Email us questions at [email protected], subject line “businesslady.” Previous installments can be found here.
Dear Businesslady,
My roommate is preparing for an interview for a position with a different team in the same large organization where he works. He met up with the person who referred him to the position, a former colleague, for coffee and learned for the first time that this very same person would be his supervisor if he were to get the new position. This understandably changed the tone of the conversation, and it turned out to be a bit of a pre-interview, even though the person will not be conducting the actual interview.
During their chat/pre-interview, the potential supervisor said to my roommate, “I need to ask you something. Are you planning on going to grad school next year? Because my supervisor will definitely ask you that in your interview tomorrow.” My roommate is considering going back to grad school eventually and may have said as much to this person back when they were working on the same team.
When I heard this, I had a gut reaction that this question in the context of an interview is absolutely inappropriate. In this country, ‘age discrimination’ as it applies to employment only covers people who are 40 or older. Still, employers also aren’t allowed to ask interviewees whether they’re married, have kids, live nearby. Those questions hint at whether a new hire is planning on sticking around, whether they have reached some point of stability in their life. Is it really okay for an employer to ask someone if they’re planning on going back to grad school? Am I overreacting? If I am, what is an appropriate answer to that question?
– Sympathetically Self-Righteous
Dear SSR,
I’m sympathetic too—to you, for being so upset on behalf of your friend. But I’m afraid you are indeed overreacting.
First and foremost, even those questions about marriage/kids/location (and others, like pretty-much-always-inappropriate questions about racial or ethnic background) are technically legal to ask in an interview. I know, right?? You can find more detail in this collabo post between Ask a Manager’s Alison Green (my hero) and Consumerist, but essentially the deal is this: it’s illegal to discriminate against someone based on marital status, race, and so on, which means it’s stupid for employers to ask applicants to disclose that information. But the law takes humans’ inherent stupidity/rudeness/capacity to place their feet in their mouths into account, and therefore focuses on actual discrimination rather than the tactless questions that might facilitate it.
That’s not even really relevant to what you’re asking, though. The above questions are out of line because they have absolutely no bearing on a candidate’s ability to do a particular job (okay, there may be extremely limited exceptions we could all hypothetically postulate, but that’s neither here nor there). If details about someone’s personal life come up in the course of the interview, that’s one thing, but hiring managers shouldn’t be evaluating people based on those factors.
In your friend’s case, by contrast, the “are you going to grad school?” question is just a more specific version of “how long are you expecting to stay in this position?” or “what’s your five-year plan?” I’ve been told in interviews, “we’d like to hire someone who can stick around for at least two years” and didn’t balk at that at all; it’s perfectly reasonable for employers to try to find candidates who will be in a position long-term. That longevity may be more essential in some positions than in others (such as those with an extended training period or highly cyclical workflow) but there’s no legal mandate for employers’ requirements to be rational—you might have trouble making a hire if you expect a minimum-wage cashier to commit to that job for at least three years, but you can boneheadedly try to make it happen if you want to.
The question of “how does this job align with your future plans?” is a pretty common one, and it often requires some delicacy of language and/or selective omission. You also have to try to read your interviewer and figure out whether they’ll find forthrightness refreshing and appealing, or unacceptable and appalling. And of course, the answer you give will depend on the relationship between the question and your actual reality. You have to titrate your ratio of “what I think the prospective employer wants to hear” to “actual truth” based on the particulars of your situation (as in, if you know it’s 99% likely you’ll have to move for your partner’s job within the year, you can’t just say “I’m completely committed to this job for at least three years but who knows what the fates might have in store”), but the balance you’re going for is “contextually appropriate honesty.”
Let’s say you’re considering going to grad school in the 2015–16 academic year and currently on the job market (like your friend). That’s a pretty vague set of plans, allowing room for “decided not to go to grad school,” “didn’t get into any programs [that I’d actually want to attend],” “got in but didn’t get funding and decided it wasn’t worth the student-loan debt,” “got in to dream program but in the meantime fell in love with someone local who can’t move and therefore staying put”—along with many others that wouldn’t preclude you from staying in a position for the foreseeable future.
I’m a big believer in the karmic ripple-effects of outright lying when there are real stakes involved, so a reasonable response to “Are you planning on going to grad school next year?” might be something like, “Well, I’ve always been interested in [field] and part of me thinks I’d get a lot out of pursuing an advanced degree. To be perfectly honest, I might go ahead and submit an application to one or two schools, just to see what happens. But there are so many other factors involved that I certainly can’t say it’s an inevitability. And I can imagine that once I settle into the groove of a rewarding job, I might decide against even applying.”
Now, if the grad-school-considerer above is being compared against an equally qualified candidate who discloses no grad-school aspirations, they might end up losing the position to the other person. That sucks, but it’s really no different from any of the other ineffable reasons that people don’t get job offers—any time you submit an application, the odds are always overwhelmingly against you actually getting hired (sorry, folks). And because it’s pretty rare for two people to have the exact same qualifications, there are ways an answer like that might work in your favor—it shows honesty, sincerity, a thoughtful approach to decision-making, and a vibrant intellectual life. If my top priority for the position was a minimum two-year tenure, I might not hire possible-future-grad-student, but if I’d be fine with them only staying a year as long as their work was good, I’d give them a shot (and perhaps enjoy the challenge of trying to lure them away from academia). And in either case, I’d be pretty upset if I hired someone who’d been all, “What? Grad school? Me? Ridiculous!” and then left within a year for a PhD program—regardless of whether or not I would’ve hired them if they’d been forthright about their plans, that type of move would undermine their integrity and basically destroy their chances of ever using me as a reference or networking contact in the future.
Job-searching is a lot like dating in this regard: sure, you’ll turn some people off by being upfront about your desire to have kids within the next five years/less-common sexual proclivities/chronic illness/ridiculously demanding work schedule/what-have-you, but that’s just inoculation against becoming emotionally invested in someone who’s a terrible match for you. Similarly, if a job wants someone who’d never consider leaving for a given length of time, and you’re someone who might be seduced by something else within that period, then it’s a poor fit and it’s just as well if they don’t make you an offer.
Staring moonily into the eyes of a person you find abhorrent might get you a second date, but that’s just one more date you have to spend biting your tongue and inwardly rolling your eyes. If you err entirely on the side of “tell employer what they want to hear,” it might land you a position, but it might not be one you actually want. And employers (like potential romantic partners) are perfectly entitled to ask questions that prompt answers they may not want to hear.
—Businesslady
Dear Businesslady,
I’ve been in my current, essentially entry-level position for 5 years now. My role has expanded somewhat over the years—as I’ve gotten more efficient at everything I was initially hired to do, I’ve been able to take on more—but even the additional work is still mostly entry-level stuff, just different stuff than I was doing at first. I never intended to be here as long as I have, and for the past 2-3 years, I’ve been searching for another job, sometimes very actively and sometimes casually. In the beginning I was mostly looking at lateral moves and lately I’ve been looking for steps up. Obviously, I’ve been unsuccessful. A few interviews, no offers. My office is a good place to work, culture-wise and benefits-wise, but I am really, really bored by my job day-to-day. However, I appear to be stuck here, and I want to make the best of it. And by “the best of it” I mean “more money.” I’ve never gotten a raise in the time I’ve been here (also, I’ve never asked for one in my life). How much of a raise do you think it’s appropriate to ask for, given that if I left tomorrow they’d be able to hire someone else pretty easily to replace me, probably someone fresh out of college like I was when I got hired? I’m not at all indispensable, is what I’m saying. My salary is not exorbitant by any means but it is on the higher end for comparable positions in my field and city, or at least it was when I started out. Help?
–Possibly Stuck
Dear Stuck,
Like many “what am I doing with my [professional] life”-type questions, yours is complicated—but I’m going to try to answer it without going into an exhaustive list of possibilities. (If you’re thinking, “gee, this is way too concise,” you’ll find plenty more thoughts about job-searching and workplace self-advocacy in my second column…and the one before that, now that I think about it.)
If you’ve been doing the same job, with increasing success, for five years, that’s the perfect opportunity to make a case for a corresponding increase in pay. Sure, you risk seeming unreasonable if you request an enormous raise, but don’t sell yourself short: even if they could hire an unexperienced recent grad to replace you, I bet there’d be a steep learning curve for that person to perform at your level.
In an ideal world, you’d help figure out an amount by talking to coworkers about their salary. Yes, it’s awkward; yes, we live in a culture that’s deeply uncomfortable discussing money. But there are ways of doing this without grilling people about their paychecks. Asking other long-term employees if they’ve ever gotten a raise will help you determine how likely it is that you’ll get one; if anyone seems amenable to this line of inquiry, you can follow up with “do you mind telling me how much it was?”—after all, you’re asking for a percentage, not their actual income. People with comparable jobs/seniority will provide the most useful information, but your fact-finding may be limited by your office’s hierarchy and the extent to which you’re friendly with your colleagues. And you might breaking out in hives at the very thought of discussing this with anyone, which I understand.
So here’s another formula: at many workplaces, it’s common to get a 2% increase each year. (This is sometimes termed a “cost-of-living” increase, in that it roughly tracks with inflation—although true cost of living adjustments, or COLAs, are based on much more complicated and boring factors.) If you’d received a 2% raise each year for the past five years, your salary would be just over 10% more than it is right now. Depending on how generous you think your employer might be, you could pitch a higher amount and see where you end up as a compromise—or if you think 10% seems like too much based on your office’s culture, you could go lower and use “it’s less than an annual cost-of-living increase would’ve been!” as part of your rationale.
But I’m actually more concerned with the fact that you feel “really, really bored,” and with the fact that your job-searching efforts* haven’t been fruitful. Is there any opportunity for advancement within your current organization, where a pay increase could go along with a better title (which costs them nothing to give you!) or a new role entirely? If an internal promotion isn’t feasible, then you might want to double down on your job searching; getting more money is great—and you should definitely ask for a raise independent of looking for a new position—but it can’t fix a general lack of enthusiasm for your day-to-day work. Plus, you’ve been in the same role for half a decade, and if you’d ever like to do anything else, you’ll have to start that process somewhere.
This two-pronged approach—requesting a reasonable raise in recognition of your contributions, while also applying for any and all jobs that seem like a good fit—should give you the momentum that you’re looking for. If your current employer gives you a huge raise (and especially if they change your title), then you’re justified in staying put for a while longer, and if they tell you your salary is capped, you have all the more reason to find a new position somewhere else. Either way, you’ll be moving your professional life forward, and hopefully not feeling stuck anymore.
—Businesslady
*P.S. If you’d like me to take a look at your resume and cover letter, I’d be happy to give you some feedback on how to make them more effective. You know the email address! (The same goes for other job-searching Toasties, although I reserve the right to rescind this offer and/or review things very quickly if I get an overwhelming number of responses.)
Businesslady! Can we indeed inquire at the Advice address, or is there another address you may wish us to use if we are inquiring if you would review resumes?
You can go ahead and use the Advice address–thanks for checking!
Hm. I don’t know that I’m comfortable sending my resume to the general Toast advice address …
You can also use dearbusinesslady [at] gmail if you’d prefer…and/or feel free to change your name or other identifying details.
But I promise that your email will just get forwarded to me from the advice address, so you don’t have anything to worry about either way.
Thanks! (And I apologize for being needlessly reticent.)
Toasties! I guess this is sort of tangentially related in that it’s another uncomfortable question – how do I ask if my contract is being renewed? Normally I would assume it would be, because both of my bosses like me and I’m kind of the only person who does my particular job at this office, but it’s also a startup that’s been going through some not-great times financially as of late. Also, I got this job through a government foundation that works with youth for job placement and covers their salary for the four-month term of employment – usually with the youth being hired after the four-month term is over, but because of my company’s financial situation I don’t know if they’re going to. I’m weird at confrontation and I don’t know how to ask about this without sounding demanding or presumptuous!
I’ve been casually scoping out other job opportunities just in case and I may actually be hired for another job that sounds way more interesting and stable, but with a pay cut (anywhere from $1-$5 less per hour), so I’d like to stay at my current job if I can.
It may feel awkward, but it’s a very reasonable thing to just ask straight out “I know my contract/government support is formally up in [x time]. Can you give me an idea of whether you plan to continue my position afterwards?” Good luck either way!
I would just write an email (always nice to have something in writing) and say something like, “as you know, my contract comes to an end on xyz date. I’ve enjoyed working here and would love to stay on if there’s a possibility of my contract being renewed; however, if that’s not an option due to [whatever is going on], I’d like to start making other arrangements now. I know that you may not be able to share all the details, but I’d certainly appreciate any insight you have. [add some more nice words here about how great your experience has been, or whatever.] sincerely, yourname.”
That gives the person the option of saying that they can’t share details with you (if that’s the case), but reiterates your interest in the position. You do have to trust that they’re not going to jerk you around, though.
If you are feeling very anxious about the conversation, a good intro could “Hey manager, I know my contract is for 4 months. Can you give me an idea of when the decision will be made whether to continue my position or not? This job is my priority, and I would love to stay, but I will need to make other employment plans if my contract is not going to be renewed. ” It’s a good information gathering question, gives your manager a heads up that it is on your mind, and sets the stage for the actual question, which you can follow up with at the appropriate time.
In my office, questions like that often jump-start our busy/distracted professional services committee members into having the meeting and making a decision.
In my mind, it’s customary to start contract renegotiations at least two months in advance of your set end date. Depending on the industry, of course, but two months is a good period of time to start finding new jobs that would start after your contract expires. (And save up some money if you anticipate a period of unemployment.)
No one’s going to fault you for thinking about your own future!
I’m in the process of thinking about what I’d like to see improved in my new contract. I’ll be bringing up negotiations at the end of the year, and plan to ask for both a raise and a change in my weekly hours. Obviously your situation is different, but maybe you have something in particular in mind that you want to bring up — even just a suggestion of “Maybe we could make time in my schedule for this new initiative!” or “What if I spent half a day each week working from home?” Something that sounds productive and/or useful for the office, that might help launch the more general “Where is this relationship going” conversation.
(If you’re really worried about the funding, maybe you can do some preliminary research on project grants or other gov’t foundations that could keep you going, if it’s applicable.)
ABSOLUTELY agreeing with all the advice in the 2nd letter – I worked at a “same position” job for several years at a company without the budget to give big increases, but they were able to adjust my duties to get rid of the more gruntworky dullsville soulsucking ones so I could spend more time on the things that were added as I became more competent (like the letter writer), and instead of big raises I got a fancier title with “senior” in it (senior to whom? nobody, for a while, but it looked great on my resume right away, which is important as you look for other opportunities, because it shows the development in your skills rather than making it seem like you got stuck in that role because you’re a dodo) AND I was able to bargain for more vacation time instead of cold hard cash, which in a dull-yet-sometimes-stressful role was enormously valuable to me. If they can’t give you more actual money, they can give you other, less literally costly things to improve your working life.
Fuck ’em. Say you’re going to stick around, and leave when you like. They want a several year commitment? Then they should make it mutual and offer you a contract promising that you won’t be laid off or fired without cause for that same number of years.
Employment-at-will cuts both ways and you shouldn’t hold back from exercising your Anglo-American right to walk out the door whenever you feel like! (And also in the U.S. we fought a war for, in a sense, the right to quit your job! So there’s that, too.)
I basically agree–you should rarely* feel bad about lying to a prospective employer about something like this.** But, there is the reputation point to consider–think carefully about whether you will want this person to say something nice about you the next time you’re applying for a job. That’s not looking out for your at-will employer, that’s looking out for yourself.
*Only if the organization is doing good, and your lie could get in the way of that. For-profit employers? Lie away.
** I.e., something that isn’t core to your ability to do the job. Don’t lie and say you managed a team of six people at a job that was actually entry level.
Yeah, I see your point about the reference, that could conceivably be a problem. But I will say that after I got an advanced degree and started applying to jobs that required it, no one cared much what work I’d done at jobs that didn’t require it.
I think it really depends. If you’re taking an office job now, but are about to go to med school and your future jobs will be as a doctor, I agree that your future employment prospects probably have little to do with the reference you get or don’t get from that office job. But if you’re going to be in the same field, especially in the same city, before and after you go to grad school, it can bite you.
I disagree. That doesn’t benefit anyone–if you lie and get a job and leave after a short stint (months, say) when you know the business wants you to put in at least a couple of years, you’ve probably eliminated your chance for a good reference. The business will be pissed off that you’ve wasted their time in hiring and training, you’ve done yourself no favours, and it’s generally not a good strategy to take.
While it is true that employment at will works both ways, it’s not a good strategy for your own professional development. It’s not unreasonable for a business or organization to expect at least one if not two years of commitment, or longer if that’s the context of their business. If they want a ten-year commitment–sure, there should be contracts involved, etc. But expecting two years is not unreasonable.
You’ve done yourself the favor of amassing useful work experience at a time in your life when you’re still in school learning how to do the job you want, and given yourself the luxury of jobhunting while employed in a day when many employers still reject unemployed applicants out-of-hand. Nobody’s going to give you a negative reference for quitting unless you’ve done something legally actionable (or they’re a complete and total loon), nobody really cares about that job you worked at for under a year (unless you did something legally actionable, or there’s like four of em in a row), and most businesses grasp that shit happens and people decide they want to go do something else.
Don’t make a practice of serially quitting job after job after job within a sub-year timeframe, but if you go around getting yourself rejected for positions because you don’t know where you’ll be in five years or can’t honestly say in your heart of hearts you’re the very best fit for the position, you’ve cut off any chance to ever actually figure that shit out before it even got started.
I think you may have me confused with someone else–I’m not in school, nor did I obtain any useful work experience at all when I was in school. And I could very strongly disagree with what you’ve said about references, since I do know more than a few people who’ve gotten lousy references after quitting.
And though I know you didn’t intend it, your comment comes off as pretty patronizing as well.
The ‘you’ in this case would be the grad student subject of the letter, who is seeking better work while planning for grad school, presumably because he has professional plans for his degree that will render his sub-year position about as relevant as that stint he did as lifeguard at summer camp, and should not be limited to the one job he can get for the entire time he is in grad school simply because he is in grad school and no interviewer outside seasonal retail wants to hear that you have plans to leave a job of your own volition. I guess third-person would have been more clear on review, since it wasn’t even the guy in question writing the letter.
People get taken to court over stupid bullshit like writing bad references just for quitting, what the hell did they even say? “applicant fulfilled all the functions of her job and gave a reasonable two weeks’ notice but I WANTED TO KEEP HER FOREVER SHE’S MINE YOU HEAR ME, MIIIIIINE“
Employers are sometimes unreasonable about how long they want/expect their employees to stick around — true! But I don’t think it’s unreasonable for an employer not to want to hire someone who’s already making plans to quit in less than a year. Which, since the question is “Are you going to grad school NEXT YEAR?”, is basically what they’re asking — “Are you applying to [full-time] graduate programs at the same time that you’re applying to this job? And if you get both the school acceptance and the job offer, what do you plan to do?”
You can’t take someone to court for saying, “His work was great, but I was really disappointed when he left the company after just 8 months to enroll in graduate school. We spent a lot of time in the hiring process discussing how important it was to us to have stability and longevity in this position, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that, while he was agreeing with all that, he was also planning his exit within the first year.” Or, I mean, you can but all you’ll get is laughed at by a lawyer.
Yep.
I certainly wouldn’t lie about it if asked point-blank and there was external evidence that I’d already applied to grad school out there (or outright lie about anything in an interview that can be fact-checked, which is totally legitimate grounds for both a firing and a bad reference), but outside that a complaint of ‘this employee left for a better opportunity/to pursue their actual passion after eight months and I feel they should have been indentured to me eternally’ is pretty absurd and easy to dispense with in an interview if you’re otherwise qualified and capable.
Exactly how unreasonable a grievance that’d be is pretty contextual, but I’m assuming that based on this dude going back into grad school and planning to bail on this company shortly that we’re still talking more on the low-level clerk going for a real job end of things than top-secret nuclear physicist defecting to Russia.
As an interviewer, I can’t imagine turning down an otherwise good fit because a previous employer said, “they said they’d stay for two years and then went to grad school!” Would you? I mean, fair enough, maybe someone would put that in an reference, but I really struggle to imagine someone changing their mind about hiring someone because of it.
Yeah I could not agree less with that first response. I’ve gotten the probing five-year-plan questions from companies that dissolved the entire department inside a year, or who turned out to have clear revolving-door employment policies, and the two best long-term jobs I’ve ever had started as short-term work for a specific project and wound up with them creating a new long-term position for me. The basic gist of interviewing, that I had to learn the slow way, is that HR managers don’t actually know what the job entails, and the position manager probably doesn’t know how to interview, and what they’re both really asking at that point is whether you’ll quit on your schedule or they’ll get to lay you off on theirs.
Tell ’em you’ll love ’em forever and be with them always, but not in a creepy stalkery way, even if you have firm plans to move to Kalamazoo in six months. You won’t get an honest idea if you’ll want to be at a job for years and years from the generic Enthusiasm Checklist interview questions (unless you’re going to grad school, in which you do know: you don’t!) so tell ’em what they want to hear, don’t get caught in any verifiable lies, and figure out if you really like the job from the considerably more informed and comfortable position of getting paid to do it.
And do move to Kalamazoo! The Bells taproom is delightful and when I visited I found a cute grocery store with “Justice 4 Trayvon” spraypainted on an electrical box nearby.
Mmmmm, Oberon.
What’s even better is, at the taproom, they have stuff they only brewed a little bit of and you can’t get from anywhere else!
Okay I’m ready to hop on the Amtrak right now. Who’s in?
I am!!
actually, if you’re driving, you can also hit the nearby breweries/taprooms for Founders (Grand Rapids, MI), New Holland (Holland, MI), and Three Floyds (Munster, IN). although if you’re going to Grand Rapids, you should also check out the Hopcat brewpub.
signed, a recently relocated former Chicagoan who made no fewer than three beer pilgrimages to the locations listed above. (Bell’s Two Hearted IPA tastes better in Kalamazoo than it does anywhere else–there’s this amazing sweet note that you don’t get in the bottle or even on draft in other places.)
Well dang I bet the cops have that circuit staked out
And man I wanna try the fresh Bell’s now. Magic Hat’s pretty much the same in Burlington or Baltimore.
Have you been to Short’s up in Bellair? I understand that is the place to go.
Two Hearted is my favorite, right before Founders’ All Day IPA.
Bellair? DANG that’s far out. Michigan is huge, dudes!
Mmm, Founders. I go to Grand Rapids for work several times a year and it is great. Love the Dissenter and the 4-cheese grilled cheese.
This does not work at all for people who have guilt issues. My previous employer didn’t ever ask me anything about commitment, and I still felt like human slime for leaving after six months.
(I don’t recommend this as a way of being, just saying if it’s already the way you are, keep in mind that lying to employers may send you into a shame spiral.)
Yeah, my jokey wording aside, this is the sentiment I most mean to address. I’ve seen so many people staying in jobs they don’t like out of a completely unreciprocated feeling of obligation to their bosses and it pains me! I’m all for being nice, but if you’re just a number to them (and you’ll know if you are), there’s no reason to treat them any better.
Uuuugh guilt. I’m having so much about applying to jobs in a different state that I want to move to, because I told my employer that I’d probably be in it for the long haul when I interviewed even though I had vague ideas of this move already. But at the time it was only a vague idea in my head and I’d been unemployed for eight months, it didn’t seem like the time for over-the-top honesty. But I definitely feel like human slime especially because it’s a wonderful doing-good nonprofit. Businesslady is helping me feel a bit better.
I agree…sort of. Of course if you get a job and it isn’t like you thought it’d be/you don’t like it, you should totally walk if you feel like it. But I do think there are risks to it. One short term employment isn’t going to ruin your resume, but a bunch of them will. You can definitely expect a question from future employers about why you left a job after X months, although “I left to go to grad school” is a pretty great excuse. Another thing to keep in mind is that future employers aren’t limited to only calling the references you give them, they are completely allowed to call any previous employer or anyone at that company about you, so make sure you’re not being a dick about it. I worked for a place where a former coworker had spent his last month on the job applying for other positions and telling people he was doing his job when he wasn’t. After he left, there was a major shitstorm trying to clean up the resulting mess. I now know of at least two jobs he’s lost out on because someone from the interview team called up someone they knew at the company I worked for and heard that story.
I feel like it really is the manager’s responsibility to initiate communication about renewal to contractors, but I have had to bring it up before when the timing was getting a little close for (my) comfort. I just ask if the department will still be needing my services after xyz date. As I’m sure you’ve figured out, it’s kind of mandatory to always be looking for other opportunities, especially full time positions! (I’ve got 99 problems and contracting accounts for basically all of them.)
I just want to say that using titration as a metaphor made my morning. Thanks.
Haha, I use that ALL the TIME. Can’t say I never learned anything in chemistry class!
Businesslady was on the money, but a more succinct answer for question 1 is: it is not illegal to discriminate on the basis of how long a person is going to stay at a job. That’s a bona fide occupational factor. Dear LW, you are understandably conflating bases for discrimination, it seems in part because going to grad school is a “young person’s thing”.
As an example, if we were interviewing a female law student who said “my wife is going to grad school in Milan next year and I intend to go with her”, it would be entirely within our rights to not hire her because she had told us she planned on moving to Milan next year. While nobody can predict the future, knowing for sure that someone is going to be trained by us and then leave makes that person a poor investment.
What we CAN’T do is not hire her solely because we don’t like married people or people in relationships with same-sex partners.
Businesslady will look at my resume???
I will indeed. And provide feedback even!
Oh, hello, Letter Writer 2, we seem to be in a very similar position.
While I’ve been able to negotiate raises over the last 5 years (6 years in 5 days, hahahahahaha) despite a 4-year “salary freeze,” I’m insanely bored and frustrated with my position. There’s no room for upward mobility. Also, despite looking for a new job for almost 4 years and having countless interviews, I’m obviously still here. This has all been sort of compounded in the last couple days when I learned the newest person in the editorial department is leaving in two weeks for a job at a different company. So I’m now frustrated, sad, and a little bitter. Ugh, Toasties. Ugh.
So, uh, if you work in publishing and are looking for an associate editor, let me know!
Aw, man. If you’d like some resume feedback, let me know (you can submit to the usual address for advice). Although if you’re getting interviews, your application materials probably aren’t the issue; I suspect you’re dealing with the supply/demand metrics of available jobs vs. eager candidates. And that really stinks.
If you had a good rapport with any of your interviewers, you could follow up with a friendly email requesting their feedback–ideally if you met with them fairly recently. It’s possible/likely you’ll get radio silence or a “sorry, can’t help you” in response, but you might end up learning ways to improve your interview game.
Yeah, I sort of have a general feeling that I have been the second-best candidate in quite a few (including the last one, which went really well and I was really hoping for. The hiring manager was very nice and gave me and said she was impressed with my resume and enthusiasm and that she wished she had more than one open position.).
I don’t know. It’s just frustrating to think I could end up in an essentially dead-end entry-ish level position for the better part of a decade and have nothing to show for it.
As someone who deals with outright lies from HR people ALL THE TIME, I wish I had Businesslady’s faith in Karma.
Haha yeahhh. My little brother is applying to admin jobs that he wants for just a few months to save up for a road trip, and he keeps being like “I don’t think I should take it because they’re talking about opportunities for advancement and training at the company and I just want a boring admin job for a few months!”, and I can’t quite convince him that they are lying liars who just think he wants to hear about opportunities for advancement.
Just wait until he figures out you don’t actually need a BBA and five years of experience in every tangentially relevant aspect of the field to fulfill the duties of every entry-level job
So true. Gordon Freeman had a freakin’ PhD in physics, and his first job was smashing headcrabs with a crowbar!
Let’s be fair here: they originally hired him on to push the Science Handtruck, he got moved into the crowbar-smashing position as the company’s needs evolved.
I had a similar situation as the first asker, where my boss asked if I’m planning to leave which was THE MOST AWKWARD QUESTION EVER. It was in the context of shifting responsibilities between me and another coworker. I assume the advice in this instance would not be the same because it wasn’t in an interview context. I already have this job. I was/am vaguely planning to start applying for new jobs in the new year. And unlike grad school which has a yearly application/enrollment schedule who knows if or when I’d even get a new job (prior to this job, I was in the second askers position where I was at my first job for 6+ years largely because I wasn’t able to find anything else).
How did you respond? There are a few different ways to handle a question like that, and a lot of it depends on the dynamic you have with your boss/the culture of your organization in general.
Probably poorly. I think I ignored that part of his comment and just talked about how I’d be excited about the other work that would come out of the shift.
I don’t think that’s a bad way to handle it. If it comes up again–and you actually feel like you can trust your manager (which is a big “if”)–you could be a bit more honest and say that you’d like to eventually transition into a role where you [X].
The advantage to doing this would be the possibility of your boss finding ways to make your current job one you’d be willing to stay in, and/or setting the stage to use them as a reference if you get that far along with a new gig.
But, obviously, there are a lot of caveats to the above, and if you think it’s more advantageous to keep mum, sidestepping the issue is certainly a reasonable strategy.
Part of the change in responsibilities is that I’d be managing a big project which is supposedly starting in the new year, and that he wants to make sure I’d be here to see the project through. Assuming that the project does start as anticipated in Jan/Feb, I’d have no problem putting my job search on hold to stay through it’s launch. But I’ve also seen/been in scenarios where they swear the boring maintenance work is just until the budget comes through for a more substantive project (next calendar year, next fiscal year, etc). Then, no matter how long you wait, the necessary budget is always three to six months away.
“I can’t predict the future. Can you?”
“I meet people all the time. I talk to everyone. Don’t you?”
“I stay where I can make a difference and feel valued.”
Specializing in answering questions with questions, also in pointed non-answers, for decades.
“I have no specific plans to go anywhere, and enjoy working here”. The first is true right now, second is impossible to independently confirm, and together they suggest that your boss has a vested interest in making sure you continue to enjoy working there more than anywhere else!
Depends on context, OFC, I assume that ‘shifting responsibilities’ means ‘giving you more of them’ not ‘easing you out the door’ or ‘making you the linchpin of the 20-year plan to build a ladder to the moon’.
Haha, thanks. The shifting responsibilities would be an exciting new project… assuming the budget for it comes through. If it does, I have no problem with staying. But I don’t want to be in a scenario where I am stuck waiting if the budget actually winds up being years away.
Well hell, depending on your relationship with your boss might be worthwhile to say just that. Definitely don’t promise anything, though, even if you’re not looking in my experience it’s best to keep ’em working to keep you happy.
Yes, interviewing for jobs is just like dating except for DATING IS VOLUNTARY AND IF YOU’RE SINGLE IT DOESN’T LEAVE YOU HOMELESS AND IN DEFAULT ON YOUR STUDENT LOANS.
Hey, at least you’re getting interviews
laughs hollowly while throwing herself off a cliff
“On review I don’t think eating regularly is really the best fit for me, and I’m sure you can find better applicants for the position”
Well they’re both equally great for utterly destroying whatever tiny spark of self-worth you may have cultivated in your life. So there’s that.
I do often compare interviews and first/second dates, although it’s mostly to comment on what I do differently with them. (I flirt *waaaay* harder on interviews.)
But the comparison does come with the GIANT CAVEAT of how the balance of power is relatively equal in the dating world, while job hunting comes with an extraordinarily huge imbalance. (See note above about constant flirting.)
Lie. Lie through your teeth! Companies lie to their employees ALL THE TIME, there’s really no reason to not give them some of their own medicine unless you’re worried about the lie coming back to bite you – for instance, if you don’t have good references to use on a grad school application, and would need the new employer to write you a reference letter, or if you don’t want to burn bridges in a certain industry.
But if you’re just looking for a year of employment until you make a career change? We live in a culture of companies with zero loyalty to their employees and vast power imbalances. Don’t give them loyalty they don’t deserve.
“I think my best attribute as an employee is loyalty, and I’m willing to take a job wherever loyalty is most valued.”
The Mafia?
The quote (or something like it) is I think from Dwight from The Office.
I’ll let him know!
Yes, this. I would advise saying something like “I’m planning on going to school part time for x grad degree” which 1. tells them enough that you are interested in your future and have plans, but 2. gives you a graceful out if you do get into a grad program an decide to leave to say “This was a total long shot, I hate to leave here but I never thought I’d get into X programme and this chance won’t come up for me again.”
Part of the thing about the grad school question is that it depends on what you might want to go to grad school for and how interested your company is in promoting and advancing internal candidates. My company is perfectly happy for folks to go to school part-time while they continue to work for us, and will pay for it, and they’re especially happy if that degree is closely related to what we do. More advanced degrees on the resumes of our staff means better proposals when we bid on contracts.
Also, if the candidate is young, the grad school question can also be a way of sussing out whether or not you have ambitions/aspirations beyond an entry or low-level position.
Going to grad school doesn’t have to necessitate quitting your job, and I think another perfectly reasonable response to “are you considering grad school” is “I have thought about it, but I haven’t applied anywhere yet. Many of the programs I am considering have part-time options, which is something I am considering” (assuming that it is true).
Oh, shout this from the rooftops “MY COMPANY IS WILLING TO PAY FOR YOUR SCHOOL” Best advice I’ve ever gotten from a family member, “Let your work pay for your schooling.”
Another funny thing about this is, rather than becoming annoyed at your schedule demands, as they do when you are paying for the school, the job will actually work to accommodate you, as you are on their dime. They are literally invested in you and and you have increased your worth to them by the very arrangement.
I would just like to say I have an interview on Monday and I’m getting a lot out of this entire thread/Businesslady answers and my little sociologist’s heart goes pitter patter whenever I can sink my little claws into something as an opportunity for ‘women helping/mentoring women in/about the workplace’ so this is very exciting for me and I enjoy all of you very much and thanks.
That feeling of solidarity is exactly why I wanted to do this column, and it warms my own heart whenever I feel like it’s working.
Good luck on the interview!
Thank you!!
I am pro leaving when you want and generously stretching the truth about your plans, but not flat out lying if possible. Just not worth the risk. Interestingly just read this article on a study that says that people who move jobs more often tend to end up in better, higher paying jobs.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/…
Ah…speaking of making a commitment, I’m in a bit of a workplace situation. I recently accepted a position that isn’t scheduled to start for about six more weeks due to security checks and so on. About a week after I accepted that, I got offered another position at a different company, and guys, this is my DREAM job. It’s full time and pays way more, and is much more in the area of what I want to do. But, I now have to awkwardly un-accept the first job and I feel like a jerk. This is just business right, I’m not a horrible jerk? Or? How can I uh, phrase my letter to the first job?
So long as you haven’t signed some sort of binding contract, you should certainly take the second job. ASAP write to the first job, thank them so much for the opportunity, and tell them pretty much what you said – an opportunity for a full time position in a more appropriate field has come up and you’re very sorry but you have to rescind your acceptance of their position. They will have a whole stack of other people who also want that job, you have done nothing more than vaguely inconvenience someone.
Think of it as if you un-accepting the first job means whomever was second place in the interviewing process will likely now get a job that he/she might really want/need!
They will click their teeth and go, “how annoying!” and call the second candidate on the list, or call HR and ask them to start a new search. The might sound a little gritted-teethe on the phone if you ring them up to apologise, and if they’re very unprofessional they might have a go at you. But fundamentally, if they’re a decently-run company, it’s an inconvenience for them. It is absolutely not worth passing up your dream job to avoid inconveniencing someone.
Dear employers : don’t ask that question. It is a stupid question. If the candidate is considering leaving, there’s no good reason for them to tell the truth to you and potentially closing off an important option for themselves, and you’ve just introduced a false note into the interview which is going to make the candidate feel awkward and not perform their best. And if they say they’re not going and mean it, you’ll still be left wondering whether it’s true.
Asking how long they see themselves in the job and you might not get an honest answer but at least you’ll find out if they understand the organisation’s expectations.
Just, don’t ask it.
I have always thought of a job interview as being the opposite of a date. In both you are seeing if you will get along with the other person. But in a job interview, you start out saying yes. You can always say no at the end.
I have always thought of a job interview as being the opposite of a date. In both you are seeing if you will get along with the other person. But in a job interview, you start out saying yes. You can always say no at the end.