August 2011

things I wish I hadn’t seen on your resume or in your cover letter

It’s true that your resume should market your accomplishments, but declaring that you are a “visionary leader” — as I read on two candidates’ resumes recently — is going a bit far. (Besides, if you’re really a visionary leader, I’ll see it in your accomplishments, right?) And “I have a very charismatic personality” is a […]

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how can I make my boss stop talking to me?

A reader writes: My boss and I work together in a small office. We get on well and have a great relationship, and she is easily a contender for the best boss I have ever had. The problem is that she is VERY chatty, usually about mundane personal things but also often about unimportant work-related […]

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manager wants to take back my raise

A reader writes: My boss gave me a raise to do the schedule when the manager of our call center quit. Now that he has hired a manager, he wants to take the raise back. I told him it wasn’t fair and he said he would talk to me about it later. That was 2 […]

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top 10 mistakes interviewers make when hiring

Hiring someone on to your team is one of the most important decisions that managers make, but it’s easy to flub it if you aren’t trained and prepared for interviewing. Here are the 10 most common mistakes that job interviewers make in the interview process. 1. Not being clear on what’s really needed to excel […]

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a quick lesson in not stealing

I spent several hours this evening tracking down and emailing sites that have reprinted my content without permission, so please indulge me in a brief public service announcement: You cannot take someone’s content off the web and put it on your own site without their permission. It is not yours to use as you wish; […]

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terse answer Thursday: 7 short answers to 7 short questions

It’s terse answer Thursday — seven short answers to seven short questions. Here we go… My boss forgot a major detail of my personal life I have worked with my boss, Nancy, for 4.5 years. We are a two-person department in a 24-person bureau. We work extremely closely and well together. We frequently discuss what’s […]

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what do you like about your job, part 2

I loved reading the responses to the “what do you like about your job?” post. We traffic so frequently in bad workplace situations here that reading about positive elements was a nice change of pace. I have a step 2 to propose:  Why not tell whoever’s responsible for the thing you cited how much you appreciate […]

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