my new coworker keeps spouting offensive political views

by Alison Green on November 12, 2015

A reader writes:

I work in a busy office with people from all different backgrounds, and my team is the first port of call when people come into the building. I believe we have a large responsibility to make sure the company looks professional to anyone coming into the building.

My new colleague is a lovely person, a little bit too talkative, but I know how to handle that. However, she believes the things she reads in the tabloids a little too much regarding refugees and asylum seekers and makes very loud and animated comments about refugees and actively blames them for all sort of issues that exist in our society. It has reached the point where someone can’t even complain about the cost of renting a property without her blaming it on asylum seekers “sponging off the state,” being greedy, and “taking things from our country.” Her comments are rude and prejudiced, and I find them pretty racist and unacceptable for a professional workplace.

If people come into the building and hear her saying these things, it looks awful! Not only that, but maintaining a degree of professionalism should involve keeping controversial topics such as politics, immigration, religion, etc. out of the workplace. Not only is it frustrating to hear someone moan incessantly about a group of people in a very rude way, but the ignorance and harsh way of talking about people that usually accompanies these awful statements leaves me a little shell shocked! I find her comments racist and I’ve faced a lot of different people in the workplace but have never encountered anyone that moans about minority groups so extensively on a daily basis. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but in a professional environment, these opinions should be left at the door when you enter your place of work.

How do I handle this situation? I am a colleague on the same level as her, so I don’t know if it would be appropriate for me to say anything. Could I next time say to her that I find her comments offensive when she brings them up? I have tried ignoring her repeatedly over the past three months, but when I ignore them, she just goes on and on and on. Or should I talk to HR? But at the same time I am concerned that might be a bit excessive.

“Jane, I find that really offensive. Please don’t say that sort of thing at work.”

“I hope you’re not saying that to me because you think I agree with you.” (Credit for this goes to a commenter here; I think it’s brilliant.)

“I feel very differently on this subject than you do, and I don’t want to hear this kind of thing at work. Please stop.”

“I really don’t want to hear this sort of thing.”

“Your beliefs about immigrants are disturbing to hear, and I’d like you to stop making these comments around me.”

And yes, this is absolutely something you should tell HR about. It’s not excessive to do that; her comments could create a hostile workplace (legal definition, not colloquial one) and make people feel unwelcome and generally are exactly the sort of thing that a competent HR department will want to shut down.

But please don’t just take it to HR. Say something directly to your coworker too, because she needs to hear that her comments are objectionable and unwelcome.

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don’t say these 5 things to your new hire

by Alison Green on November 12, 2015

Bringing a new person onto your team can be a delicate time: the person is forming impressions that will sometimes be long-lasting, and what happens in their first weeks can shape their perspective and morale for a long time to time.

Here are five things that are kryptonite to say to new team members.

“We’re swamped right now and no one will have time to train you, so keep yourself busy for the next few weeks. Here are some manuals to read.” New employees are usually excited and eager to get to work. Finding out that they’ll just be sitting around for days or weeks will let the wind out of their sails faster than you can say “employee onboarding video.” If you want new hires to continue to be excited and enthusiastic, you have to show that you’re excited to have them there and have put thought into ensuring that they’ll be able to get to work. (Also in this category: “I’m not sure when your computer will get here.”)

“Watch out for the VP — she’s difficult.” Warning a new team member about a difficult coworker may seem like a kindness, but it can poison relationships before they even begin. By all means, give your new colleague useful tips (like “Jane prefers very short emails and doesn’t like too many interruptions”), but avoid negative characterizations and let them form their own impressions.

“We’re all going to lunch. We’ll be back in an hour.” Assign someone on your team to take your new employee out to lunch on her first day – or at least to make sure she knows what lunch options are available. And definitely don’t abandon her while the rest of you head out to eat together.

“We really needed to hire a woman, so I’m glad you’re here.” Don’t make your new team member feel like a token hire, or that you’re seeing her race or gender before anything else about her.

“We have initiation rites for new employees.” Sending the new guy on a supply run to a nonexistent office might be a time-honored welcome ritual, but you might be walking a finer line than you realize with initiation traditions. Think carefully about whether people are likely to feel truly welcomed – or just uncomfortable. Don’t ask people to sing a song (some companies really do this!), share their most embarrassing moment (people do this one too!), or otherwise make themselves vulnerable to a group of strangers they’re not yet comfortable with.

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I’ve been told to implement a decision that I think is unethical

by Alison Green on November 12, 2015

A reader writes:

I’ve been working in Human Resources for about four years, two of them in my current organization. I work in a small team of four – my coworker and I handle most of the day to day, as well as projects, and we also have an administrative assistant who handles the clerical functions. A director oversees us, but she has a few other departments so she is not always very involved.

The organization I work for is a nonprofit focusing on homelessness, hunger, and poverty. I feel strongly about the mission, which was a primary reason I made the move from a corporate environment to here. However, over my two years here, some decisions have been made regarding employees that I feel are unfair and inconsistent with our mission. For example, we often underpay employees, don’t give raises, and push healthcare premium increases onto them. I realize nonprofits are always short on money, and I’ve chalked most of it up to that and tried to make a difference where I could.

That said, the director shared with us recently that senior leadership has decided that the four employees who were identified through our ACA compliance process as needing to be offered health insurance, despite being coded as per diem employees (meaning they’re working full-time hours on average but are still coded as per diem and therefore were no previously offered health insurance through us) will not be moved to full-time status because this way we will only need to offer them health insurance but not PTO, dental insurance, life insurance, etc. Essentially, they want to keep them incorrectly coded to skirt around having to offer them the benefits our other full-time employees receive. For reference, we already have about 200 staff who are full-time, so this wouldn’t be a significant increase. My director is insisting this is okay because it’s not illegal.

It’s not illegal, but I still think it’s wrong. It doesn’t foster positive employee relationships or speak well to the type of employer we are. It certainly doesn’t help retention and employee engagement, which are all things I care deeply about as an HR professional.

However, even more of a sticking point for me is the fact that one of the services we provide as a nonprofit, in an effort to prevent homelessness, is trying to find people stable employment. Yet here we have an opportunity to offer four low-wage workers better hours and benefits and a more stable position, and they won’t do it because it’ll cost a few extra dollars. It feels hypocritical.

I’ve been asked to communicate this to the four employees and I just don’t know if I can. It feels ethically icky to me. Am I overreacting?

I don’t know enough about the ACA compliance process to know if this is legal or not, so I’m going to take your word for it that it is.

But yes, the law aside, if someone is routinely working full-time hours over a sustained period of time, the right thing to do is to treat them as a full-time employee, meaning that they should have access to the same benefits as other full-time employees. If there’s truly good reason not to do that, then it should be explicitly addressed and explained so that everyone is clear about the reasoning and can see that it’s being applied logically and consistently.

And yes, it’s especially messed up for an organization that works to alleviate poverty to try to skirt the line on this.

I’d say this: “Given that these employees are in fact regularly working full-time hours, I’d argue it’s at odds with our mission to try to keep them off of our full-time benefits, and that it could cause real employee morale issues if people realized it, as well as PR issues if donors or the public heard about it. I think we have an obligation to pick up these costs, and that there’s real potential of eventual fall-out if we don’t.”

If you’re overruled, there’s not much more you can do about it; at that point you’d need to decide if it’s a deal-breaker for you or not. I’d probably consider it in the wider context of what you know about the organization’s ethics and how it operates. If things are otherwise pretty good, that’s worth considering. But if this is part of a larger pattern of ethical issues or problematic treatment of employees, I’d weigh that all pretty heavily.

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I’m not my boyfriend’s keeper, employee is openly job searching from work, and more

by Alison Green on November 12, 2015

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

1. My boyfriend’s boss tried to track him down through me

My boyfriend and I work in the same nonprofit organization, in different departments, under different bosses. However, our workspaces are pretty close together, and it’s a casual environment, so people often see us take lunch together and know that we’re dating. Usually this is a positive thing– people are friendly and it doesn’t cause a problem.

Today my boyfriend was sick and wrote in that he wouldn’t be in the office. However, his boss needed something he was working on (boyfriend didn’t know this). Rather than email or phone boyfriend (or just check his own email…), he came by my desk, looking upset, and in front of my whole department, very testily asked where boyfriend was and told me he was supposed to be in by such-and-such a time. I just responded that he mentioned in the morning that wasn’t feeling well but that I don’t know his whereabouts at all times. He persisted in saying things like, “This is when he’s supposed to be in… he should be here.” I said that I could try to contact him but I didn’t have any information for him (honestly I wish I hadn’t even said this, he was being so rude, but I just wanted him to go away).

His boss has always been kind of over the line like this (when I hear stories, it drives me nuts) but usually it doesn’t involve me. Is there anything I should do about this? I feel like telling my own boss, “Hey, can you tell this guy not to act like I’m boyfriend’s mom?” But I have a feeling my boss won’t be able to do much and it will just create bad feelings all over. If his boss had just emailed or asked politely, I’d have no problem telling him what I know, but it was frankly pretty insulting the way he was yelling at me for something completely not my business.

I think you handled it perfectly; you made it clear that you aren’t your boyfriend’s keeper and you held firm when he pushed back. I don’t think you need to take any further action, although if it happens again, you could say something like, “I’m really no more able to help you find Fergus than anyone else here would be.” And if it happens a third time, I’d say, “I’ve noticed you come to me when you can’t find Fergus. I need to ask you not to — I have the same boundaries with him at work that anyone here does.” (You could do that the second time if you wanted, but if he’s senior to you and depending on the dynamics in your organization, you may need to give him slightly more slack than he deserves.)

2. Employee is openly job searching from her work computer

I am the team lead of a two-person admin team for a sales department. I am the supervisor of the second person, but not her manager; however, most critiques are expected to flow through me first unless there is a serious problem.

The second person spends most of her time in our reception area (answering phones, greeting visitors, etc.) It can be slow, so my manager is very flexible about internet usage. Recently though, I have noticed that this second person is spending quite a bit of her time at the front desk searching for a new job. She is doing this on the office computer, which is visible to guests and anyone who walks through the reception area, which is a common thoroughfare in our office. My office is absolutely the type where people notice what other people are doing on their computers.

My problem isn’t the idea of the person leaving; this job has a high turnover and it’s expected most people will eventually leave the position because the room for growth is minimal. But I am not really comfortable with her spending her time this way, as it feels to me inappropriate and unprofessional to use company time to find a new job. I am not sure if I am overreacting and I don’t want to create unnecessary conflict if there isn’t a need. Their quality of work has not changed noticeably. Should I approach this with my second person, take it to my manager, or leave it be?

Both. Your job as her supervisor means that you should say something to her, and for that I’d say something like, “Jane, I’ve noticed you spending a lot of time looking at job sites while you’re at work. It’s fine to look at news or other non-work sites when it’s slow, but I want to ask you not to job search during work hours. If you’re ready to move on, I’ll support you in doing that, but openly job searching from works looks really bad to people who see what’s on your computer.”

You should also give your manager a heads-up (and let her know that you addressed it) so that she’s not blindsided if she hears about it from someone else. That’s not tattling; you’re both part of the management team above this employee, and she should have the same information you do.

Read an update to this letter. 

3. How can I reconcile my view of management with my boss’s?

My boss and I have very different management styles. She believes her role as a manager is to convey company policies and to rally her team to comply to the new rules and procedures. I, on the other hand, feel like my role is to articulate to management how these new rules will impact my team. I see myself as an advocate for my direct reports, and sometimes I disagree with company policies because I felt they negatively affect morale (and they have). My personal rule is that I will always voice my opinion but I will follow my boss’ direction regardless of my feelings (i.e., I’m not defiant by any means).

However, I’m concerned that my boss thinks I’m a negative nelly because there’s been a series of new policies that I’ve strongly disagreed with. She would say, “All this energy to be angry can be avoided if we can just accept that this is the company policy that we have to follow.” She genuinely does not have a problem with these policies, and she truly believes that they’re created with the best intensions. The overall morale is low and many people have quit over the new policies. Our GlassDoor reviews are atrocious. She’s disconnected with the pulse of the staff, but I don’t think I can change her mind. What advice can you give on how I can communicate better with her?

It’s possible that you’re both right. It’s true that part of being a good manager is making sure that management above you understands how new policies will affect your team. But it’s also true that part of being a good manager is hearing when those above you are telling you that they’ve judged that others things need to take priority, and having a good feel for what battles are worth fighting and where to spend political capital.

If you get to the point where the conflict between what you think they need to hear and what they’re willing to hear is too large for you to live with comfortably, that’s a flag that you might need to move on — but a lot of this comes down to judging how far you can push with the people above you without compromising your effectiveness.

As for how to change your boss’s mind, you may not be able to. You can certainly lay out your point of view and why you have it, but she’s presumably seeing the same turnover numbers and GlassDoor reviews as you are. At some point, I’d probably say to her, “We have really different takes on X and Y. I don’t want to be annoying in how much I’m pushing my perspective, but I also don’t want you to be blindsided by what I think are growing problems on the staff. Do you want me to keep raising this kind of thing or ….?”

4. Should my resume include short blurbs what what each company does?

Should a resume include a one-sentence blurb about what the company did/does, especially if it no longer exists and therefore has no web presence? Something like:

Madeupword, Inc., 2004-2007
Small chocolate teapot startup developing novel pouring methods via machine learning

Generally, no. They tend to take up real estate that’s better used to describe what you did, not what your company did. Where it’s providing important context to your work, though, you can instead weave it into a bullet point about what you did there. For example, “managed daily operations at small chocolate teapot startup” or whatever.

5. Travel pay requirements

My son was hired to work on a crew about 30 minutes from where he lives. Last week, they reassigned him to a crew that is four hours away. He has to work there Monday through Friday and can only come home on the weekends. They just told him that he will be working this crew until the first of the year. They are not offering any sort of extra travel pay or per-diem for meals. They are covering the crew’s hotel. Is there any requirement legally that they offer extra pay or a per-diem?

Nope, there is not. A smart company will offer it anyway, and he could certainly try negotiating for it, but they’re not required to agree to it.

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our job candidates have to give “positivity presentations”

by Alison Green on November 11, 2015

A reader writes:

Let me start by saying I love my office and I love my job, but sometimes management gets a little weird about handling conflict.

We have a small pool of coworkers who are up for an internal promotion, and one of the candidates has caused nothing but drama. She claims that other members of the office are causing discord because we used to all take breaks together and that’s beginning to taper off. In reality, she’s the one causing the discord. She seems to think she’s being victimized and alienated because she hasn’t been invited along on lunch breaks. (We’ve never had to invite anyone on lunch breaks. It’s always been whoever wants to show up in our agreed upon lunch area can, and she’s been here long enough to know that.) Besides, she chooses not to go on lunch breaks with everyone else so she can run errands and do other work. She’s opting out; she’s not being left out.

Anyway, she’s pointed the finger enough to raise concerns with our management that there may be something wrong in that division. Now the candidates for the promotion have to jump through all sorts of hoops, including “positivity presentations” where they have to come up with initiatives to foster positivity in the workplace. One of the requirements of the presentation is that the candidates, acting as team leaders, must get everyone in the division involved.

I’m interested in your take on this. It seems like a ridiculous way to handle the problem, but that’s just me. Why not just sit down and talk to this coworker causing the issues, instead of making the rest of the candidates and the entire division solve a problem she’s responsible for? How are they expected to solve a problem they didn’t contribute to? And finally, is it wrong for management to consider this candidate for the promotion when she’s causing these issues? I don’t think she’d be very good in the role as it is lower level management and requires trust of her employees, which I feel like she’s been steadily destroying. Should they just remove her from consideration?

What?!

Yes, that is indeed a ridiculous way to handle the problem, for so many reasons, not the least of which is that you’re adults, not young children.

Yes, they should indeed just sit down and talk with this candidate and get a better handle on what’s going on. And it’s especially important that they do that before considering promoting her, because someone causing this kind of social drama is not a great bet for promotion, especially since it sounds like she’d be moving into a role where she’d be managing other people, because it’s helpful for managers to be grown-ups.

Requiring all candidates to give “positivity presentations” is guaranteed to nauseate good candidates and make them question whether they want a role where such a thing is required. It’s also sending a terrible message to everyone forced to sit through these presentations: that this is a company that will find convoluted, round-about ways to address perceived problems (without even finding out if there’s a real problem to begin with) rather than addressing them directly. Seriously, blowing a hiring process with something absurd like this is ridiculous.

When there’s drama that’s impacting work — and it’s not clear that this even rises to that level — you sit down with whoever’s involved, do whatever conflict resolution is appropriate (or direct the parties to do it themselves, if realistic), and then get people back to work. And you take it as a flag to look at people’s goals, performance, and workloads and to assess whether there’s an issue of low workload or low performance, because often serious drama ties back to one or both of those, and solving those will often solve your drama problem.

I hope all the other candidates say that their initiatives to “foster positivity” would just be to hire strong people, give them clear goals and resources to achieve those goals, and treat them like adults.

Read an update to this letter here.

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what to do when a work event includes prayer

by Alison Green on November 11, 2015

A reader writes:

What do you think about prayers or invocations said during work events? My organization’s CEO asked everyone to bow their heads while he said grace before a celebratory pre-conference dinner at a fancy restaurant they had rented out for the occasion (it was a typical Christian prayer, thanking the Lord for the food and such). The guests included prominent professionals — some even famous in our field — from all over the country, along with staff and board members.

The organization is health care-based and has nothing at all to do with religion.

I was a little shocked and embarrassed, and immediately wondered how many non-theists, Muslims, Hindus and Jews were among the attendees.

I’m not really asking about the legality of this, but am interested in your take on this issue and wondered if you had advice on how to approach leadership about not including this particular component of the dinner next year.

You can read my answer to this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and often updating/expanding my answers to them).

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my coworker is a dominatrix — and it’s fairly public on Facebook

by Alison Green on November 11, 2015

A reader writes:

I currently work in a public elementary school. I’m sure you are familiar with the way educators view Facebook profiles: the less info shared, the better. I have a question concerning a former coworker who now works at another school in the district.

Today another coworker and I were discussing people who share too much of their personal life with their coworkers, and she said something along the lines of “oh, well Ms. ______ had an alternative lifestyle but she never let it affect her work.” This piqued my interest and I went on Facebook to investigate this claim. I’m not her friend, but I was able to search for her and find her profile very easily. I assumed that she might be a lesbian (I live in the deep South–homosexuality is indeed considered an “alternative lifestyle” here) but what I found is that she is actually a dominatrix in her spare time. While she hasn’t made any posts herself, she is publicly tagged in several posts by a man who proudly proclaims himself to be “Mistress ____’s slave” at least twice. Upon viewing HIS Facebook page, I can see dozens of other posts that refer to her by name but don’t tag her actual profile.

What am I supposed to do with this knowledge? The man’s posts are some of the most graphic things I’ve ever read. Bondage, weird fetishes, discussions of bodily fluids…all visible to the public. I almost feel like I need to make a burner email account and email her to say “hey girl, might want to check your privacy settings on Facebook,” but I’m not sure if that’s my place to do anything. I am pretty sure she could get in major trouble if the wrong person found it.

Well, you don’t have to do anything with the knowledge. In fact, I’d say that your default should be to wipe it out of your mind and pretend you don’t know it unless there’s compelling reason not to.

If she were a friend, you could (and probably should) give her a heads-up that you were able to easily come across this stuff.

But this isn’t someone you know, and she presumably doesn’t live under a rock; she knows that Facebook’s privacy settings are a thing.

At most, I suppose that you could send her a message saying something like, “Hey, I came across this and didn’t know if you realized this stuff is publicly viewable and thought I’d let you know in case you didn’t mean it to be, in light of our how our field can be about people having personal lives. If it’s not a concern for you, please ignore me and carry on!” But again, she’s got to know that Facebook isn’t the most private of places, and this message might be odd coming from someone who doesn’t know her well.

Whatever you do, though, I definitely wouldn’t send her an anonymous message, since that’s a higher level of covert action than is really required (and in general, anonymous messages are unkind; they rattle people and leave them having to suspect everyone they know of being the sender).

Read an update to this letter here.

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does weight impact your career, a disappearing new hire, and more

by Alison Green on November 11, 2015

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

1. Can weight impact you professionally?

I’d really love to know your thoughts on weight and if an extra few pounds can impact you at work. In the past year, I’ve probably gained about 15-20 pounds, ironically related to work related stress and a lack of many healthy food options in the workplace. I’m the type of person where even small weight gains cause me to change clothing sizes. The way women’s suits and work clothes are cut, I feel as though there is no easy way to hide the weight. I’m currently trying to take off that weight, which typically means really early morning workouts, but it’s a slow process.

I can tell I’m more self-conscious and don’t feel as comfortable in my skin. As a young female manager, I feel like there is even more pressure to stay in shape. I’ve even had a few older coworkers dismiss when I’ve lost a few pounds, saying, “Well you’re young, so it shouldn’t be that hard.”

Do you think that we need to be concerned about weight and how it may affect our perception at work? Of course, there are health benefits to staying in shape, but could it also have a significant impact on your career?

Well, there are a bunch of studies showing that being overweight can indeed impact your professionally, particularly at the hiring stage and particularly for women. My hunch is that 15-20 pounds won’t trigger that effect (but maybe that’s my own wishful thinking? because let’s all say hello to my new middle-aged metabolism). But if you’re feeling uncomfortable in your own skin, that matters, and I think that might be more likely to impact you professionally than the actual weight. That’s the part that I’d say to focus on — not what your coworkers might or might not think of you jumping up a size or two.

2. New hire accepted the job, called out with an injury, and hasn’t been heard from since

I am fairly new to management and work for a family company (a winery). Most of my hiring has been straightforward, and I haven’t had to deal with any situations like this yet and am a little flummoxed about how to move forward.

I recently offered a position to a new candidate, who accepted and set up a start date. When the person was due to come in for their first day, about a half hour before their shift, I got an apologetic email about a medical emergency (ankle sprain), but they did not specify if they still wanted to work with us. I followed up with a phone call and left a voicemail wishing her well and discussing the position, and also sent a an email with the same information. I have given her a couple of days to get back to me (and the weekend), but have not heard back yet. How much time am I allowed to let pass before I put out a new job posting and look for other candidate?

You can do that right now. Giving her a couple of days to get back to you is reasonable; depending on how bad the injury was, it’s possible that she was on painkillers and had her hands full with figuring out how to adjust to being one-footed. But I don’t think anyone who really wanted their new job would let it go longer than two days without getting back to you. Her silence is telling you what you need to know here.

I’d contact her once more and say something like, “Since I haven’t heard back from you, I’m assuming that you’re no longer interested in starting the job. I’m going to reopen the hiring process, but please let me know if I’ve misinterpreted.” And then yes, start talking to other candidates right away. If she does end up getting back to you after that, it’s reasonable to probe a bit about what happened, since if what happened is just that she has a really cavalier attitude about the job, you probably want to stick to looking at new candidates.

3. Should I resign while I’m away on my honeymoon?

I have been with my current employer, a small nonprofit, for two years. My boss and I are the entire staff and we are heading into the end-of-year push. It’s been a really hard year for our organization and there are a lot of balls in the air, even without the added stress of getting through December.

I’ve been interviewing elsewhere for several months, and early last month had a very promising meeting with a local company. I was hoping to have an offer in hand from them by the end of October, but circumstances aligned so that my formal offer arrived last night–two days into my two-week honeymoon. It’s a good offer, and I’ve accepted it. The new company has told me that I can start anytime from the Monday I return to town to a week or two later.

I would prefer to send my current boss my notice as soon as I can; today, if possible. She is unlikely to take the news well, and it’s unlikely she’ll be able to replace me before the new year, let alone in a two or three week notice period. By giving my notice today, she and the board can at least get that process started as soon as possible.

Would it be appropriate to send her my resignation while I’m on vacation? The more time they have to work on getting someone into the place, the better, but it feels a little disingenuous to resign while I’m away.

Yes, you should. It’s not ideal, but telling her ASAP is the higher priority than telling her in-person. When you email, just say something like, “I’m so sorry to tell you this over email, but the alternative was waiting until I returned, and I wanted to let you know as soon as possible. I’ll of course plan to meet with you the first day I’m back to discuss transition plans, but meanwhile thought I needed to give you an early heads-up.”

Read an update to this letter here.

4. Job searching while living overseas

I am a U.S. citizen currently living in the UK. I may be returning to the U.S. soon, and am a bit nervous about trying to land on my feet when I get back.

While I have a job currently, it took a long time to find work. Prospective employers weren’t willing to contact references on another continent and I worry this will happen again. I’m also concerned about the employment gap working against me.

In addition, I moved to the UK as the spouse of a citizen. I’m really uncomfortable bringing up my marital status in interviews, but it seems unavoidable as that is why I left in the first place. I’m not really sure how to sell myself and would appreciate any advice you can give on job searching after living abroad!

Yeah, the reality of this is that unless you’re dealing with companies that are very used to hiring from overseas, many employers aren’t going to bother contacting you unless you’re an unusually outstanding candidate, because they won’t want to deal with the hassle (real or perceived) of interviewing you from afar, contacting references, etc.

So that leaves you with some limited options: be an unusually outstanding candidate, focus on companies that do a lot of overseas hiring and/or where your UK experience will be a strong plus, or lean even more heavily on networking than you would normally. (Another option is to wait until you’re back here before launching a serious search, but that may not be realistic.)

5. How to talk about training people successfully

Part of my work includes training all new incoming teammates. My department is considered the best place for other teams to go hunting for new talent, and recently several of the people I have trained have been selected for high-profile promotions. Another one is being eyed with intensity. I take a lot of pride in the fact that my trainees do so well at my company.

The trouble is, I feel a bit “motherish” in this accomplishment; “Look at my babies go!” How can I showcase this success in interviews, reviews, and elevator pitches in a more professional way?

“I love training people and invest a lot of thought into how to set them up for success. The people I train frequently go on to high-profile projects and promotions and generally thrive into our company.”

That’s just a start, though. You could strengthen this by talking specifically about whatever it is you do that’s producing such successful outcomes.

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is a higher-paying job worth extra stress?

by Alison Green on November 10, 2015

A reader writes:

I’m an executive assistant for a medium size nonprofit organization. I absolutely love my job, the organization, and my boss. Like most nonprofits, the salary is on the low side. Currently I am at $40,000 a year but usually I receive a few enhancements, making my salary closer to $43,000 a year.

I was contacted by a corporation for an executive assistant position at $65,000 a year. While the job duties are very similar, I did some research on the corporation and there has been recent management changeover, several key employees left, and one of the new executives had several sexual harassment allegations at a previous company. The allegations were settled privately. This would be the executive I would report to. I’m sure my husband trusts me, but I don’t know if I could trust my new boss.

On top of this, I have some minor health issues that a stressful job could make worse. The idea of going from a laid-back organization to a large corporation with a potential for high stress is concerning to me. In my current job, my boss lets me come in late if I have an appointment, go during lunch, etc. Currently my job does not affect my health anyway and my job performance is not affected by my health. I need work-life balance and I’m always worried a new employer may “talk the talk but not walk the walk” regarding “family comes first.”

I have a lot of college loans and the money certainly would be helpful. Does the extra money negate the negatives of changing jobs?

I believe pretty firmly that only you can decide that. The answer is heavily dependent on your current finances, your financial obligations, your savings and saving goals, what you want out of your career, and what you care about most in life. It’s also dependent on where you are in your life right now; sometimes that kind of trade-off makes sense at one stage of your life but wouldn’t interest you during another stage.

It’s certainly not unreasonable to decide that extra money isn’t worth giving up a job you love and a work environment you’re happy in, if you’d be trading it for stress, less flexibility, and possible health issues. On the other hand, a 51% salary increase isn’t exactly minor. It also has more of an impact when you’re starting at $40,000 than if you were starting at $100,000; the additional money is likely to buy you a bigger increase in quality of life and more financial breathing room. And plenty of people do decide that they’re willing to work long hours with less than pleasant people in exchange for the right amount of money (take a look at big law).

It really just depends on what you value most right now.

I say go to the interview and keep an open mind. Do not go with the mindset of “I want this job” or “I’m so excited about this salary.” Go with the mindset of “I’m going to gather as much information as I can so I can figure out if this is something I’d even want.”

After talking with them, you might come away feeling like there’s no way you’d want to work with them (in which case, problem solved). Or you might feel more interested than you expected to. If that happens, take a brutally honest inventory of pros and cons, and what you’d really be selling them for the price they’d be paying. If you’d just be selling a few extra hours of your time per week, that might be worth it. But if you’d be selling your health or your quality of life, it’s probably not. The real answer is probably somewhere in between, and that’s where we get into “only you can decide what want from a job” … but the key thing is to figure out what the trade would really be, and then you can decide if it’s a trade that interests you.

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how to know if someone’s really suited to working remotely

by Alison Green on November 10, 2015

Whether you’re considering a staff member’s request to work remotely (some or all of the time) or you need to hire a new team member who will work off-site, it’s key to know how to tell if someone is well suited for remote work or not. Many people assume they’ll thrive work remotely but then encounter problems with motivation and productivity. And managers are sometimes too quick to assume that if teleworking works for the team, anyone on the team will be able to do it successfully.

But in reality, some people excel when they’re working remotely, and others crash and burn. Here’s what to think about when you’re contemplating whether someone is the right fit for remote work.

Has the person ever worked remotely before? People with experiencing telecommuting are more likely to have a good understanding of its difficulties and demands, and of whether they do well in that context. That doesn’t mean first-timers can’t do it, but it does mean that you should spend extra time talking about challenges and expectations with a remote newbie.

Does the person have realistic ideas about remote work? Do they understand that they can’t regularly care for young children while working remotely, or do they see it as a child care plan? Have they thought about how they’ll remain connected to the team, and what work habits or processes they might need to modify? Or do they just imagine themselves getting laundry done while they work and figure the rest of the details will work themselves out?

Does the person thrive when working autonomously or have a high need for interaction?Remote employees can certainly collaborate virtually, but someone who draws energy from being able to grab a few coworkers and bounce ideas around may go stir-crazy working from home. Make sure you have a realistic view of what conditions help the person operate at their best, and that being physically isolated won’t make them feelisolated, or dry up their creativity and energy.

How’s the person’s reliability and drive? Obviously, you want anyone on your team to be conscientious, reliable, self-motivated, and accountable. But these things are absolutely crucial when someone is working remotely – or you’re likely to find yourself having trouble tracking them down during the day, not hearing back in a timely fashion, and eventually doubting how they’re actually spending their time during the day.

How would you rate the person’s communication skills? Do they seek out input, relay their thoughts clearly and reasonably concisely in writing, understand instructions and nuance without a lot of hand-holding, and reach out proactively when something needs to be hashed out? You’re also going to need to rely on all this when someone isn’t working down the hall from you.

I originally published this at Intuit QuickBase’s blog.

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