how to answer the interview question “how does this job fit with your career path?”

by Alison Green on December 28, 2015

A reader writes:

All through high school and college, I wanted to be a journalist. I got my degree and spent four years in newspapers. And then I got fired. I realized the industry was dying and changing and perhaps it was all for the best. I still use my writing, editing, and research skills, but I’m in corporate America now and happy enough to work standard hours with good, reliable coworkers and decent pay and benefits.

Recently I’ve had a few initial interviews for jobs that sound interesting, and regardless of whether those jobs work out or not, I find myself hung up on how to answer the question of what I see in my career path. I honestly don’t know. I take life as it comes, and try to take advantage of opportunities if that arise. To me this seems like the wrong answer, but I also don’t have a dream job or path anymore. I can see a lot of possibilities. I’m fine with that, but what do I say to recruiters or interviewers? Do they want to know that I would stay in a new industry for the long haul, or what is the hidden purpose of this question?

When interviewers ask this question (or various other forms of it, like “where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?”), they’re basically saying, “Tell me how this position makes sense for your longer-term professional goals for yourself.”

That doesn’t mean that you actually have to have a plan or specific goals; lots of and lots of people don’t really have those things. But you probably have a general idea of what interests you and why this particular position seems like a logical step for you right now.

And they’re not asking you to write anything in stone or commit to a particular path (which is an objection I sometimes hear from people when this question is discussed — “how should I know what could happen in five years?!”). They’re just trying to understand how this job fits in with whatever thinking you do have.

Why do they care? Well, a lot of times, a candidate’s answer to this question will give useful insight into what they want out of the job and what their professional interests are. That matters to an interviewer because it can point to a strong or weak fit, and also just because it helps flesh out their understanding of who you are professionally. For example, maybe they’ll learn that you have career goals that this position will help you fulfill, or that you’re especially motivated by doing X and they can offer you a lot of that in this role, or that you think this position will give you enough exposure to X to help you achieve Y but in fact it won’t and it’s important to point that out now, or that there’s some other reason why you’d be unhappy with the role long-term. Or maybe it won’t tell them any of that but will just help them get a deeper understanding of you, your goals, and how this job makes sense for you.

That kind of thing matters to interviewers because they want to hire someone who will be excited about the job and where it will lead them, whether that’s to a specific higher-level position in three years or just to increased satisfaction with the work they’re doing. They want to know that you’re not just applying for jobs randomly and taking whatever you can get but rather than you’ve put some thought into why this particular job makes sense for you, because they don’t want to hire someone likely to get bored or to leave as soon as something else comes along.

But again, you don’t have to have a highly detailed plan for yourself, or even a specific idea of what job you’d want after you move on from this one. It’s okay to say something like, “You know, what’s most important to me is doing work at increasing levels of responsibility and skill, in an environment where I feel like I’m playing a meaningful role. I’m interested in this position is because I think it will move me in that direction.”

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my coworkers are birthday tyrants, job candidate called coworker “annoying,” and more

by Alison Green on December 28, 2015

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

1. Manager says if I get a raise, fewer of my coworkers will get raises

I have  a salary that’s presumably on the higher end of non-management in the department I’m in. I also have about a decade or more development experience than those I work with, so my spot in the range seems justified.

What’s your opinion when a manager says “You’re near the top of the range. If we give you a raise then that means fewer of your coworkers can get raises too,” as a reason for me not getting a year-end raise?

Part of me thinks it’s fair and makes sense, but part of me thinks that my employers defined my salary to fit my experience, and I shouldn’t be penalized for what I’m being paid because it’s in line with what I bring to the table.

That response from your employer is manipulative, whether intentionally or unintentionally so. They’re distracting you from the question of what’s a fair salary for your work and raising the specter of taking money from your coworkers. It’s entirely reasonable for you to ask to be paid a salary that’s commensurate with your value and the market price for your skills; it’s not reasonable for them to make their ability to pay your coworkers your problems.

I’d ignore their statement entirely and bring the focus back to what your work is worth. If they bring up the coworker thing again, say this: “I can’t speak to that, but I think my work is worth $X because ____.”

2. Job candidate called coworker “annoying”

I had a phone interview with a candidate who kept referring to a coworker as annoying. For example, he said, “She was known to be annoying” in a response to the question “can you describe a time when you’ve worked with a group to collaborate on creative approaches?” He mentioned her as annoying twice. Everything else in the interview went great. I feel like “annoying” isn’t really a professional way to describe someone, and maybe he should have opted to describe examples to hint at annoyance would have been better. Is that a red flag?

I’d say it’s a yellow flag. Not an absolute deal-breaker, but a flag to slow down and get more data (both by probing more with him and by talking to references later in the process). At a minimum, it says he lacks some amount of professional etiquette/decorum and understanding of professional conventions (in that you don’t describe your coworkers as “annoying” to a job interviewer).

Ideally you would have followed up more in the moment: “You said she was annoying. Tell me more about that.” … “When you have to work with people who are challenging to get along with, how do you approach that?” … and so forth. But you can do that in the next stage of your process too, and see how he handles those questions. You might end up concluding that his comment was just him being overly candid but not indicative of anything beyond that, or you might end up concluding that it was indeed a sign of deeper poor judgment or difficulty getting along with people. Right now, it could be either — so your job is to probe more deeply.

3. My office insists on celebrating my birthday, despite my protests

I’m a middle-aged woman who has decided many years ago that I do not wish to celebrate my birthday. It’s not for religious reasons, I just personally do not wish to have streamers and balloons at my desk and the constant attention though out the day….ugh …I just hate it! I will participate in other birthday celebrations, just not mine.

I have been able to successfully avoid this by approaching the work office party planner and politely ask to be removed from the birthday list – all my employers and co-workers were very respectful and there was never any pressure to celebrate my birthday.

However, my new employer is a different story. I have been employed here for two years, and even though I have explained over and over again that I do not celebrate my birthday they continue to probe and ask questions. I work at the same company as my husband and they even approached him to ask him my birth date. He knows not to tell and made a joke “If I tell you she will kill me.” They have now added me to the company birthday list with a made-up birthday, and when that day came they had a potluck and cake for the celebration. I explained to everyone who wished me a “happy birthday” that it wasn’t my birthday – which was very awkward.

I love my job and I really do like my coworkers. But, this birthday thing is just getting out of hand. How can I get them to stop celebrating my birthday?

Apparently you can’t. I don’t know why they’re so aggressively insistent on celebrating it when you’ve asked them repeatedly not to, but apparently they have a bizarre commitment to doing it anyway. You’ve done everything you can do, short of making it a bigger issue than is warranted (unless you are inclined to become a Jehovah’s Witness and make it an issue of religious accommodation), so I’d just assume that as long as you work there, this is going to be a thing that they do. They are weird.

4. Is this an odd reference question?

I just received a reference request for someone I used to manage. In addition to the usual “What were this person’s job duties?” and “Would you hire this person again?” questions, there was this: “What advice would you give as to how to manage the candidate in order to get the best results?”

That struck me as an odd question: I certainly haven’t seen it before. Is this a common thing to ask? And it raises another question for me: is it OK to just leave questions blank when completing a reference check? The person in question has already been hired and has started work, so this seems to be a mere formality at this point.

It’s actually not an uncommon reference question, and I’d argue it’s a good one that can produce lots of useful insight into the person. It’s also, frankly, a way to get more candid information out of references because it requires them to say something other than a canned “she’s great!” type of answer.

It is indeed okay to leave a question blank when filling out a written reference form, although be aware that (a) if you do that with multiple questions, you’ll be diminishing the value of the reference, possibly significantly, and (b) a blank answer can send a message too, so you’d want to think carefully about that (for example, if you leave “what are her greatest strengths?” blank, you’ll be conveying “no strengths that I can think of”).

And last, yes, it’s weird that they’re asking you to spend time on detailed questions like this after the person has been hired. The time for them to do this is before they extend a job offer, unless they don’t truly base a decision on your responses, in which case they shouldn’t be wasting your time.

5. I was fired by a board of directors

Is it legal for a nonprofit’s board of directors to terminate an employee other than the executive director? Until recently, I was working for a nonprofit in a role that reported to the executive director. Then the executive director retired, with his last day being a Saturday, and an interim executive director was scheduled to start the following Thursday. On the Monday of this in-between time, I was called into a meeting with two board members and told that my position was being eliminated and so I no longer had a job.

From my experience with nonprofits, I was under the impression that the board only had authority over the executive director’s position, and no others – although I recognize that this happened during a time when technically there was no executive director. However, quite frankly, this decision was not made in the best interests of the organization, because no competent executive director would have eliminated my position. My job was critical in terms of responsibilities (almost every organization in our field has someone in this position, and my colleagues in the field are flabbergasted that they would eliminate the position), organization structure (I has six people reporting to me, and they now have no one supervising them), and manpower (our organization was very understaffed so losing another full-timer would have been hard for the organization and the remaining employees).

Do I have any case for wrongful termination, or any form of recourse?

Not based on what’s here. The answer would only be yes if you were fired because of a protected characteristic (i.e., you were fired because of your race, sex, religion, disability, etc.) or as retaliation for legally protected behavior (i.e., you were fired for complaining about harassment or discrimination).

It’s true that nonprofit boards typically only directly manage (and thus hire or fire) the executive director, but that’s not a law, just a best practice. It’s surprising that the board didn’t wait for the new interim executive director to start and let her handle the situation, but they do have the legal ability to fire staff members, unless there’s something in the organization’s bylaws that specifically denies them that ability, even at a time when no executive director is in place (which would be fairly unusual).

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update: our job candidates have to give “positivity presentations”

by Alison Green on December 27, 2015

Remember the letter-writer whose company was asking internal candidates for a promotion to give presentations about how to foster positivity at work, all because of one person who’d been causing a lot of drama? Here’s the update.

I wrote in a month or so back about my office’s internal hiring process, which changed to involve the candidates creating a “positivity presentation” because one of them was causing drama.

Well, they are finally giving their presentations and they sound like they’ve been an utter flop. The goal was to get everyone in their department involved and working on these in order for the candidates to demonstrate their management skills, but people just aren’t going for it. I’m sure none of them are happy about being pulled away from their work to deal with this.

The dramatic coworker continues to wrench herself out of the running for the promotion, though. The position comes with an immediate 50% increase in workload and the dramatic coworker has been falling impossibly behind in her regular workload. They recently had a project day to deal with small tasks usually put off until their quarterly deadline. It’s the exact same task over and over again and each one takes roughly 15 minutes to complete. In an 8-hour work day, she completed 2.

I don’t understand how she doesn’t see that she’s coming off poorly to management and constantly proving she won’t be able to handle the responsibilities attached to the promotion, but she still somehow believes she’s going to get it. I’m just waiting to see if she follows through on her threat to quit when her coworker gets the promotion instead.

Thanks for affirming that this process is ridiculous, and thanks to the readers who commented as well!

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3 more updates from letter-writers

by Alison Green on December 26, 2015

Here are three updates from letter-writers who had their questions answered here this year.

1. New hire is plotting a coup

I spoke with my manager regarding the employee’s behavior and comments after your advice, and the coworker’s behavior was being closely monitored after my disclosure (hearsay, I guess).

However, her time with us was destined to be short, due to continued tardiness/periods where she was unaccounted for (several times in a short amount of time) and a sudden conflict that erupted between her and a coworker. She was terminated after just three weeks of employment. After she left, she sent an email to a senior employee complaining about our operations while flirting at the same time (using emoticons), and we felt confident that the right decision was made. Looking back at the situation a few months removed, I do not think that our other recruiters were involved in her plan at all and she wanted to establish herself as an office troublemaker early on.

2. Not attending a colleague’s funeral (#2 at the link)

First of all, I was really struck by how divisive an issue this was, but I really appreciated all of the thoughtful replies and took all sides into account.

Everything turned out really well, as my boss, who knows of my anxiety, asked if I would be willing to be the office coverage while others attended the funeral for the colleague. This, combined with sending a thoughtful card to the family after the funeral, as commenters suggested, was the perfect solution for me.

As it turned out, a few months later, someone at work I actually am close to unfortunately had her husband pass away. I felt very strongly that I should attend that wake/funeral because I very much wanted to be supportive to her. It was open casket, and I was very uncomfortable, but it was important to me to be there and I believe it meant a lot to her as well. So for me, I think the anxiety in the first case had a lot to do with the fact that I felt like an interloper into the first person’s funeral as I didn’t know her well, and didn’t know her family at all.

Thanks again to you and the wonderful AAM community! P.S. Thanks to your blog, I’m about to have a very direct conversation with an employee about expectations that I previously would have spent hours anxiously planning for. Thank you!

3. How can I reward an exceptional employee? (#2 at the link; first update here)

 Here’s more detail and reflection.

I was shocked at all the negative responses – “over-rewarding,” “going overboard,” “nobody can be that great,” “she is going to burn out,” “no one can sustain that level of excellence.” Reading over of the original posting – all of the staff partakes in the power bars, but because she is “wheat-free” I buy that kind. All of the staff gets gift cards after the yearly big event. Everyone has jackets.

I realized that I was especially grateful as I inherited a spectacular bad employee who ended up on a year and half PIP (union). I was a bit shell-shocked from the experience. Then I was on medical leave for a month, and as a new employee she managed the department with a calm determination while cleaning up the previous employee’s mess.

She did get the highest rating in her yearly review (very rare, needs my supervisor’s approval, akin to “walks on water”) and there was a raise. She did get to go to the annual conference. She does have a deficit (she isn’t perfect) in one area of her position but is working on that and since I abundantly have those skills, I have happily pitched in. She continues to not only go above and beyond the call of duty, she is an excellent model for the rest of our staff.

Yes, I am a very lucky and grateful manager. The best thing I can say is that “she is the reason I can sleep at night” and I do say that to her and credit AAM.

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update: should I take off my engagement ring for job interviews?

by Alison Green on December 25, 2015

Remember the letter-writer who had been advised to take off her engagement ring for job interviews (first published in 2012 and then reprinted for Inc. in October of this year)? Here’s the update.

I am the person who asked this question a few years ago and I know I’m long overdue for an update!

First, thank you, Alison, for your fantastic advice and thank you to all of the commenters for sharing your perspectives! It gave me much needed sanity during my year long job search. At the time, I was just beginning my career and going through quite a few life changes (clearly). Of course, well-meaning relatives gave me a lot of advice, most of it from a good place but either out of date, biased, or both, and I was trying to sift through it all. It did not help that most of the women within my own family hadn’t worked in awhile and at the time, I was sorely in need of good mentors.

As it turned out, I wore my ring to every interview and ended up getting a job within my field, where I am still working today. No one seemed to notice or care about the ring and, when they brought me on board as a permanent hire, I was able to get time off for my wedding and honeymoon, in addition to a great salary and benefits package, as well as opportunities to grow. I’m very happy that I took your advice!

Thanks again, everyone!

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Christmas open thread – December 25-27, 2015

by Alison Green on December 25, 2015

Olive wreathIt’s the Christmas open thread!

The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on anything that you want to talk about — work-related, not work-related, doesn’t matter. Due to the holiday, I’m expecting much lower commenting on this post than usual (which may make it easier to keep up with), so have at it!

* If you submitted a question to me recently, please don’t repost it here, as it may be in the to-be-answered queue :)

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update: team lead wants us to have weekly group meetings to air problems and grievances

by Alison Green on December 24, 2015

Remember the letter-writer whose new team lead proposed weekly meetings where everyone would air concerns and grievances? Here’s the update.

I forwarded the link to our lead and we went through the comments together after a couple of days. We both thought people got really caught up in the idea that it was back-stabbing and tattling, or some sort of power play on her part, when that was not the situation at all. So a lot of the comments were not relevant. But there were a few good ones. In terms of the advice you gave directly, I think we took away the message that the format/content that was initially introduced was not a good idea, but pretty much everything else we did came from a few contributor comments.

Those 2 or 3 people whose comments we really focused on talked about how to structure “loose” meetings around what people wanted to do that they weren’t, what people felt they should keep doing, or things they should change/stop doing. They were very focused on solutions rather than focusing on the problems beyond understanding what we were trying to address. So that’s what we used as a starting point.

The meeting has mostly evolved into everyone who has questions/comments/concerns for the group bringing those with them, and we take turns bringing up our items and discussing them. We put a recap of any important decisions in the notes for a larger meeting agenda so the information can be disseminated to everyone it might affect. If we have individual concerns, we email the lead, and if there are common themes she’s seeing, she’ll bring it up so we can all discuss it. If we’re all sort of quiet when we first get there, our lead starts asking us what good things happened in our week, and as we go around, that usually engenders some sort of conversation. It varies a lot from week to week, but I think it has turned out pretty well.

Our supervisor is really happy with how it has turned out, since some good suggestions and special projects have come out of it, and we’ve identified quite a few instances of people interpreting instructions or policies differently, and have been able to clarify those for everyone. The special projects have resulted in pairing of some unlikely folks, so I think we’re all working across our job descriptions a bit, and learning how to use each others’ strengths in the context of a larger team.

Not everything is perfect, and we still have some passive aggressive things going on with certain employees, but I think we’ve all just come to expect that from them, and take it for what it is. You can’t change who people are. It’s actually kind of funny, if someone does something that is borderline inappropriate and someone is a little offended, they will very dramatically act pretend offended and say, “Ugh, I’m bringing this up at tea time.” Everyone chuckles and the person who said or did the particular thing will look a little sheepish. So it has allowed us to passively address social discomfort/inappropriateness via the euphemism of “tea-time.” I’m glad our lead is a good sport about it, because it’s actually been working to address the problem it was supposed to by cluing people in to how others might be feeling. I know individuals have followed up with each other after a “tea-time warning,” with the offending party asking if the other person was actually upset and why, then apologizing. Sometimes they’ll do it on the spot, sometimes later in person, sometimes via email. Sometimes people are just joking around when they say it, so it lets it remain this way to call someone out, but not really directly, because they might be joking. Often they’re not really offended, just pointing out that what the person said could be offensive, so it keeps awareness up. Occasionally, if a person suspects they may have offended someone, they’ll actually initiate the discussion by asking them somewhat jokingly, “Are you offended? Should we talk about this at tea time?” Maybe not the ideal solution, nor one easy to apply elsewhere, but an organic one that seems to be working in this context. I find it amusing. People are so funny.

Thanks again for taking on our question.

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what to do if you’re stuck working today

by Alison Green on December 24, 2015

If you’re at work today, you’re probably in a half-empty office, with most people away for the holidays, and might be finding it hard to stay focused and productive.

Here are five things to do today that don’t require a ton of concentration but that will help your team, rather than just giving in and streaming Christmas movies from your office. (Although who’s to say that you can’t get work done while Elf plays in the background?)

1. Send warm personal messages to people who have been especially helpful to you this year. If a colleague or vendor made your life easier this year, send them a short note (email is fine!) telling them what you appreciated and why. So few people take the time to do this that it’s likely to make a big impression; in fact, some people save these sorts of notes and treasure them for years. Bonus points: Also send an email to the person’s manager, letting the manager know how much you appreciated their employee’s work and why. Managers tend to love hearing this kind of thing, and you could make a real difference in how someone is seen and valued.

2. Do some planning for your priorities in January. Go through your to-do list and figure out what will be most important to tackle when you return to work after the new year. If you have big projects on that list, break them down into smaller components, and schedule interim deadlines for yourself and work blocks to tackle them. That way, when you come back after the holidays, you’ll be able to hit the ground running.

3. Spend 20 minutes doing something you’ve been putting off. Why only 20 minutes? Because it’s easier to get started if you’re only locking yourself in for 20 minutes – 20 minutes is nothing! You can do that! – and often when the 20 minutes is up, you’ll be in the zone and just keep going. And even if you don’t, you’ll feel better about the day for having some of it done.

4. Give yourself some room to just think. In the normal rush of day-to-day work, it’s often hard or even impossible to carve out time to step back and think creatively and big-picture. And that’s a bad thing, because innovation rarely results when you’re stuck rushing from one task to another. Take advantage of this quiet period to give yourself some breathing room to just let you mind wander. (Keep it on work matters though; don’t let it wander all the way to online gift shopping.)

5. Reorganize your space. Cleaning out your office is a time-honored way to spend a few hours when you’re stuck at work near the holidays. Because there are fewer people around to interrupt you, you’re likely to be able to make a serious dent in clutter. It probably wouldn’t hurt to sanitize your desk, keyboard, and phone while you’re at it.

And don’t limit yourself to physical space either – now’s a great time to clean out and organize your email so that you don’t come back in January to an in-box stuffed full of yet-to-be-dealt-with emails from a past year.

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my team bikes to off-site meetings, and I’m dreading it

by Alison Green on December 24, 2015

A reader writes:

I recently started a job at a nonprofit with a young and fast-moving team of four (myself included). To give you a sense of the dynamic, I am the only woman and the only non-veteran on the team. Our office is downtown in a major city, but it’s kind of inconveniently located — many of the offices of partner orgs/companies are more than 20 minutes walking distance away and totally inconvenient for driving/transit. For these reasons, my colleagues have mentioned that they sometimes take advantage of the city’s bike share program to get to meetings. It hasn’t happened in the two months I’ve been here (the team doesn’t seem to take that many external meetings), but the gents I work with seem really enthused about using the bikes.

This *terrifies* me because:
• I haven’t ridden a bike in over a decade (except once or twice) and I’ve never ridden a bike in a city.
• This would involve riding in the most traffic congested areas and I know several people who have been in biking accidents with drivers in this city.
• The bike share bikes are not at all comfortable for a tiny woman like myself. I’m not a particularly strong/healthy person.
• Biking to a meeting where I need to look professional and be mentally present (to request funding, etc.) seems super counterproductive.

The good news is that I have an excellent relationship with the CEO (who is my direct supervisor) so I do feel comfortable talking to him about this and feel like I need to bring it up preemptively. (We don’t have the kind of office culture where advance warning happens a lot.) But I’m not sure how to bridge the topic without sounding like I’m complaining, something that feels particularly sensitive since some of my coworkers are disabled and still do this. I don’t want to be the overly serious woman who doesn’t participate in things with the team (I love this team), but just the stress of thinking about the bike situation has occupied many hours of my time already.

You are way over-thinking this, I suspect.

Unless I’m misunderstanding the situation, the fact that your coworkers enjoy biking to meetings as a group doesn’t mean that you too will be required to bike. If you are urged to in the future, you can simply say, “No thanks!” No explanation required, but if you’re pressured for one, you can explain any of the following:
• “I’m not comfortable biking in traffic.”
• “Biking just isn’t my thing.”
• “I haven’t ridden a bike in years and don’t want the company to have the liability when I fall straight into a passing car.”
• “I’ve got a back problem and my doctor has limited what exercise I can do.”
• “I prefer to drive/take a cab.”

It’s not going to sound like complaining because you’re going to be cheerful and matter-of-fact about it.

It is highly, highly unlikely that your employer will insist that you bike to meetings, but if you sense things going in that direction, you can invoke the bad back (you probably have one anyway from the tension of all the stressing over this) and that should be that. Seriously — it’s just extremely unlikely that that won’t shut it down.

If you’d be more comfortable dealing with this preemptively so it doesn’t stay on your mind, then sure, raise it with your boss now. But don’t make it a big, fraught thing. Just say something like this: “Hey, I’ve heard from people that they often bike to off-site meetings. What options are there if someone doesn’t bike — is it cool if I drive or take a cab?” (And then if you get any pushback or sad eyebrows or whatever, you can pick from the bulleted list of suggestions above.)

As for you being the overly serious woman who doesn’t participate with things with the team: This is almost certainly not the only opportunity to do things with your team. You can joke around with them, grab the occasional lunch or drink with them, be easy and enjoyable to work with, and otherwise be a pleasant member of the team. Do that stuff and people may rib you about opting out of the biking, but it’s not likely to be an issue beyond that.

Seriously. I’m sending you a cease and desist order on the hours of stress, so cut that out now. This will be fine.

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should our office stop cake collections, disclosing a wage garnishment, and more

by Alison Green on December 24, 2015

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

1. Should our office stop collecting money for cards and cakes when people leave?

In my office, there is a custom that when a colleague leaves, folks in the office contribute a few dollars towards a card, a farewell cake, or similar. It used to be mostly informal with someone doing the rounds with cap in hand. Is it appropriate?

More importantly, the HR manager has recently started coordinating this initiative — with all the best intentions, but I’m afraid it may seem like an imposition if it comes from an HR person. As head of office, should I allow this to continue?

No, you should stop it, and good for you for thinking about it because all too often people don’t. You should stop it because it usually results in people feeling pressured to contribute even if they don’t want to or can’t afford to. And that’s especially true if HR is coordinating it.

If the company wants to give cards or cakes to people who are leaving (which is a nice thing to do), the company should pay for it. Don’t let it be funded by employees.

2. Am I obligated to stay in my job while covering for a colleague on maternity leave?

I work as a client relationship associate supporting an senior executive with a roster of about 20 clients. My role is underpaid (woefully) and under recognized by management. I took this job after six months of unemployment almost three years ago and have excelled at it – I have more than 20 years of business experience. The people in my position really run the day-to-day operations and our executives are thankful and generous, but management is not. After no raises and no way to move up in the organization, they brought in another executive without posting the role for any of us who would like to apply.

The person I currently support is going on maternity leave for 12-16 weeks, and I am tasked with supporting our clients while she is gone. I am not getting an increase in my hourly rate, but the company has agreed to pay me a flat monthly fee for the time I am in this role. Once she comes back, I will revert to my regular rate, no monthly fee. I was told that if in the future “a role opens up, you will have a leg up because you’ve done it.”

Here’s the rub – I will have an opportunity in Q1 of 2016 to move into a role more in line with my experience, with more money and more responsibility, more recognition, less drama. What’s my obligation to stay in my current role to fill out the maternity leave? I have nothing in writing, just an expectation that I will handle the role for the expected maternity leave.

Your obligation to stay is zero. People leave jobs while covering for colleagues on leave all the time. Give appropriate notice, of course, and leave your work in good shape, but do what’s best for you.

For what it’s worth, it’s not really outrageous that your pay will revert back once your colleague returns; that’s pretty normal. And it’s not necessarily outrageous that they hired someone without giving internal candidates a chance to apply; if they knew that no current employees would be real contenders (and there are many situations where that’s legitimately the case), that’s reasonable for them to do, rather than going through the motions for the sake of appearances. I don’t know if that’s useful or annoying to hear, but it sounds like you might be so frustrated with the company that it’s coloring your interpretation of everything they do (which is all the more reason to leave if you get a good opportunity.

3. When should I disclose a wage garnishment?

I’ve been at my current job for a little less than six months now. My employer has been more than accommodating, and all things considered, he is generally a great boss. However, the work itself is not fulfilling and it has inspired me to look for a new career. I’ve heavily thrown myself into the job market, and have applied and interviewed for positions with companies that want to fill their respective positions by the beginning of the year, meaning that I may very well end up with a new job in a few weeks.

However, because of a silly mistake in my earlier years, I have a wage garnishment from my state for a speeding ticket that I completely forgot about. Is it better to disclose this fact now before they make me an offer, or would it be better to approach this topic once I get hired? Or, alternatively, would I just not discuss it at all? (If I were to get a new job, I’d simply pay off the rest of the garnishment with my increased salary.)

If you’re going to pay it off within a few weeks of starting the new job, you probably don’t have to disclose it at all because the new employer will probably never hear about it. If it might take longer that that, you’re legally required to report the change in job to either the court that issued the garnishment or the creditor (I’m not sure which; check your local laws), and around the time that you do that, you should alert whoever handles payroll at your new employer so they’re in the loop. However, you certainly don’t need to disclose it before you get an offer or before you start the job; treat this as a minor logistical thing, not something that could cause you to lose an offer.

Also, it might give you some peace of mind to know that federal law prohibits employers from firing someone for having one wage garnishment (although it doesn’t prohibit it for two or more garnishments).

4. When should I tell job candidates that I’m pregnant?

I am a fairly new manager, hiring my first direct report. After an initial phone screen and brief online exercise, I will bring the top candidates (1-3, depending on the outcome of the phone screen/exercise) to our office for a final round of interviews with me and several others. My question is around when or if I should tell the finalists that I’m expecting my first child this summer. The person should have at least 3 months overlap with me before I go out for at least 3 months. This will slightly change the nature of the position, as they’ll have to fill in for some tasks and/or work with others on tasks that I would normally handle and that would not normally be part of their responsibilities.

I want them to have all the information they need to make a good decision on taking the offer and ultimately be happy in the role, but I don’t want to divulge what might be seen as personal information too early. Should I tell the candidates when I invite them for the final round? During that day? Only when making an offer? Something else? For the record, my supervisor and colleagues do know about the pregnancy.

I wouldn’t worry about it being seen as divulging personal information; you’re giving them work-related information about the job expectations. I’d mention it some point during the interview process — not as a big deal, but just simple and matter-of fact. For example: “I’ll be out on maternity leave for three months over the summer, so I’d like this person to start by April in order to have three months overlap with me before that, since they’ll be covering some work that I normally handle.”

I wouldn’t wait until the offer stage or do it when issuing a final interview invitation because that makes it seem too much like “drawback that I must now disclose to you” rather than “pretty common thing that happens in the course of business.” Just do it in the normal course of talking about the job.

5. How to share a portfolio of work at the phone interview stage

I have built up quite a large portfolio of work with my most recent job. I have examples of everything from marketing materials to training manuals that I created. Most of the jobs that I apply for have the initial phone screening interview, which I sometimes bomb. Recently, I had a phone interview for a great position that would carry me much further up the ladder in my career. I was nervous, I fumbled with some of my answers, and I was recovering from the flu (which did not help). On a side note, I explained to the interviewer that I was sick and she was sympathetic, and we bonded a little over both having toddlers, but I digress. I feel like the portfolio is a good way to confirm the skills I speak of which I speak so highly. Only, during a phone interview there is no chance to flip through the binder.

Is it okay to mention that I have a portfolio and how would I go about doing that? Do I mention that I have one and would like to send a digital copy to them? Or is it best to wait until I have the face-to-face interview and bring it up then?

Put it online if possible (or in something like Dropbox), and then include a link to it on your resume.

If it’s too late for that, it’s fine to send a link to it when you’re confirming the phone interview. You’d just say something like, “In case it’s helpful, here’s a link to see a portfolio of my work.”

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