to any other jobs anytime soon.

My question is whether Org B will see it as a red flag about me if they notice on my resume that I have only been in my current position for about three months. I have never stayed at a job longer than two years so far, but I have only been out of college for about five years. What if I explain to Org B (if I get interviewed) that I am happy in my current job, but was so excited about this job opportunity with them that I had to go for it? How is this going to look to this Org B? Will it reflect poorly on my as a candidate?

If you had a track record of longer stays at previous jobs, I wouldn’t be horribly alarmed to hear “I’m happy in my current job, but this role was so exciting to me that I had to give it a shot.” But against a backdrop of no long-term stays, and you thinking about leaving your current job after only three months? Yeah, I’d be concerned that the whole picture taken altogether was one of someone who wouldn’t stay long-term with me either.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a shot anyway, because who knows, maybe the interviewer won’t see it that way … but factor into your thinking more broadly that you’re starting to create a job-hoppy pattern, and you want to make sure you counteract that with future moves.

4. How to tell an interview-offering company that I accepted a job somewhere else

I have a question about how to turn down an interview with Company B after I’ve already accepted an offer from Company A. My job at Company A is temporary, so when it’s over I may want to apply for a position at Company B again. What should I say in my interview-declining email so that I make the best impression on the Company B? I was thinking of starting it with Dear Mr. X, and possibly telling him where I’ll be working. Is that too much information? I just like to be friendly and honest with people, but sometimes can’t tell when I’ve hit TMI territory.

Or is it even appropriate to email my decline-to-interview in the first place? Should I call?

Nope, definitely email it. It’s not so urgent that it warrants the interruption of a phone call, or any kind of back-and-forth conversation. An email like this would be totally fine: “I’ve actually just accepted a position as X at Company A so I need to withdraw from your hiring process. However, I really appreciated the chance to learn more about your work, and since my role at Company A ends in December, I may be reaching back out to you then!”

(If you’ve already had an initial interview with B, they may take note of this. If you haven’t talked with them at all yet, they’re less likely to care — but there’s still nothing wrong with saying it.)

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

1. People keep telling me how hot my field is, while I’m unemployed

I’m unemployed and making a huge effort to network. I work in scientific computing in an area with a ton of scientific industry, but I’ve been looking for eight or nine months. It’s starting to seem likely that the reason I’m not getting much interest is that I don’t have a PhD, but that’s not what I’m here for (I figure commenters will be curious). Because I’m in a “hot” field in a “hot” industry, whenever I go a-networking (be it official events or just socially), when people ask what I do and hear my answer, the reply is INEVITABLY “Oh, that’s so hot, you should be able to get a job really quickly/easily!”

I know you’ve already written pieces addressing how annoying and unhelpful this is, but my question is: How do I respond politely/cheerfully/productively? I know these probably aren’t the people who could help me anyway, but I don’t want to appear negative or bitter.

Ah, this is tricky because you’re there specifically to network. If you weren’t, I’d say to just give a quick, breezy response (“one hopes!” or “ha, if only”) and then quickly change the subject (“so tell me about Norman’s new rice sculpture!”). But if you’re networking, you probably do want to talk about your field/your job search/possible leads. So in that case, how about “You know, it’s not as bursting with job openings as it can seem from the outside!” (Or whatever is accurate — maybe it’s that there aren’t as many openings for people at your level, or maybe you want to mention the PhD thing and get more input, or whatever makes sense.) Say it cheerfully rather than dourly, obviously.

And if anyone insist that they’re right and you’re wrong, then hey, take advantage of that and ask them to tell you about some of these openings.

2. Should I be asking my staff for daily updates?

I manage a staff of three people, and we are all housed in different locations (one is even in a different city). We meet twice a month, once in person and the other via conference call. I also call staff members to talk one-on-one as needed. It is not my desire to micromanage, but I do want an idea of what they are working on regularly, so I have them send in daily updates (what they’re working on for the day, what they accomplished the previous day, any questions/comments/concerns). The updates have been successful for the most part. I am able to distribute additional tasks or remind staff of important meetings.

However, lately there have been a couple of issues. My newest staff member sends update in late (I ask for them at 8:30 a.m. and sometimes get it by 11 a.m. or not at all). To be fair, she is housed in an office where a lot happens in the mornings, and I recently asked her to just send them for the next day the afternoon before. Another staff member is starting to just send what is scheduled for the day but not anything else (and sometimes late as well).

Essentially, I want to know whether these daily updates are the best way to manage remotely? What might be a better method? I had suggested weekly updates but staff said they liked the daily ones.

Well … daily is pretty hover-y! It’s possible that the nature of the work your team does makes this reasonable, but for most jobs, that would really be overkill. After all, the power of having a staff is that it allows you to get a lot more done (there’s four people rather than just one of you!), but you’re giving up a lot of that advantage by managing everyone at this micro of a level.

For most managers, remote or not, I’d say to do weekly one-on-one’s with people, and in preparation for those meetings, ask each person to send over a weekly list of priorities for the week and where key things stand (so that you can use the meeting time for real discussion, rather than just running down a list of updates). I’ve got more advice on managing remotely here and here.

I’m curious to know why they like the daily updates, so it could be interesting to ask them more about that. Maybe there’s good reason for it … but it’s worth considering that you might have inadvertently created a situation where they’re overly dependent on you and feel safer being hand-held (apologies if I’m wrong).

3. I got a bad reference from someone who used to work with me at the company I was applying to

I recently applied for a position with Company B through my job placement service. I was turned down for an interview based on a negative reference given by an employee of Company B who had worked with me at Company A more than six years previously.

Company B’s HR refuses to allow me to interview or address this negative reference, and its content is unknown to me. What recourse do I have in dealing with a negative reference from a former coworker? I have no idea who it was or why. There were no incidents I can think of that would cause this.

I’m a working professional and have consistently received above average and superior performance reviews. I left Company A’s location on a promotion at the request of the company to take on an urgent project at another location. I received good reviews from supervisors. I’m no slacker. I also work well with others, holding ethics and honesty as key principals.

There’s not really much you can do, especially since you don’t know who the reference was. Companies are allowed to put a lot of weight on the opinions of their employees, and are especially likely to when someone has firsthand experience working with an applicant. And the reference might not have been “she was a horrible employee” but rather something like “she was good at X, but I don’t think Y was a strength” or “she did good work, but I don’t think of the caliber this role needs” or “she was good, but the other two candidates we’ve already interviewed are stronger.”

If you knew who the reference was, and if you knew that what she said was intentionally false, it’s possible that it could be defamation … but since neither of those things is the case here, all you can really do is move on. And I’m sorry — that does suck.

4. Asking for a more senior position than the one you’re interviewing for

I recently moved to a very large “headquarters”-type city to follow my husband who got a job here. For the last three years, I had a director-level position at the field office level, managing small staff and operations at a country level in various positions overseas. Now that I am back in a country and city where industry headquarters tend to be located, I am not finding any jobs that fit my years of experience in the field and the higher level positions with line management that I had there.

I am, however, finding lots of jobs that are just one or two pay and responsibility grades below what I have been doing, and many of these are with great companies and projects I would like to work on. I’ve had a few interviews for some of these lower level positions, but have not had anything pan out yet. If I do get to final rounds for one of these positions, is it ever ok to say, “I would love it if this job could be expanded in scope or responsibility so that the title and paygrade would be just a step higher to match my past experience?” (And how could I say it professionally?)

I feel like I may have to take a step back in my career progression since I am only finding quite junior positions — either that or I guess I have to stay unemployed, which is not great either. Also, the pay cut I am talking about here is to the tune of $15,000-$20,000, so it is not insignificant. The pay cut does not matter to me as much as the title and scope of responsibilities of the job so that I can keep going in my career progression. I worked so hard to get where I am in my career and now I’m worried I may have to take some giant steps back unless I can negotiate something, which I realize is likely pretty unorthodox. Any advice?

In 99% of cases, if they wanted to hire someone at that level, they would be advertising that job or they’d mention it to you when considering you for the lower level role if they thought you were a strong match for it. Very, very rarely, it is possible to make a pitch for yourself to do a job that’s higher level than the one advertised — but we’re talking like 1% here, and it’s pretty hard to spot from the outside when a situation will be in that category. It’s more likely to just come across as “I know I we’re talking about a different job, but how about paying me more and making me more senior?” … which is not terribly effective.

Your better bet might be to focus on networking (ugh, I know) with the companies where you’d like to work, which would allow you to get a better sense of their landscapes and where you might fit in, and would help make a more effective pitch as more of a known quantity (as opposed to being an outsider saying, “no, give me a better job!”).

5. Update: struggling to accommodate coworkers’ medical leave in a small office

Thanks again for answering my question, and thanks to all the readers who chimed in with helpful advice. Just wanted to give you an update.

Things are pretty much the same. Cersei’s lateness and overall attendance improved somewhat, but as we moved into cold season, two of my other coworkers, Sansa and Dany, began calling in frequently due to their children’s illnesses, and I myself had to take time off due to a death in the family. At this point, another coworker mentioned her frustration and so I discussed this with our boss. We worked together to come up with a schedule to cover most of the tasks that need to be done on a day to day basis when people are absent. This has helped, since we’re not all scrambling around trying to figure out who can cover what every time someone calls in.

But just this week, both Cersei and Tyrion called in two days straight, on the same two days. Unfortunately, it was two days where we had several meetings and were pretty busy in general. After my second day in a row of eating lunch while covering the phones, I realized that this situation is unlikely to ever change, and it’s unsustainable for me. (To add insult to injury, the county I work for is in bad financial shape. Most years we haven’t had raises, and when we do, the most we can ever get is a 1.5% increase.) I love my boss. most of my coworkers, and the work I do, but I think it’s time for me to start seriously looking for a new job! My field is very competitive, so wish me luck!