Ask a Manager

This is a transcript of the Ask a Manager podcast episode “I Don’t Want to Become the Office Secretary.”

Alison: Hi, and welcome to the show!

Today I have lots of interesting questions to answer. The first question today is from someone who’s worried that she’s inadvertently becoming the office secretary, even though that’s not her job.

Caller 1: Hello. I work at a large educational institution, and have a job that directly serves and faces students. I love my job! When I started, we had a part-time front office person who basically managed the office: ordered all the supplies, handled walk-in traffic, etc. We had an additional agreement with most of our office staff about divvying up the more menial tasks so that one person was never saddled with all of the dishes, cleaning the conference room, vacuuming, etc.

Our front office person left in early April of this year, so I have been covering this position for almost a year now now. I normally wouldn’t mind, but it’s starting to affect how I see my job. I took this position thinking it was be a step up (higher pay, more responsibility) from a previous front office position I had, and specifically took it because I knew I wouldn’t be “the” front office person (aka secretary).

However, dynamics have changed in the absence of a front office person. Menial things are starting to take up my time more and more. Coworkers make comments and requests of me now that are much different, like asking me if I can fix the vacuum … “You would be so proud of me, I fixed a copy jam by myself!”… “Our water tower seems gross, can we get a new one?”

I wouldn’t mind, but it’s starting to affect my confidence at work. I’m all for helping out around the office, but I’m getting sort of bitter that I’m now the “go to” for menial tasks and not the “go to” like before for more technical tasks or questions. Instead of being asked to make coffee, our main supervisor will now cry into his mug like a baby until I notice and ask if he’d like coffee. Folks who I serve will motion for a pen instead of asking me for a pen. I know these things seem small, but it’s starting to feel a little bit de-humanizing and that I’m only there to be a secretary, and not valued for the more technical skills and background I was hired for.

I’ve been trying to chalk it up as a temporary situation, but my boss seems to think we don’t need to rehire that position because it’s just an issue with office coverage (something I’ve tried to bring up multiple times). Again, I’m all for pitching in around the office, but what options do I have here to get back into loving my job? Should I suck it up and grin and bear it?

Alison: Ooooh, do not suck it up and grin and bear it, because if you do, it’s very likely that this will become your job and it’ll get so ingrained that you won’t be able to change it after a while. In fact, I am worried that may have already starting to happen because you’ve been a good sport about it for so long. The fact that people are motioning to you to get them pens, rather than getting their own pens, for example – worries me. That’s a small thing, but you’d never do that to a peer who wasn’t in charge of pens. They think you’re in charge of pens now. So yeah, you’ve got to short-circuit this and get it changed.

Now, you said that you’ve brought up with your boss multiple times that the front office needs more coverage and he doesn’t think he needs to re-hire for it. I think instead you should tackle it from a different angle. I mean, it’s up to him if he rehires or not, but you want to step out of the role you had stepped into temporarily to help out. I would sit down with him and say something like, “I want to talk to you about my role here. I was happy to help out with front office coverage when Jane left, but I’ve been doing it for months now, and I’m concerned that doing it any longer will mean a permanent shift in my role. I actually took this job in part because it wasn’t the front office person, and it’s important to me to be able to focus on the technical skills that I was hired to use, and which are the reason that I took this job.” Make sure that you use that language – the stuff about “the reason I took this job” – because that’s emphasizing that the job is evolving into something you didn’t and wouldn’t have signed on for. And then say, “You know, I stepped up to help cover that work because I wanted to be helpful and figured it would be temporary, but admin work is starting to take up more and more of my time, and I’m seeing people just assume that it’s my job – doing things like asking me to fix the vacuum or handle the water tower or bring them pens or coffee. And again, I was willing to help out in a pinch, but at this point I’m concerned that it’s really overshadowing the work I came on board to do, and I want return to focusing on that. If you don’t plan to rehire for the front office work for a while, can someone else take over most of this coverage so I can get back to the work that I came on to do?” So something like that. The thing that you’re pushing is not you need to hire to fill that role, it’s that you’re going to step back from doing so much of it. Again, you volunteered, so just de-volunteer yourself. Un-volunteer, whatever the word might be.

Also, if there is a mix of genders in your office, if there are some guys in there too, I would also say, “I don’t want to fall into a trap where people are turning to me to do this work because I’m a woman. It’s important to me to have your support in making sure that doesn’t happen.” Because that is very much a thing that does happen – women step up to fill this kind of vacuum far more often than men do, and you shouldn’t get pulled into that. And sometimes when you’re talking to your boss, it can help to make that very explicit, especially – well, I was going to say especially as a man, but actually it’s helpful to point it out to women too. Sometimes people just don’t realize that that gender dynamic is playing out, and when you name it, they realize “oh, okay” and they’re more willing to help you out with that.

Also! To some extent, it sounds like you may be sort of … enabling your coworkers’ dependence on you for the admin work. You know, if someone is whining about not having coffee, even if it’s your boss, you absolutely, 100% do not need to volunteer to solve that for him. It’s not your job – but there’s a danger that people will start thinking that it’s your job if you keep doing it. So don’t do it, not at all, not even one more time. He can get his own coffee or, if he doesn’t want to, he can hire someone who has that in their job description. But it’s not your responsibility. Stop volunteering to get him coffee.

The same thing with the pens and the vacuum, and so forth. If someone motions to you to get them a pen, from now on you have no idea what they’re gesturing for. Give them a weird look and if necessary, you can say, “The pens are in the supply closet” or wherever they are. Or give them the same response they’d get if they did that to the dude in your office who has no idea where the pens are.

And along the same lines, if someone asks you to fix the vacuum, your answer can just be, “I don’t know how to do that any more than you do and I’m right in the middle of something, sorry I can’t help.” If someone asks you to do other things that aren’t your job, same thing – you know, “Sorry, I don’t have time to do that.”

I know you want to be helpful, but you are going to train people to think you’re the admin, and you’re not. If you want to do the job you were hired to do, you’re going to have to put up boundaries and focus on doing that – don’t worry about fixing a problem that is not yours to fix. It’s your boss’s problem to fix, and if he wants to fix it, he will. Look around at all your coworkers who have decided it’s not their problem – and take your cues from them. I know that you want to be helpful, and that’s a lovely trait. But by making it your problem to solve, you’re making it easy for your boss to avoid doing anything else about it.

So from here on forward, you are not the front office coverage anymore.

Caller 2: Hi Alison. I work for a very conservative nonprofit org and we are currently hiring for a high-level position. We have narrowed it down to two candidates. There was one candidate who clearly was more qualified and ready for the job. So we were ready to make an offer and I did some internet sleuthing and noticed that on his Instagram page he is following some very inappropriate accounts. Not to get too detailed here, but the accounts are I guess what you would call Instagram models, but barely clothed and latex type clothing often showing much skin. He follows about 100 of these different accounts. I don’t know if that’s a reason we would not hire him, based on that one piece of information alone. So would love to hear any advice you have. Thank you.

Alison: You know, this is tricky. In general, I’m a big believer that people get to have a private life and it shouldn’t really have any bearing on whether you hire them. But Instagram isn’t exactly a private life; it’s public enough that you can see what he’s doing there, and he’s knowingly putting out a certain image, or if not knowingly, then he’s certainly maybe displaying the type of savvy that you would want for a high level position at a conservative organization. Now, if this were a lower-level position, I’d say eh, not really your business. But you said the job is a high-level job, and you said the organization is a very conservative one. So I don’t think it’s entirely off-base to think about this. It’s hard to say exactly how you should navigate this without knowing more information about the job you’re considering him for. There are some jobs where it shouldn’t matter, and others where it would, especially if it’s high-profile. I think what I’d ask is, if your staff or your donors saw what you saw, would that cause issues? Like for example, if he would be in a position where he’s going to be managing women, or evaluating women, is that going to give those women some pause about how he will treat them and if he’s someone they feel comfortable with? If, for example, he’s working in HR where he’s going to handle sexual harassment complaints, are women going to feel comfortable bring harassment complaints to him? And I don’t know. I know that sounds like I’m sort of pre-judging the answer. But I don’t know. I think it really depends on your context and the job you’re hiring him for. And also, if you’re working for like a gender equality group, or an anti-porn group and he’d be a spokesperson, is that going to look off? I think you’ve got to think about the specific job he’ll be doing and how he’d be interacting with people on your staff and decide from there if it would affect his ability to do his job with credibility. And again, I’m not pre-judging it. I feel like I’m sort of leading you to the answer of yes, it would be a problem, but I genuinely don’t know. It really does depend on those details.

One other possibility is, if you decide it’s something you’re concerned about, you could try raising it with the candidate. You could say something like, “We think you’re a strong candidate, but I’ve got to be honest – we’re a conservative organization and this a high-level position, and this is a thing we noticed and are wondering how it would play with our staff and with donors.” And then see what he says. Who knows, maybe you’ll hear it’s an abandoned account and it’s been taken over by spammers, which is a thing that can happen. Maybe you’ll get some other reaction that will make you think, oh, okay, this isn’t an issue going forward. And there’s certainly a school of thought that if you’re going to rule someone out on something like this, it’s better to give them the chance to respond to it. You don’t have to, but if he’s an otherwise great candidate who you were excited about, it could be worth it.

Caller 3: Hi. I’ve been working for a small nonprofit for a few years. I’ve recently been given a new position. It’s a sideways move rather than a promotion, but it involves managing a small team, whereas before I didn’t have direct reports. The person who used to head up this team just left, and management decided to restructure rather than recruit directly to replace them. However, I’ve heard from others that the person who was second-in-command on the old team was very disappointed on hearing this news. I think he expected for his boss’s position to be open and that he could throw his hat in the ring. For what it’s worth, he is great at his job but younger and a little less experienced than me. I get on well with him, and I think he likes and respects me. But we’ve not worked closely together before, and he will now be my direct report. Any advice on how to deal with this? Should I acknowledge the elephant in the room and get that out of the way or just skip over it? Thanks!

Alison: I would definitely talk with him, but I probably wouldn’t start out with a really blunt “hey, I realize that you may have wanted the opportunity to apply for this job.” I think I’d ease more into talking about his work and how you think he’s great at his job, and kind of see how that conversation goes. Tell him you’re impressed by his work, you’re excited to work with him, and then, depending on how that’s going, you could say something like, “I know you were second-in-command on the old team and might have been interested in this job. So I want to tell you that I’m committed to working with you to give you more responsibility if you want it and development opportunities and helping you get really well positioned for that kind of promotion if it’s something you’re interested in in the future.” So it’s not, “hey, you must be feeling weird” – because that’s pretty likely to make him feel weird, if he’s not already. It’s more “I recognize that you’re great at what you do and that you might have ambitions to move up, and I’m all about helping you do that if you want me to.”

The thing is, in his position, he might be worried about what this restructure means for him, and whether it’ll be in some ways a demotion for him – especially if he was second-in-command in the old structure but isn’t now – and he might be wondering, do you recognize what he brings to the table or is he going to be sort of unrecognized and unappreciated? So one of the best things you can do early on is to make it clear that you do recognize what he brings, and that you value and appreciate him. And that’s likely to help the situation.

Now, there are sometimes situations where the person who was passed over is resentful and handles it badly. But it doesn’t sound like you’re seeing signs of that in this case so far. If that happens, of course you would have to deal with that head-on. But if he’s just a bit disappointed –, that’s okay. I mean, it makes sense that he might be, and we can understand that. As long as you’re really underscoring to him that you appreciate the value that he brings and that you’re not overlooking that, it’s pretty likely that that will give you a good foundation to start building a working relationship with him.

Okay, the next question we have is from someone whose boss sort of traps her in her office and rambles at her and she can’t escape.

Caller 4: I work overnights and by the time I come in, my boss’ schedule is to just finish up his daily tasks and head out. Sometimes this takes a while, but he tends to make it even longer by coming into our room (it’s connected to his office) and he’ll ramble on and on about something, usually political, of which I have a strong opposing view. I can’t argue too much because he determines whether or not I have the job and because that will only extend his stay in the office since he’s a very “my way or the highway” type and that makes him have to take more time to finish his daily work. I’ve tried turning my back to him while still giving little “uh-huhs” and other minor engagements to show I’m not being rude and ignoring him. But what can I do about my rambling, ranting boss?

Alison: That’s annoying. You’re sort of his captive audience because of the power dynamics, and he’s using you as kind of a captive outlet for his ranting. A long time ago, I worked with someone who would always do this at the end of the day too, and it was not fun.

Often with this kind of thing, where you don’t feel like you can just directly say “hey, stop talking to me,” the best thing to do is to have almost physical barriers to the person doing it to you. So for example, if you have to make phone calls for your job, I wonder if you could save some of them for the time of day when he tends to come by your office on his way out. If you’re on the phone when he comes by, it’s going to head off him rambling at you. You could also be just about to get up and leave your desk to get coffee or to go to the bathroom. Obviously you don’t want to stand up and leave every time your boss enters your office, but you can do it some of the time. And you can also do it after he has rambled for five minutes – you can say “I’m dying of thirst, I’ll be right back” and sometimes that’s going to be enough to break up whatever monologue he’s delivering. You can also just say, “Sorry, I’ve got to get this report done so I better not get too involved in this conversation.” What I would do is a mix of these – different ones on different days, and also accept you’ll have to sometime you’ll have to just let him ramble too. But you can probably get it down to just being stuck listening to the rambling maybe once or twice a week rather than every day.

Now, if you had a different type of boss, in that case I might say, no, just be direct about it – because with some types of bosses, you could say, “Hey, I’ve noticed I get pulled into chatting with you when you’re leaving every day, and I love talking to you, but I’m realizing it’s making me get behind on my work on those days and then I have to rush to catch up so I’m going to pull back on our 5 p.m. chats.” But you said this guy is very “my way or the highway,” so with him, I’m guessing that maybe more subtle methods of avoidance might work better, or at least they might feel more comfortable to you to use them.

Caller 5: I’m a recent college grad (well, if you count two years out of school recent) and I can’t seem to land a full-time job. To remedy my situation while I’m working two part-time jobs, I’ve sent in applications (probably over 150) to full-time jobs across the country for the last two years. I consistently get good feedback on my performance at work and my application materials, but I’m really worried I’m doing something wrong navigating the work world and no one is telling me. What can I do differently to land a full-time job?

Alison: So it’s really hard to say with confidence what’s not working without seeing your resume and your cover letter and seeing you interview. But what I can tell you is that the vast, vast majority of resumes and cover letters that I see are not good. So the first thing that I always suspect when I hear someone saying something like this is that your resume and cover letter aren’t as strong as they could be, and are holding you back – because just statistically speaking, that’s the case like 95% of the time. And what is interesting is that I will often hear from people who tell me, oh I know that my resume and cover letter are fine, they’re definitely not the problem, I’ve even gotten feedback on them from other people, I’ve followed all your advice on writing them. And the sometimes I say, well, just to make sure, can I take a look at them? And they send them over, and much of the time, even though they were very sure their materials were good … they’re not that good. Even when people tell me that they’ve followed my advice on writing them, when I actually take a look at them, they haven’t really followed that advice. So the first thing I would look at is that. If you go to my website, askamanager.org, there’s a lot of totally free information on how to write a good cover letter and how to write a good resume. And there are samples of both that you can look at. The big thing with resumes that most people don’t do, is that you really, really don’t want it to just read like a job description. You don’t want it to be a list of activities that you were responsible for. Because, as the hiring manager, just knowing that you were assigned task X doesn’t tell me anything about how well you did task X. And that’s the piece that I care about, and that’s t he thing that will make you stand out from other candidates. So as much as you can, you want to talk on your resume not about what work that you were assigned or what work you were in charge of, but about what outcomes you got by doing it. What were the results you got? And that is going to make a much stronger resume.

And then with your cover letter, you want it to have personality and to be engaging. The most important thing is that you don’t want it to just summarize the contents of your resume. That’s what most people do with their cover letters – you know, “dear hiring manager, I’m applying for your analyst position, I have 10 years of experiences doing blah blah and five years of experience doing blah” – that’s not a good cover letter. That’s just giving me the same info from your resume a second time. Your cover letter is to talk about why you’d excel at the job without just regurgitating what’s on your resume. So again, go to askamanager.org, go the resume section and the cover letter section in the archives, and you’re going to find loads of information about how to do this.

Now, you didn’t say if you’re getting interviews or not. If you’re not, then it’s a really safe bet that your resume and cover letter are the things to focus on – or I guess it could be also that you’re applying for jobs you’re just not qualified for, of course, but I’m assuming you’re targeting jobs that you’re a good match with. But if you ARE getting a decent number of interviews, then it might be that your materials aren’t the issue at all. In that case, I would be looking at your interview skills instead. Do you get really nervous in interview? Do you prepare ahead of time? How much time do you spend preparing? (And actually, I’m going to send you back to my website, because I have a free guide to preparing for an interview that you can download, and it’ll walk you through what to do step by step.) Also, do you go with specific examples of work situations you’ve encountered in the past, and you are able to speak with specificity about times in the past when you’ve done the sorts of things they’re hiring someone to do, or something similar to it?

Those are things I’d be looking at. And also, if you have gotten some interviews and if you had an interviewer who you particularly seemed to click with, or who just seemed like a nice and helpful person, you might contact that person and ask if they would be willing to give you any feedback. Tell them you’re having trouble getting hired and that as a new grad, you’d be grateful for any guidance or feedback they’re able to give you. Some people will say no, because they’re busy, so don’t be discouraged if that happens, but some people will say yes, so it’s worth trying.

The other thing you can do – I don’t always recommend informational interviews because I think they can often be a waste of everyone’s time, but in your case, it might helpful to set up a few informational interviews with people in your field and see if you can get feedback on what you need to do to make yourself a stronger candidate. For people who don’t know, the idea with informational interviews is that they’re not a job interview – they’re a conversation to help you get kind of the insider scoop on the field you want to work in from people who are already working in it. So you don’t go into it hoping it’ll turn into a job offer or even a lead on a job – because people can tell when you’re doing that and it’s annoying. Be really clear up-front that you’re struggling to find the type of job you want and that you’re looking for advice on what you can do to be a stronger candidate. And I would really make sure to say that you’re a recent grad because a lot of people like helping recent grads, especially if you’re humble about it.

So that’s a lot to think about! But that is where I would start, and I hope that’s helpful.

That’s our show for today! If you’d like to hear your question answered on a future episode, you can record it on the show voicemail at (855) 426-WORK. That’s 855-426-9675. Or, if you have a longer question where you’d want to actually come on the show and talk with me, email your question to podcast@askamanager.org.

You can see past podcast transcripts here.