my boss is consulting my peer about my work

by Alison Green on July 29, 2015

A reader writes:

I work in an 8-person field office of a major national nonprofit. Our office is currently in the midst of a major collaborative initiative which has placed increasing demands on our Executive Director’s (my boss) time. My boss is so busy cultivating relationships with volunteers and funders that he spends less time on the day-to-day management of the organization. Morale is low, as people are feeling spread too thin.

Over the past few months, my boss has increasingly leaned on one of my colleagues to handle the day-to-day management responsibilities. In many ways, my colleague has become a de facto deputy director. I respect my colleague, but I was angered to learn that my boss gave her a draft of my annual work plan for feedback without telling me first. I was particularly upset that my boss gave me additional responsibilities based on my colleague’s feedback with involving me in the discussion. Work plan development has always been an employee-manager activity in the past. Am I out of line for feeling upset that he shared my work plan with her without first telling me? I don’t mind her input, but I’m upset at the lack of communication and now have questions about about how my performance will be monitored and by whom.

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 new office is full of dogs — and I’m allergic

by Alison Green on July 29, 2015

A reader writes:

Thanks to your amazing advice, I was able to land a fantastic job with a big raise after years of stagnant dead-end work. My first day I walked into the office…and it was full of dogs. They have a dog-friendly office, which was never advertised or communicated during the hiring process.

I’m allergic to dogs, VERY allergic. Within ten minutes of arriving at work, my eyes are red, itchy and watering, my nose stuffs up and I get a headache from my swollen sinuses. This is what happens when I’m on medication! If I skip the meds, I break out in hives, start to wheeze and I run the risk of my throat swelling closed. I went to my doctor who referred me to a specialist. I’m already on the strongest meds they give out, and they said as long as I “expose myself” to allergens, this will keep happening and might get worse over time.

I tried to work with my company to fix this: they put me in the far corner away from the majority of the pooches where I’m near a door I can prop open, they have a company that cleans bi-weekly and they let me work from home one day a week. The nature of my job demands that I be in the office at least four days a week, I really have no wiggle room. Even working from home one day a week has been a stretch and caused some negative feelings on my team, even though they hear me sneezing every 20 minutes when I’m there!

It’s been 2 months and while I love the work, love the company and love my coworkers…I’m miserable. I’ve considered looking for a new job, but every job I’ve seen in my field has a “dog-friendly” office. I’m at a loss – their dog-friendly office isn’t ME-friendly. What can I do?!

Ugh, yes, this is the other side of benefits that some people love.

Lots of people are thrilled at the idea of a pet-friendly office, and lots of pet-friendly offices operate successfully. But they really only work in the long-term if there are effective plans for accommodating people with allergies, as well as people who are afraid of dogs (or other animals) or just not comfortable around them.

In a larger workspace, that can mean having pet-free floors. In a small office, that might not be feasible. (And as you can see from this story about someone with allergies who worked in Amazon’s dog-friendly offices, being on a pet-free floor didn’t quite work as smoothly as it was supposed to.)

Working from home can be a solution, but as in your case, that’s not feasible with every job.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does require employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for employees with qualifying disability if doing so won’t impose an “undue hardship” on the operation of the employer’s business. But what’s reasonable to ask, and what’s an undue hardship?

To get an answer, I consulted two awesome employment attorneys: Donna Ballman, author of the awesome Stand Up For Yourself Without Getting Fired, and Bryan Cavanaugh.

Donna and Bryan both agreed that based on your description, the allergy is likely to be covered as a disability under the ADA (which covers “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities”).

So if the law covers you, what does your employer have to do in response? Bryan says: “To its credit, the employer has already been interacting with this employee to see if there is anything reasonable the employer can do to help the employee overcome the limitations and allow her to do her job. The efforts the employer has offered so far – moving the employee’s desk by door, allowing the employee to work from home one day a week, cleaning the office bi-weekly – are nice but they have not solved the problem. Therefore, technically, neither the employee nor the employer has identified an ‘accommodation’ yet. An accommodation is a modification that allows the employee to perform all of the essential functions of his or her job. That is not happening yet, since none of the ideas mentioned has worked.”

So realistically, what else might you try?

Donna suggests working with your doctor to see what she suggests:

“If there are allergy shots or other medical solutions, great. But they may also be able to suggest some reasonable accommodations you haven’t thought of. Questions I’d ask the doctor are things like:

1. Is there a spray or something that can be put on the dogs that would keep them from spreading allergens?
2. How far away do you need to be for you to be safe from the dogs?
3. Would any kind of filter or mask work for you?

If the doctor can come up with some reasonable accommodations you can ask for that would address your allergy, the employer has to either grant the accommodation, engage in the interactive process with your doctor and you to come up with an alternative accommodation, or demonstrate an undue hardship.

If there is no accommodation that would allow you to work in the presence of dogs, then the other question to ask is of your employer, namely, whether the dogs are an accommodation for anyone else’s disability. (The ADA also covers emotional support dogs and service dogs, so you have a real pickle if the dogs are there due to disabilities of coworkers.) If not, then a reasonable accommodation might be to ask that the dogs be kept at home or in a doggy day care. It won’t make you popular with your dog-loving coworkers, but an accommodation like that is probably reasonable under the law.”

Bryan agrees:

“One accommodation that would work would be banning all the dogs (except service dogs) from the office. That is something the employer needs to consider seriously. An accommodation is not reasonable and does not need to be offered if it would create an ‘undue hardship’ for the employer. Usually that means an unreasonable expense to the employer. But here, there would not be a direct expense of banning dogs from the office. Rather the employer should consider ‘the impact of the accommodation upon the operation of the facility, including the impact on the ability of other employees to perform their duties and the impact on the facility’s ability to conduct business.’ Banning the dogs would lower morale, but it would not appear to harm the business itself or the business’ operations. This is not a veterinary clinic where it is necessary to have dogs in the workplace. Although we do not know what the business does, the business can presumably operate without animals in the workplace. So while banning dogs may be a drastic change and hurt morale, the employer must consider doing this in order to comply with the ADA.

Whether an accommodation is reasonable and whether an accommodation would present an undue hardship are fact-intensive inquiries. We do not know enough facts to say definitely one way or another whether the employer is required to ban all dogs (besides service dogs).”

But I suspect you really don’t want to be the person who causes your coworkers to lose a benefit that most of them probably love. That comes with its own set of issues.

Bryan also suggests:

“From an HR perspective, the employer should continue to interact with the employee to see if some other modification would solve this problem. For instance, the employer should consider moving the employee to another remote location within the office, moving the employee or his or her own personal office, purchasing a special air purifier, and re-arranging the office such that only employees with low-dander dogs are near this employee. If none of those work, they this employee and employee could very well be facing the choice of (1) banning dogs from the office, or (2) telling the employee to deal with the situation as is, which sounds like it would effectively make the employee resign due to health concerns.

If the employer faced that choice and chose option #2, the employee could file an EEOC charge and then take the employer to court and litigate the issue the whether option #1 would have constituted a reasonable accommodation that the employer was required to implement.”

So again, ugh.

If I were in your shoes I’d go back to your manager and HR and say this: “I appreciate you working with me on moving my desk and setting up telecommuting one day a week. However, I’m finding that I’m still suffering severe allergy symptoms and my doctor tells me that they may worsen with increased exposure to the dogs here. So I need a different medical accommodation to be able to do my job and want to talk with you about what’s possible.”

But if none of the lighter-touch accommodations work, this may come down to a philosophical decision on your part about whether you want to push for the dogs to be removed, or whether you’d rather look for a job that either doesn’t come with dogs or which is set up to allow you to avoid them more easily (by telecommuting or finding a company large enough to give you an office far away from the dander).

This isn’t an easy one.

What do others think?

* I make a commission if you use that Amazon link.

Read an update to this letter here.

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my new employer lied to me about salary, do we need team meetings, and more

by Alison Green on July 29, 2015

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

1. My new employer lied to me about salary

I recently started a new job, which pays me pretty laughable amount but I accepted it because I was told it was at the mid-range point for the position, and I was offered a mid-range wage because of my experience. Well, today I was finally able to access financial documents for my institution that outline salaries for all positions, and lo-and-behold I discover that I am NOT being paid mid-range, but am in fact paid pennies above the bottom 25th percentile. What can I do?? I am extremely upset by this – what I’m being paid now barely covers rent/utilities/health insurance/and other living necessities. The mid-range salary would help so much it’s insane.

What angers me the most about this is that I’m basically being paid as if I came in with NO experience, which is not true in the slightest. They explicitly offered me the position because I had so much relevant experience. Please help me – is there a way I can approach my supervisor/HR and talk to them about this?

I’m not normally a fan of trying to renegotiate salary soon after you start, because you agreed to a particular salary, presumably found it fair or at least acceptable, and need to stick to that agreement (just like you wouldn’t want the employer to come to you a few weeks after you started and say that they’d like to pay you less). However, in this particular situation, it sounds like they gave you wrong information — or at least that they conveyed something different than perhaps they intended to. (Who knows, maybe they consider “mid-range” to be everything between the 25th and 75th percentile. Or maybe the document you saw is wrong. Or some other explanation.)

It’s reasonable to seek clarification and find out what happened — not necessarily to renegotiate (which is very hard to do once you’ve accepted a salary and started the job), but to get some clarity on the situation. I’d say something like this: “My understanding was that you offered me a salary in the mid-range for this role, but document X makes it look like I’m actually in the bottom quarter of the range. Can you help me understand?”

2. Do I need to set up team meetings?

A year ago, I took a new job and find myself formally managing a small team for the first time. (In my last job, I ran project-based teams but this is my first permanent team).

Because I’m face-blind, I can come off as a bit cold – if your cat died, and you tell me that, I will be sad and sympathetic like anyone else; I’m just not likely to notice that you are upset unless you say something. So I’ve always asked a neutral colleague to check in with my team occasionally to remind them they have to articulate their feelings, and make sure I haven’t missed any emotional elephants.

At our last catch-up, my guide mentioned that several of my team are feeling disconnected from each other, like their work life happens in a little bubble and they never know what anyone else is doing. My guide suggested I start having team meetings to address this.

My instinct is that five people who sit within 10 feet of each other (with email and instant messaging, a shared trello board that maps all the team’s current and upcoming work and who’s responsible, and tons of local lunch spots for all budgets, including free) should be able to just talk to each other – which is what I would do – but clearly they’re not. Admittedly, this office in general is full of people with lousy social skills, but my team don’t seem to have trouble making friends at work outside our team.

I’m at a loss what to do – I’m not against the idea of team meetings, but I’ve never worked in a team that had them (I guess I’ve been raised professionally by wolves?) and I have no idea what to say or where to start. How do I help my team communicate better among themselves and feel more connected?

I wouldn’t assume that team meetings would solve it, at least not without actually talking to people and hearing first-hand how they’re feeling and what they think would help. So that’s where I’d start: Talk to the people on your team. It can be useful to have your colleague sharing her impressions of how people are feeling, but that’s really just a tip for you to alert you that there’s something you should be checking in with people about; it’s not the full information. Talk to people, ask how connected they feel with the rest of the team and how connected they’d like to feel (they may feel relatively unconnected but not really see it as a problem), and — if they do see a problem — ask for their input on ways to address it. You might find out there’s no real problem, or that it could be solved by something simpler and faster than team meetings (like “we need a better system for logging project updates”). Or maybe everyone would love meetings, who knows.

But ask.

(I will also add that the bit about having a colleague remind your team to articulate their feelings worries me a bit. I’d rather have you talking to people directly, inquiring how they’re feeling about things if you’re not sure and you think it’s relevant, and being up-front about the face-blindness and what you need them to do to accommodate it.)

Read updates to this letter here and here.

3. Can I submit writing samples that were edited by others?

I’m currently applying for a few positions in writing/communications that ask for writing samples. The sort of job I have now does involve a ton of writing, and I generally write the first drafts of everything, but since I’m a lower-level person at my organization, the things I write are often edited by people higher up on the chain who make decisions about what is printed, mailed out, etc. The edits are often minor and mostly involve word choice changes and maybe a few additions, so the majority of the work is mine, but not all of it. Can I submit the final versions of these writing samples, or do they need to be the first drafts that weren’t touched by anybody? Or can I submit the final versions and indicate that edits were made by others? Several of the things I’m considering submitting were printed in magazines, so the PDFs of those pages just look more professional than the Word document drafts I have.

Well, it’s not really a sample of your writing if it’s been edited by others. Submit stuff that only you worked on.

With published clips, where some of the value of submitting them comes from the fact that they were published, it’s worth noting when you submit them that were “lightly edited” by someone else or whatever the case may be. They can ask you for unedited work at that point if they want to (or have you do a writing exercise, which they should do anyway).

Note: Everyone in the comments disagrees with me on this. I called this one wrong, and you should follow the advice of everyone else on this, rather than me. Please also see this post.

4. When my older work history is more relevant, can I put it at the top of my resume?

I have a question about the order of my work history on a chronological resume. I’m currently a teacher, but used to be a journalist. I want to go back into the journalism profession.

My current position is as an ESL teacher/program coordinator at a school. I am also currently a freelance reporter. In 2012, I was a reporter for a small news organization in Massachusetts.

Currently, I’m applying for a journalism job. Naturally, I want to put my 2012 experience up at the top so that the hiring manager can see my relevant experience first. But, it’s in 2012, so technically it should be lower in the resume since it’s an old position. Right now, I have freelance reporter at the top (because it’s until the present), and I have my teaching position next (because it’s also in the present). Next, in a chronological order, would come my reporting position.

Can I put my 2012 reporter position right after my freelance position so that it comes nearer to the top? It’s not chronological, but it’s relevant. I don’t want to do a “functional resume” because I hear that’s bad for most cases. I don’t want people to think I’m “hiding” something.

Divide your experience into two sections: Relevant Experience (or you could just call it Journalism Experience) and Other Experience. Put the first at the top. That’s a really common way to do it and won’t raise any eyebrows.

5. Asking an employer if a position is still open

Can you ask HR if they are still hiring/if a position has been filled when you applied for the position two weeks ago and haven’t heard anything back? It did not say no inquiries.

I wouldn’t. You applied, they know you’re interested, and they’ll reach out if they want to interview you. If you’re antsy to know if they’re still hiring, it’s a sign that you’re thinking about this job too much; you should mentally move on after you apply, because you gain no advantage by waiting and agonizing and wondering and letting it take up space in your mind — over a job that you might never hear back about — when the part that you control (your application) is already done and over.

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I’m getting a bunch of calls from recent grads asking to schedule job interviews

by Alison Green on July 28, 2015

A reader writes:

Local grads, plus a few random people, are cold calling my small, newish accounting office to ask for work. Some have been very demanding about speaking directly to the hiring manager, owner, partner etc, but all the callers have worded their question in roughly the same way, along the lines of “I am a recent graduate who is looking for work in accounting and am interested in a full-time position. I would like to speak the hiring manager/owner/partner about scheduling an interview.”

I have never listed a job opening. It seems like they are going down a list to tick a box. When they are told that I’m not hiring, they quickly say thank you and hang up. They do sound local and are calling from local numbers. However, the interruptions and firm (I read it as pushy if they think they have not reached who they are asking for) tone leaves me thinking even if I were hiring, no way would it be someone who reached out with these tactics.

Should I reach out to the local college to ask them if they are behind this? Or try to grill the next caller? It’s only one or two a week so far, but it used to be one a month. Is this a “thing” now?

It’s not a thing. Or at least it shouldn’t be a thing.

What is a thing, to some extent, is the existence of crappy job search advice, and some of it recommends that people use their time in this remarkably ineffective way.

But it would be interesting to (a) let the callers know it’s not a useful strategy and (b) find out if it is something like a local college recommending this (in which case you could contact the college and tell them that real, actual employers do not like it).

So yes, I would totally ask the next caller about it! I’m a huge fan of just noting when something seems really out of whack with how you’d expect someone to behave and asking what’s going on. And you can even do it with strangers, particularly when a stranger is asking you for a favor.

With the next caller who does this, why not say this: “I’m not currently hiring, but I wonder if I can ask you a question. I’ve received a lot of these calls recently, and it’s not a job search tactic that I’d recommend. Most employers aren’t going to respond positively to it. I’m so curious — are you being encouraged to do this by your college, or is there someone else who’s pushing this idea? I’d love to understand what’s behind the sudden influx of calls that I’m getting.”

Say it nicely, of course — your tone should be kind and genuinely inquisitive, not lecturing.

Try this with a handful of these callers, and then come back and let us know what they tell us.

Meanwhile, anyone who is thinking that making these calls sounds like a good idea: If you want an employer to consider interviewing you, sending in your resume and a well-crafted cover letter is a far more effective strategy than calling random strangers who know nothing about you to set up interviews for jobs that may not exist.

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napping at work, better office design, and more

by Alison Green on July 28, 2015

Over at Intuit QuickBase’s Fast Track blog today, I take a look at several interesting work-related stories in the news right now: whether napping at work can improve your productivity, the best and worst office designs, and more. You can read it here.

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should parents encourage their kids to have jobs during school?

by Alison Green on July 28, 2015

A reader writes:

Several friends and I were discussing the pros and cons of our children working while in high school or college.

As an occasional employer of new college graduates, I find young adults without any work experience (not counting internships, which aren’t always like a real job) have more difficulty adjusting to the concepts of the work environment like a schedule, actually being at work for 8 hours or more, a limited lunch time, and not taking time off whenever they want. Then there is also cell phone use and social media use on work time. I feel that working at an entry-level, minimum wage job, even for a few hours a week, provides valuable life experience and motivation to do more.

The other view presented was that teens and young adults are only young once and that school and activities take enough time. If they don’t need the money, let them have fun. One person even said she didn’t want her daughter doing menial work because she is too smart to waste her time that way. I would love to hear what you think on the matter. I believe that in this tight market for college graduates, those with no work experience are at a disadvantage.

I believe that people should get lots of work experience in college, and ideally some in high school too, for exactly the reasons you say: There’s real value in learning how to operate within an employment context, how to get along with managers and coworkers, how to advocate for yourself, what professional behavior is, and what is and isn’t reasonable to expect at work. And there’s value in simply learning how to get into the routine and rhythms of working, and building whatever mental muscle it is that makes you get up and go to work even when you’d rather stay home that day.

There’s also real value in making mistakes (especially mistakes of professionalism) when the stakes are lower and learning from them then, rather than making them in a post-college professional job.

Where I differ from you is that I do think that internships can provide some of this. In some cases, internships alone can provide what’s needed; it just depends on the internship.

But “they’re only young once so let them have fun”? I worked summers throughout high school and college, and I had plenty of fun — probably too much, in fact. High school and college students who want to have fun are going to have it, job or no job, believe me.

In fact, before my sister and I were old enough to have paying jobs, my mother required us to spend our summers volunteering. While most of my friends hung out at the pool, I volunteered at a library and a hospital, and then later spent high school summers working at a vet clinic, a grocery store, a cookie store, and a frozen yogurt store. I’m convinced it gave me a head start on understanding how the work world functioned, which my friends didn’t get until a lot later. But I still got in plenty of time goofing off and getting into trouble.

As for the “I don’t want my daughter doing menial work because she is too smart to waste her time that way” mother — well, ick. Way to teach her kid humility and appreciation for hard work. And does she think her daughter is going to graduate and go straight into a VP job?

I’d argue a parent’s job is to prepare their kid for a healthy, happy, successful adulthood — not to protect them from real life as long as possible. Unless the kid is going to be independently wealthy forever, work is part of life. If you don’t let them start experiencing that until they graduate at 22, you’re going to do them a disservice.

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interviewer asked me to describe myself in one word, I was fired after only three days, and more

by Alison Green on July 28, 2015

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

1. Interviewer asked me to describe myself in one word

Although I felt well prepared for a recent job interview for an internal position at my organization, there was one question that threw me: “Describe yourself in one word.” What is the purpose of this? Admittedly the first word that came to mind probably wasn’t appropriate to answer with. I ended up saying “balanced.” But it was really awkward to just say this, and then full stop. There doesn’t seem to be any room for further discussion when you’re only asked for one word. They didn’t follow up with why. It felt vaguely like some sort of psychoanalytic test. What if I said, “sparklehorse”?

It’s a crap question. It puts people on the spot, it’s gimmicky, and it’s unlikely to produce particularly useful information. There are so many more useful questions they could be asking instead that would get at what you’re actually like than a single word picked under pressure will (for example, “how would your coworkers describe you?”) that it’s hard to see it as anything other than bad interviewing by someone who isn’t particularly thoughtful about the questions they’re asking.

2. I was fired after only three days

Last week, I was notified by a staffing agency that I was selected for a customer service position they had with one of their clients. I started on a Monday, but on Wednesday my recruiter at the staffing firm notified me that that she received some negative feedback, and that the client had chosen to end my assignment. I had forgotten to check my email before I started making calls that day, and there was an email with some very important information regarding what we tell customers. A manager came to me and said, “Don’t look at the call lists from the day before, because they were already picked up by other agents.” My recruiter said that they told me some information to tell customers (I don’t remember that). However, my recruiter told me the other new candidates followed suit. So my recruiter told me that I was giving the clients the wrong information, and they had to backtrack and call all of these clients and notify them. My recruiter told that they got the impression that I don’t follow directions.

In the three days I was there, I made every effort to my knowledge to perform my duties the best that I could. Every time my manager notified me of something I needed to be doing differently (that I remember), I did. Other than this mistake that I made, for which I am sincerely sorry, I have put forth effort. And I don’t feel that three days is adequate in assessing someone’s ability. And I feel I should have been conferenced about this first. Is this mistake steep enough to warrant a termination? In so little time (same day)? I followed all of the directions that I knew of, and this is no excuse but I am diagnosed with ADD, though I’m currently not receiving treatment for it.

Well, they think it’s enough to warrant dismissing you, and that’s their prerogative. I don’t know if they acted rashly or not, but it does sound like there were other mistakes being made too, so it’s possible that they reasonably concluded that it wasn’t quite the right fit. And one reason some employers use staffing agencies is so that if they’re not happy with someone’s work, they can easily and quickly replace the person with someone else.

Effort is good, but ultimately employers are going to judge you on the quality and accuracy of your work. If you do think that your ADD might be playing a role, it might be worth revisiting it and seeing if that helps in future jobs. Good luck.

3. My company HR rep is in a LinkedIn employment group I joined

I recently joined my college LinkedIn employment network group. I am in the process of looking for a new job while I am still employed. As I was scrolling through the “see who else is in this network” list, I came upon an employee who works in the HR department of the company where I currently work. She is a recruiter and apparently a graduate of the same college as I. It is unclear if she is on this network as a recruiter for the company or if she is seeking an employment move away from our current company.

I am now worried about posting any questions or seeking guidance from this group. Do you think she has the ability to let the HR department know I am on this network and looking for employment? If she knows I am looking for work outside of my current company, is that grounds for them to fire me? I feel stuck as I was excited to add to my search through this site but am unwilling to risk loosing my job.

Yes, she could do that, although it’s far from a sure thing that she would. And yes, some employers do push people out if they find out they’re looking, although it would be pretty unusual for that to happen simply because you’ve joined an alumni networking group. In fact, I’d frame it to yourself that way and if anyone happens to ask you about it: it’s an alumni networking group and you hope to connect with and be helpful to other alumni. That means that you probably can’t post specific job-searching messages to the whole group, but it shouldn’t stop you from using it to connect with people more discreetly.

4. Can I ask to the change the start date for my new job a second time?

I recently asked my new job for a different start date from what was specified on the agreement letter due to a family affair. Unfortunately, I was notified a few days later that my family event was moved to the week after, due to some complications in the scheduling. It’s an important event that I should go to, but I feel uncomfortable asking my new employer to change the start date again. Should I commit to what I had already confirmed to my employer or explain the situation and ask for another change?

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to ask for a second change in start date either; it risks you looking flaky and/or uncommitted to the new job. I think you’re stuck with the new start date and shouldn’t ask to change it again.

5. I haven’t yet received the scholarship letter I was promised

I’m a graduate student in a field where receiving a stipend (not much, but enough to live on with a roommate or two) is quite common. Upon my admission to the university, I received an email from one of the professors in charge of admission telling me that they were impressed enough with my background that if I attended, the department chair would send a letter offering me a scholarship that would be given as an increase in my stipend. That letter never arrived.

I’m unsure what to do — I don’t want to spend a lot of time chasing money, especially because the two professors involved ended up on my academic committee, and I don’t want to give them a bad impression, but on the other hand, the promised scholarship was more than a 10% increase in my yearly stipend, and I could really use it! Is there a way to bring this up softly, or should I just forget about it?

You don’t need to tiptoe around this or find a way to bring it up softly. It’s fine to just be straightforward and direct. Email the professor today and say this: “I wanted to touch base with you about the letter you mentioned I’d be receiving about the increase in my stipend. I haven’t received it yet and just wanted to make sure that I didn’t somehow miss it!”

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how long can it take to hear back after a job interview?

by Alison Green on July 27, 2015

A reader writes:

There is this company that I have wanted to work for since I got into the work I do now. I finally had the experience to apply and have done so and I also was referred highly by a current employee. I was contacted fairly quickly for a phone interview and then a few days later for a face to face interview. I had my interview on July 1 and felt it went really well. I met with all managers and the lead. I was told that they may have an extended interview process of a few weeks, but they would let me know either way.

About a week later, I received an email from the HR manager following up with how the interview went and to let me know they are still in the process of conducting interviews but that I would be informed when final decisions are made. I responded with how it went and my interest in the position, as well as how I felt I was an excellent fit based on what I learned during my interview.

Almost two weeks later and three weeks after my interview, I sent the HR manager a quick email to follow up and see if there were any updates, and stressed again my interest in the position.

I still have not heard anything back from either email. I passed the tests and felt everything went well. I even turned down another job offer because I was waiting to hear about this job and the other employer needed an answer after giving me a week due to the circumstances.

My current job is becoming worse by the day and I would really like to leave as soon as possible. How long is too long? l feel like I am being strung along because I have not received any updates, even just to say they are still conducting interviews. My referral on the inside did say they are looking to hiring multiple people within the next few months. Do I just wait it out or take the next job offer I hope to get? This company is my first choice. How long can it take to hear back after an interview?

It can take a long time. Some employers move very quickly, and others move very slowly. People have been hired three hours or three months (or more) after interviewing. Moreover, hiring nearly always takes longer than employers expect it will; you should generally double or triple whatever timeline they give you. (That’s because higher priorities come up, decision-makers go out of town, scheduling conflicts make it hard to schedule interviews, budget questions need to be ironed out, and all sorts of other complications.)

It doesn’t particularly sound like this company is stringing you along. They told you clearly that they expected an “extended interview process.” They don’t really owe you updates throughout the process; they were polite enough to reach out and give you one after a week, but lots of employers don’t provide ongoing updates throughout the process. It’s polite and appreciated when they do, of course, but HR people and hiring managers usually have lots of competing priorities, and it frequently results in follow-up emails from candidates being pushed to the back burner.

I think I’m hearing in your letter that you’re assuming that since your interview went well, you have a high likelihood of being offered the job (so much so that you turned down another offer). Be careful not to assume that. Even if you did the best interview of your life, someone else still might end up being a stronger fit, for reasons that are close to impossible to predict from the outside.

If you get another offer, you can contact this first company and let them know that you have a pending offer but would prefer to work for them and that you have X days before need to get back to the company that made you the offer, and ask if they’re able to give you an expedited decision. If they won’t, that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t make you an offer eventually — but it does mean that they’re not jumping to hire you, even when they know it means they might lose you entirely, which is worth factoring into your thinking. (It could also be possible that it’s not about you at all; it could be that they’re working out a budget issue or some internal restructure, or who knows. But a good company would explain that if it were the case.)

Anyway, at that point you’d need to decide between the certain job offer and one that may or may not ever materialize. Whether or not to gamble on the latter depends on how badly you need a job, how you’d feel if you turned down the offer and the one you want more never materializes, and how much you do or don’t want the offer that you have.

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our intern is driving everyone crazy!

by Alison Green on July 27, 2015

With summer internship season in full swing, you might be thrilled with your office’s crop of interns – or you might be counting down the days until summer ends and they return to school.

If you’re finding yourself aggravated by interns who are unprofessional or don’t know work norms yet, remember that you once didn’t know these things either. After all,  part of the point of an internship is to start getting experience in how an office works, and that it’s normal for things that seem obvious to you not to be obvious to interns. That’s part of the price you pay for hiring really cheap labor; you get to teach it to them!

Here are three of the most common difficulties you might encounter with your office’s interns and what you can do in response.

1. Interns who chafe at doing low-level work. Most interns understand that they won’t be coming in at a senior level, and that they’ll be doing relatively low-level work, at least until they prove themselves. But occasionally you’ll encounter an intern who seems to expect to be doing glamorous, high-profile work and who seems put out when asked to file or do basic computer work.

What to do: Address it head-on. Say something like this to the intern: “I’ve noticed that you seem disappointed in some of the work that we’re giving you. The reality is, when you start as an intern, you haven’t proven yourself in the work world yet, so you’re given pretty low-risk assignments. But if you do a great job on this stuff – pay attention to detail, follow instructions, and care about quality – that’s how you start to build your reputation and eventually get trusted with more interesting work. Let’s plan to check in a few weeks from now and see how things are going, and we can talk then about additional projects you might be able to work on.”

2. Interns who don’t know professional norms. Interns who don’t know how to operate in an office can be disruptive – stories abound of summer interns singing loudly as they walk through the hallways, texting during meetings, interrupting colleagues, and generally not quite understanding how office life works.

What to do: Remember that one of the biggest goals of interning is to learn this kind of thing! We all had to learn it at some point, after all, and better to learn it during an internship than during a full-time job after graduation. As the intern’s manager, it falls to you to give direct feedback when you spot things like this.

In some cases, you can be very straightforward: “Please don’t text in meetings; we’re all expected to pay attention and be engaged with the conversation” or “Please don’t sing in the hallways, since it’s distracting.” In other cases, it might take more nuanced coaching: “I want to talk with you about some things I’ve noticed about your approach with me and other coworkers. I’m sure you don’t intend this, but you sometimes come across as very abrupt in your questions and requests. Saying please and thank you and acknowledging when you’re asking someone to you a favor or to do something that might be inconvenient will make people more receptive to helping you. For example, when you asked Jane to find a file for you, you sent her a message that simply said, ‘find me the Jones file.’ Most people don’t like that level of abruptness from their manager or a peer, let alone someone they’re senior to.”

3. Interns who dress unprofessionally. Whether it’s flip flops, overly short skirts, or sweatpants, interns who haven’t quite grasped the office dress code yet are a pretty routine element of most internship programs.

What to do: Again, remember that if you’re the intern’s manager, this is part of your job to address. The best thing to do is to talk with the person privately and say something like, “I want to mention something that has nothing to do with your work, but is important. In our environment, we can’t wear skirts quite that short. Generally you need to stick with knee-length.” (Try to have this conversation toward the end of the day, so that the person isn’t stuck there the whole day feeling embarrassed but unable to do anything about it.)

And if you’re willing and you sense that the person would be receptive to advice, you could say something like, “I know that it can be tricky when you’re just starting out in your career to figure out what is and isn’t appropriate for the office, especially on an intern’s salary. When I was in your shoes, here’s what I found worked…”

With this and any other tough feedback conversation, if your tone is “I think you’re great and I want to see you succeed,” your message will probably be easier for your intern to hear.

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

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employees who vent to HR but don’t want us to act on the information

by Alison Green on July 27, 2015

A reader writes:

I am the head of a small HR department. Occasionally, I run into a situation where an employee tells me about a problem and asks me to do nothing with the information.

For example, last week I was talking to someone who is upset with their boss. The employee feels intimidated about delivering bad news because of how the boss reacts. The boss gets visibly upset, becomes abrupt, and frames questions in a blaming way (“How could you let this happen?”). I believe this is a real issue. I’ve seen a version of this from the boss in a different context very occasionally. It seems like the boss might sometimes struggle with managing their own dismay, fear, and anger when they hear bad news from a direct report. This could be detrimental to the organization because people will avoid giving you bad news if you react poorly, so it might have implications beyond this one employee / supervisor relationship.

After listening carefully, acknowledging emotions, and assessing what strategies the employee has already tried, I turned the conversation to action planning. In this case, the employee told me they wanted to do nothing. I asked the employee how they were likely to feel in the future if they did nothing and the same situation recurs. The answer was ‘crappy, but I guess I’ll just suck it up.’ I suggested there might be some other options, like talking to the boss, which could take many different forms and which I could support in a number of ways – directly or indirectly.

In this case, the employee’s assessment is that the boss is who they are and will never change. I disagree with this, having seen significant and sincere changes in the boss’s behavior in response to feedback, which I told the employee. Then the employee wanted to go back over the reasons that the boss is in the wrong for what happened, adding more details. The person repeated their decision to do nothing and asked me to do nothing as well and that’s where we left it.

I did speak with the boss’s boss in general terms. Big boss has seen some emotional “leakiness” and has made some attempt to address it where directly observed, but again, it’s a different version of the behavior and a different power dynamic at play.

I want to do something to change the situation. However, I rarely directly observe the boss’s behavior and have little current first-hand information to address this with the boss myself – not without ‘outing’ the person who talked to me. Doing some kind of systematic 360 review for the supervisor has occurred to me, but that’s out of the ordinary for our organization. I suppose we could change our whole system to do it for everyone, but that’s a huge undertaking, when really what we need is a way to deliver some very specific feedback to one Individual.

Once or twice a year, I encounter something similar. There’s a skill gap in a boss (different bosses) that is bad for the organization as well as an individual employee, but I’m handcuffed by the employee’s request that nothing be done. I empathize with the employee’s anxiety about a difficult conversation – power dynamics with your boss are real and while I can support the conversation and ensure no substantive retaliation, I can’t manage every aspect of how the boss is going to react.

On the other hand, I sometimes suspect there may be an element of embracing the victim role in these cases, especially when the person seems to want to dwell at length on the wrongs that have been done to them.

How do I balance my obligation to act for the good of the organization with respect for an employee’s wishes that nothing be done about a problem?

This one is actually pretty straightforward: You need to stop letting people people use you as a venting station. That’s not what your job is. (I suppose it’s possible that your organization actually does want to supply a therapist-type role to people where they can come and vent, but (a) that would be very unusual, and (b) that wouldn’t be HR.)

Instead, I’d recommend making it clear to people when they first come to you that you can’t promise them confidentiality.

Explain that you may need to take action based on what they tell you (because your job is not to be a priest or a therapist but rather to act in the best interests of the organization), but that if that happens, you’ll absolutely ensure that they don’t face negative repercussions for it. You need to really emphasize that last part (and mean it) or no one will talk to you at all. I’d use wording like, “I can’t promise that I can keep anything you tell me confidential, because sometimes people share things with me that my job requires me to act on, but I will promise you that if it’s something I do need to act on, I will bend over backward to ensure that your manager won’t penalize you for having shared it with me, because I know that’s necessary in order for people to continue being comfortable raising issues.”

People giving you information that you have to agree not to act on doesn’t get you anywhere good. You’re either stuck not sharing something that you really should be acting on it or — more commonly — you’re stuck betraying a confidence (which will eventually result in no one trusting you).

Short-circuit that whole thing and be clear up-front with people that this isn’t therapy or a confession booth; it’s them approaching a representative of the company with a work concern. Then it’s up to them whether they want to do that or not.

You might worry that this will mean that you won’t hear about important things you’d want to know about. But that’s unlikely to happen (and again, if so, you’d be back to that choice of betraying an employee’s confidence or not acting on the information). As long as you show that you mean it when you say you’ll protect people from retaliation for talking to you, you’re still likely to hear about just as many important things as you hear about now (if not more so, because people will respect you for being straightforward about the dynamics in play). And sure, you’ll probably get far less of the unproductive “I don’t want you to do anything; just listen to me” venting, but that’s good; that’s not what you’re there for anyway.

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