June 2010

power will lead you to eat more cookies and chew with your mouth open

This is pretty fascinating: “A particularly amusing study — undertaken by Keltner, Gruenfeld, and another colleague — shows that giving people just a little more power than their colleagues causes them to eat more cookies, chew with their mouths open, and leave more crumbs.” — Bob Sutton, writing for Business Week More info from the […]

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can I run my business with a 4-day work week?

A reader writes: As a future employer (I hope!), I have an idea that I’ve been kicking around in my mind for awhile. I feel that a five-day work week is stifling and that people in general would be happier with a four-day work week at approximately 32 hours a week. However, in my scenario, this […]

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does “we’ll keep your resume on file” really mean anything?

A reader writes: In most of the jobs where I’ve been interviewed and rejected the rejection letter says something like “We will hold on to your resume and contact you if we ever have any jobs that meets your needs” or something like this. Is this just being polite or is it possible that some time down the road they […]

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turning down an employer’s offer a second time

A reader writes: Here’s a situation I never would have seen coming in this market. I received an offer for a job about 1.5 years ago. Ultimately I rejected it to stay at my current employer because the compensation package as a whole was just not quite enough to allow me to pull the trigger. […]

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my coworker relies too much on my help

A reader writes: I have a friend at work, Anne, who joined our office a couple of years ago. She is frequently asking for my help – most of the time, it’s to explain procedures or policies (not to actually do her work for her). She seems to be understanding most of it, but she […]

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it’s not illegal to give a bad job reference

A reader writes: My wife and I go back and forth about this one all the time. A former secretary of hers was moving and searching for a new job in her new city. The problem was that this person wasn’t the most reliable employee. She was always late, took days off without calling and […]

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don’t stalk my voicemail

In a comment on a recent post about employers who don’t return phone calls, one commenter suggested not leaving voicemail when you call and an employer doesn’t answer, so that you can then call repeatedly, until you get a live person. Shawn took issue with this, responding: it isn’t uncommon for me to be at […]

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how can I get a job with a leadership role?

A reader writes: I’ve been working since I was in high school –  retail gigs, etc were the norm for me until I went to jr. college and started temping in offices. It grew a bit from there, as I learned all the new programs, and because I was a fast keyer, was cast in roles […]

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