Ask a Manager

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

1. Is something sketchy about this interview invitation?

I recently received an invitation to interview with an direct marking company (based outside of the U.S.) who just opened their first U.S. location. They are hiring for all sorts of positions, but I only applied for one that suited my interests and career goals the most.

There’s a portion in their interview invitation email went something like this: “I’m sure you’ve applied for a lot of roles and want some information on what you actually applied for.”

I don’t have a good feeling about this; it seems like they did not even acknowledge what I applied for and could possibly try to sell me on a position that I am not interested in. Furthermore, they go on to note that they have included links to more information about their company, but the links are to articles about “Signs You Were Born to be an Entrepreneur” or “Ten Habits of Highly Successful People,” both articles that they have published themselves on their own website. At most, those articles give me an idea of their company culture.

Should I even bother with an interview? Or should I at least email them back and ask for them to clarify what position I’ll be interviewing for? If I decide to interview, I don’t want to go into it blind.

Are you sure that it’s a legit job and not a multi-level marketing scheme? The articles they linked you to are screaming MLM to me.

Plus, telling you “you probably want some information on what you actually applied for” and then pointedly not giving you that information screams MLM too.

In any case, though, it’s absolutely reasonable to email them back and ask for clarification about the position. Their response (or non-response) to that should tell you all you need to know. Reputable companies don’t ask to interview people and then refuse to tell them what it’s for.

2. Can I unfriend my boss on Facebook?

I am a few years out of school, working in one of my first real jobs. I currently work in a large organization with lots of young people. There’s a friendly environment and people socialize outside of work. I am happy to get a drink with my direct colleagues once in a while, so that’s not an issue for me.

The thing is that right from the start, people have been Facebook-adding each other. I was nervous starting this job, didn’t want to seem unfriendly, and accepted most of them, including one from my manager. In fact, our entire team are Facebook friends. I feel uncomfortable now and post less (sometimes changing privacy settings to leave them off). I don’t mind about my colleagues, but my manager and I have clashed in the past, and they have proven they bring unrelated complaints and events into work feedback (like extrapolating a casual comment at lunch into a concern about an aspect of my work).

I would really like to just unfriend them, but feel like making a distinction between them and my coworkers might seem antagonizing. Any advice?

Is your manager a heavy Facebook user who’s likely to notice or care about an unfriending? If so, you risk it seeming like an adversarial act (which is ridiculous; it shouldn’t seem that way but in reality it could). If that’s the case, the easier route would be to just set your privacy settings so that they don’t see anything you post.

But you’d certainly be entitled to unfriend her entirely if you prefer. Most people aren’t rude enough to demand to know why you unfriended them, but if that happens, you can just say, “I realized I was letting the boundaries between work and personal life blur too much so I’ve tried to pull back.”

3. My coworker won’t stop drumming on his desk

A few months ago, someone moved into the cubicle next to me. He listens to music without his headphones (uncommon in our office) and drums on his desk what feels like all day but is probably more like 50% of the time. Not just little nervous taps but full-on beats, drum rolls, etc.

The music I think I could get used to if I really had to, but the drumming is driving me up the wall. I have a really hard time focusing with background noise generally, and my own music (in my headphones) doesn’t cover up the intermittent drumming.

I want to approach him about it and ask politely if he’d stop or cut back on drumming, but I’m not sure if (a) I missed my window since he’s been there for months while I try to work up the courage and (b) how exactly to phrase my request in the most polite and effective way.

My actual ideal scenario is that he use his headphones and stop drumming, but I’m not sure if that’s too much to ask, and I could settle for just the drumming going away. Can I ask him to stop? If so… how?

You haven’t missed the window, and I think you can ask him for both. Say this: “Hey Bob, I’ve been trying to block it out, but your music and drumming your fingers is making it pretty hard for me to focus. Would you mind using headphones like most people do here when they want to listen to music and not drumming on your desk so much?”

This is an entirely reasonable request and if he’s a normal person he’ll take it in stride. He might be annoyed about having to use headphones, but if you point out that that’s the norm in your office, he’s not going to have much ground to stand on in refusing.

4. Should I take my resume out of chronological order?

I’m finishing up a graduate program and currently searching for jobs. As part of our program, we had some professional development courses that provided examples and guidelines for cover letters and resumes, and on top of that, before I went back to school, I had some limited experience reviewing applications to select interns for my old company. I know what I like to see in a resume and what bothered me, and I have always had a resume that has separate education and job experience sections, in chronological order. I’ve had quite a few internships, and to keep my experience on one page, I’ve omitted the jobs that aren’t relevant to the positions I apply to and given the more pertinent/impressive opportunities more bullet point details.

A friend’s company is actively looking for referrals and so he has agreed to pass on my resume to the hiring managers. During undergrad, I had one really great sounding internship at a high profile organization that ostensibly would foster the kind of knowledge this company wants, followed by a job at a well known NGO, followed by a few small business/not so relevant internships during the past two years at school. His advice was to put the two more prestigious job descriptions at the top, regardless of timeline. Is this good advice? The high profile organization was seven years ago, and despite how great it sounds on paper, I don’t feel like I really gained a lot of hands-on professional experience during my summer there. Is my personal distaste for functional resumes clouding my judgement and burying an attention-grabbing position that should be placed more prominently?

He’s not suggesting you do a functional resume, which I’d agree you should stay far away from. (More on that here.)

He’s just suggesting you move your most relevant experience to the top so that it’s not buried. That makes sense in some situations. Of course, you wouldn’t want to have your work experience section jumping all around in no chronological order. Instead, what you’d do is to put a Relevant Experience section at the top, put the most impressive/relevant jobs in it, and then have an Other Experience section for everything else.

That said … does it makes sense in your particular situation? It’s hard to say for sure without seeing your resume, but if he’s suggesting it only because the organization is impressive but you don’t feel like your work there was particularly substantive — and especially if it was just one summer seven years ago — I think that would be giving it weird emphasis that isn’t warranted.

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

1. My mom wants me to help with her business for free

Before I moved out, I often got into arguments with my parents over money. I didn’t mind taking out the trash, doing the laundry, cooking, etc. I had no issue with these tasks. However, my parents would often ask me to do things for free that a professional would normally do. These tasks took huge chunks out of time out of searching for a job, and were not compensated. I was told I was being “greedy” when I brought up payment for things like selling things on eBay or painting a mural for them. When I moved out, I was then busy enough that I could claim time to not do these time consuming, often expensive tasks.

However, I’m recently on break due to summer, and my mother now wants me to help with a business where I will be designing things to be sold. She wants me to do the research on the patents, file them in her name, make the prototypes, etc. but has never once talked about payment for all of these things. I know things are slow, but I really don’t have the time to devote to this, especially if I won’t be compensated whether or not this ever gets off the ground. She seems to think this will take off by the end of summer, but I know these things take time and I don’t want to take time off of school and work for this. Am I being selfish and paranoid, or should I set up some parameters before I devote any more time to this?

Nope, it’s reasonable to say that you can’t take time away from work and school for this. (Obviously, this is heavily cultural though; there are cultures that would absolutely expect you to do it.)

I do think that when you’re living in your parents’ house, you should try to be as accommodating as possible to requests for help, even if it’s the sort of thing that you described (i.e., beyond normal chores). It’s part of acknowledging how much your parents have put into supporting you over the years. But it’s not reasonable for them to expect that you’ll do professional-type work for them if it would come at the expense of your own job or school.

That said, I think you’re muddying the waters by asking to be paid. It’s hard to say you don’t have time for this and then say you’ll find the time if they pay you. I’d stick with explaining that work and school aren’t leaving you with enough time to take on anything additional, and perhaps offering to help with a less time-consuming element if you can (like “I can do X and Y, but I’d need to limit it to that”).

2. I got chastised for not letting a company know I accepted a different job offer

I recently applied to several admin jobs and was offered a position a couple days ago, which I accepted.

One of the companies I applied to just phoned me to invite me to an interview. I thanked her for the invite but said I would like to withdraw my application as I have accepted another position elsewhere. The woman then questioned when I had found out this news and said I should have notified her. She seemed a bit annoyed.

Should I have notified her? And do I now need to go back and inform all the other companies I applied to say that I’ve found a job so they need to withdraw my application? I applied to a lot of places, so it would seem like a bit of a waste of my time especially if they were not planning to shortlist me anyway.

This situation has actually happened to me in the past, and the person on the other end of the phone just said fair enough and best of luck in your new job. So I’m a bit confused, what is the right thing to do in this situation?

Nope, don’t let one rude person throw you off. It’s absolutely not expected that you’ll notify every company you’ve applied to when you accept an offer somewhere else. If you’ve been interviewing with someone and are still in their process, it’s considerate to let them know so that they’re not still factoring you into their candidate pool. But even if you didn’t, they shouldn’t chew you out for that. And places that you’ve only submitted an application to? No one expects that. (I’d be interested in knowing how vigilant that person is about letting applicants know when they’ve been rejected…)

3. Should I chase down the stuff my new boss said I’d get before my start date?

I’m starting a new job in three weeks — I’m currently halfway through my six-week notice period. When I was offered the job, I was told to expect a hard copy of my contract in the post, look forward to being invited to for team drinks prior to my start date, and keep the Sunday before I start free for a company event (we’re an events agency, so this isn’t unreasonable).

So far, I’ve received none of these. I contacted my new boss when I handed in my notice to confirm my start date and heard nothing, so chased a week later and got back a “Yes, yes, all good, see you on your start date.” I’m cautious about chasing the other things again as I don’t want to be pushy, but I’m starting to feel cut off from a job I was originally really excited about. What would you do?

Don’t worry about following up on the drinks; it they forget about that, it’s no big deal. Do you have an electronic version of your contract? If so, that’s probably enough, but if you don’t, it’s reasonable to follow up on that. If you have a contact in HR, I’d try that person rather than your new boss, but if you don’t, I’d email the boss and say, “Sorry to bug you! I wanted to check on two things: I know you’d said to expect a hard copy of my contract in the mail, and I wanted to check on whether it’s gone out since I haven’t received it. Also, I’m holding (date) for (event) but don’t have details on it yet. Glad to attend if someone will send me info! Otherwise, I’ll just happily plan to see you on (start date).”

4. Asking for a new title in lieu of a raise

I’ve been at my current job for a year and love it. I’ve struggled with learning the business, which is completely new, and received an overall “average” review from my boss (the president of the company) last year. Nothing in the review was unexpected. We have goals set in place for the next year that are perfectly achievable, and I am confident that he is happy that I’m here and I have a good future at the company.

This is a small company and I’m the only full-time recruiter. There is one part-time recruiter – the owner’s husband – who doesn’t report to me.

My boss mentioned that we’ll have a follow-up meeting soon to discuss a raise based on my review. The thing is, money isn’t that important to me. I’m very well paid for my position, and am happy with the current salary. I’d much rather receive a new title, either Senior Recruiter, Lead Recruiter, or Recruiting Manager – the person who formerly held my position was the Recruiting Manager. Would it be unrealistic to ask for a new title in lieu of a raise this year? If not, how would I phrase it?

Nope, that’s totally fine to do! Small companies are often delighted to save money on raises if a title bump will do instead. Obviously, you don’t want to ask for a title that’s wildly out of whack with what you do, or that would cause weird inequities elsewhere in the company structure (like a change that would make you a VP when other people doing work similar to your level are all associates), but in this case it sounds pretty reasonable — especially since there’s precedent for the title in your role. That said, any reason not to ask for both?

5. My part-time job has turned full-time against my will

I started a new job about two months ago, and I was hired as a part-time employee, with an agreed upon four days, approximately 35-hour week. As of last month or so, I’ve been scheduled for approximately 45 hours a week, which is clearly overtime. I’m getting overtime pay, which is fine but I never agreed to the increase in hours. I’m still considered part-time, and as far as I know this company doesn’t have HR or offer benefits (which I’m also fine with) so a full-time promotion would do very little. I’ve hinted to my boss that I was expecting more time off than I’m currently getting, but that went unanswered. What I really want is my part-time schedule back. How do I get that now that the overtime has become the norm?

Stop hinting! Be direct. Say this: “When I was hired on, it was a part-time job — 35 hours a week. I was happy to help out with extra hours this past month, but I can’t continue that schedule permanently. Can we get me back to the part-time schedule we initially set?”

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

1. I can hear my coworkers getting chewed out

I’m about three months in at my first job out of college. I’ve had a hard time adjusting to certain things, though reading your blog has helped immensely. The open office concept is the worst. Those of us in the cube farm can hear what goes on in the offices and vice versa. This is distracting but not a huge deal.

However, hearing everyone receiving negative feedback out in the open has me very concerned. Recently a manager blasted a coworker for not finishing a project. He didn’t close her office door. I’ve heard another of my coworkers called an idiot and get chewed out (very loudly) by another manager. Even in my previous retail job, feedback was given quietly and calmly, with no yelling or spectators. Is this normal? I haven’t been the subject of a rant yet, but it concerns me. Is there anything I can do as a relative newbie? (Background info, my manager is higher on the org chart and I’ve never heard him behave this way, but I get projects from the other managers.)

No, it’s not normal. It’s true that in open offices, you’re going to overhear people getting feedback — but those should be calm, constructive conversations, and anything really serious should happen in private.

Yelling, chewing people out, and calling someone an idiot are things that aren’t generally okay at work; if they feel like the norm in your office, there’s some real dysfunction going on. Managers who do those things typically do them because they have no idea how to manage effectively; good managers don’t need to treat people that way because if there are problems in someone’s work, they have much more effective tools to deal with it.

If anyone does end up treating you that way, I have some advice here about how to deal with it — but the more important thing is not to let this mess with your ideas of what’s normal. Terrible management has a way of reprogramming your norms so that you start to accept really awful treatment and expect it at your next job. Make sure you don’t let that happen.

2. Should I ask or tell my manager when I’m taking time off?

I have been in my position (graduate coordinator) for almost four years. Until about a year ago, I had a different supervisor (from hell). Now I am very blessed to have a wonderful supervisor. She’s fair, she’s kind, she treats our team very well, and we adore her.

With Old Supervisor, we’d have to ask for time off. We’d also have to explain why, and if she didn’t think it was a good enough reason, she’d deny it or say she’d think about it and then get back to you the day of or the day before you needed. (She treated us all like we were children on many, many levels. She micromanaged to the extreme). New Supervisor treats us like adults.

Last week, when I asked for an hour off to go to a doctor’s appointment, she laughed and said “of course,” and joked that it’s not like she’d ever say “no, you can’t go to the doctor” or take whatever time off (I’ve seen this with other members of my team – she really does treat us like adults who know what they’re doing).

Should I ask her (like last week) “can I take this hour / day off” or should I say “I’m taking the day / hour off”? I don’t want to be rude or inappropriate, but since this was the second time my supervisor joked about the permission aspect, I feel I need a new approach.

In professional jobs, it’s pretty normal to manage your own time and just give your manager a heads-up about times you’ll be away — as in “I’m leaving at 2 on Tuesdayfor a doctor’s appointment.” In some cases, people will phrase it this way: “I’m planning to take the 5th and 6th off — let me know if that poses any issues.”

There are managers who want to be asked for permission, but they tend to be (a) overly controlling managers who don’t trust that they’ve hired competent adults or (b) in jobs where scheduling and coverage is a big thing that needs to be managed centrally.

3. Interviews on casual Fridays

I know there’s bit a lot of chatter lately about dress codes and what is appropriate wear. But what about doing interviews on casual Fridays? As the one being interviewed, I always make it a point to arrive my interview nicely and well dressed – as is expected. But on a few occasions, the interview was on a casual Friday for the hiring manager/HR so there I am in my best and there they are in their jeans. This made me feel awkward – my point of view was, I took the time to look my best for you, could you not also try to present yourselves nicely to me?

I expressed this once to a friend and she said, “Why should they give up their casual day for just an interview?” I countered that they could bring a change of clothes and at least look nice for the interviews.

In the end, it doesn’t change how I will behave during the interview and I didn’t feel that the interviewers were any different than others where they were in usual office wear, but I did feel that it placed me at a weird disadvantage. What’s your opinion on this?

It’s pretty common for interview candidates to be dressed more nicely than their interviewers. It’s just … how interviews go. Rightly or wrongly, candidates are expected to wear suits to interviews in most industries (not all — more on that here). If it’s a convention in your field, you’re expected to adhere to it even if your interviewers are dressed more casually.

You’re right that it’s not particularly fair, but neither are a bunch of other things about interviewing (for example, as a candidate you can’t take a call in the middle of an interview, but your interviewer can). The process is rife with double standards! I’m not endorsing that, but it’s the reality of how it usually works.

4. Applying for a different internal role right after getting a promotion

At my performance review a couple of weeks ago, I was told I would be getting a promotion: new (way better) title, 12% raise, more creative work, the whole deal. However, it won’t begin until the start of our company’s new fiscal year, which is about 2.5 months away.

Now, I’ve just found out that someone in another department at my company is retiring (I don’t know exactly when), and there will be an opening. I’d really like to apply for this job. It’s in a department I’d rather work in and am more skilled in, with a much better manager. The people in this department tend to stay for years, if not decades. So the chance to work in this department may not come up again for a long, long time.

Am I obligated to stay in my current department and take the promotion in a couple of months? Would it be considered bad form to apply for this new position (and to take it if it’s offered to me)? If I do apply, should I let my current manager know beforehand? Of course, I don’t want to cause any bad blood with my current department or manager, but I would so much rather be in this other department!

Ooof, this is tricky and depends a lot on your manager and whether she takes this stuff personally. If your manager is reasonable, you should be able to say something like this: “I’m really excited for this promotion — it sounds great to me in lots of ways. But I want to be candid with you that hearing that the X role in department Y is opening up has thrown me — I’d love to do that work long-term. I know how rarely they have openings there and I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t throw my hat in the ring. If it doesn’t work out, I’d remain incredibly enthusiastic about the role here. But I wanted to talk with you about it before doing anything.”

The key here is to do what you can to prevent your manager from worrying that you’ll see the promotion as a consolation prize if you don’t get the other job or that you’ll have one foot out the door.

5. When should I mention that I’m in the military reserves?

After weeks of applications, I finally landed a phone interview with a company that I am very excited about. The work fits my background perfectly with a lot of room to grow, and the company is doing great things. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about this opportunity. My phone interview was yesterday. Everything went very well, and I am scheduled for a Skype interview (I’m out of state) next week.

The problem? I am a drilling reservist. In and of itself not an issue, but I realized last night that it isn’t listed anywhere on my resume and I forgot to mention it in my cover letter. Should I email them right away? Should I bring it up in the follow up interview? I don’t it to look like I was intentionally hiding the information and am not sure how to bring it up.

Nope, there’s no reason to bring it up at this stage. It’s illegal for an employer to factor that information into their hiring decision, so it’s not something you need to raise now as they can’t use the information anyway (but like bringing up pregnancy at this stage, hearing it may unconsciously bias them). I’d wait until you have an offer and mention it then — and frame it as “by the way, I need to let you know I’m a military reservist” rather than “will this be okay?” since the law requires them to allow you time off for reserve duty.