verbally abusive boss

A reader writes:

I recently left a large internet company to join a well established, yet small creative agency. The company's philosophy of listening and constantly learning really connected with me and the team was very passionate about doing good work for a great set of clients.

The issue here is the level of verbal abuse that I have since found out is a feature of the work environment. The cool radio station playing in the background wasn't because the office was hip - it was to cover up the screaming coming from the executive office for even the smallest offenses. Late 10 minutes? Well, you are going to get yelled at for a half hour and have every other fault or perceived flaw flung at you along with a litany of questioning of your professionalism and dedication. Didn't convey the exact message that the founder force fed you before a client meeting? Well, that is good for at least an hour.

I have tried everything from being calm and reasonable, to trying to get a work in edge wise, to confronting him and telling him behavior is unprofessional and damaging, to just flat out ending the conversation and walking out. Unfortunately, because I am not willing to sit through these tirades with my hands folded and head down like all of the other executive team, I am being froze out of key meetings and now enduring work which is totally not in my job description suddenly becoming my responsibility (i.e. I am a producer and suddenly I am being told that site QA, customer research and architecture work is also part of my duties).

I am a senior level person with over 10 years of experience and have not had the experience of working for someone who only knows how to express themselves by yelling. I just started this job and really would like to get a year in before going, but this is taking a toll on my health and I dread stepping foot in this place. There were also a whole host of things that they flat out lied about during the interview process (no 401k, no flexible hours, team is widely dispersed) and I would have never taken this role if I had known. I am not sure what to do here - I am very on edge and don't think I have it in me to deal with another day wasted with these tirades.

Leave.

Seriously, leave.

Okay, look for a new job and get an offer first, but ultimately, the answer is to leave.

I get that you want to stick it out for a year, so that you don't look like a job hopper to future employers. But you have a perfectly reasonable excuse for leaving now. You can tell interviewers, "The manager's management style revolves around yelling, and it's not for me." Assuming that the other jobs on your resume were longer stays, people are going to understand this and will realize that good people don't want to work for tyrants.

Chronic yelling should be a deal-breaker. It demeans the person being yelled at, and frankly, it diminishes the authority of the yeller because it makes them look out of control. And if anyone out there is reading this and thinking, "Well, there are some times when yelling is warranted" -- no, there aren't. If you're a good manager and you're confident in your own authority, you don’t need to yell; problems don’t get under your skin because you have effective tools at your disposal (such as performance counseling and moving out employees who aren’t the right fit). Yelling is the sign of a bad manager. And a jerk.

Leave, and have no qualms about doing it.

bad job vs. possibly unstable new company

A reader writes:

I took a job that I am not well suited for, but have done just satisfactorily elsewhere in the past. But personality conflict with my manager and my resistance to working hours that would eliminate any work / life balance ended up leading to my demotion.

I'm concerned that I've been irreparably labeled at this company. I am fairly uncomfortable there. I've had a successful phone interview with another company and my interview with the hiring manager is Monday. This position would be a much better fit for me, but the economy has been tough for a while and although this new company (it's a large company) has remained pretty successful, they had some salaried layoffs a year ago and could always end up facing more if the weak economy drags on (especially weak in my region).

I'm a strong match for the new position and its culture and I interview pretty well, so I think I have a good chance of getting an offer. Do you think I'd be better off pursuing the new opportunity or riding things out in my current situation until we have a stronger, more stable economy?

I'd say pursue the new position. You're in a job where (a) you aren't well-suited for the work, (b) you have a personality conflict with your manager, (c) you disagree about the number of hours you should work, and (d) you've already been demoted. This situation is not good. In fact, not only should you pursue the position you're interviewing for, but you should likely conduct a full-scale job search.

While the new company had lay-offs a year ago, your current situation is so precarious that it's certainly no better than a company with lay-offs a year ago and may in fact be worse. Of course, do your due diligence on this new company; do research into and ask about their financial outlook and so forth. And if the information you find doesn't make you confident, you may want to look at other options instead. But by all means, actively work to leave your current position.

reality-based management

I've become convinced that there is a major characteristic that distinguishes good managers from bad managers: being committed to living in reality, as opposed to some hazier alternative. Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I talk about reality-based management and what it looks like. Please check it out!

new manager doesn't trust us

A reader writes:

I've been confronted with a situation at work that violates what I would consider a level of professional trust, but my direct management doesn't seem to agree, and now I'm left wondering if I'm the one who's wrong. Let me explain...

My organization puts on a yearly conference, nominally for us, but in reality because we believe our customers appreciate it. We had a new director come in last year about a month before the conference, and one of her pieces following that experience was her strong assertion that the conference was our conference and we needed to treat it that way. It was generally believed that this statement was a direct result of a couple of things: One, a lack of enthusiasm for the conference following last year's event was obvious among a number of us. Two, certain staffers were not seen throughout the conference (off-site), even though they were at the hotel and participating.

We're now a year later, about to head into the conference again, and the latest direction is that the entire staff is to submit their daily schedules during the conference to management. The stated purpose of this exercise is so that management knows where everyone is during the conference and who is available to help. I have difficulty believing that statement, given the experience of last year. If that was truly the intent, wouldn't it make more sense to ask for that information in an inclusive manner, such as "volunteer to staff a session or work the desk" and then ask for those who don't volunteer where they would like to help? I just feel like the actions of a few has caused an overreaction, and I feel that I and the rest of my organization doesn't have the trust of management, even given the stated intent. Am I overreacting to this?

Well, it indicates a belief by your manager that things won't go the way she wants them to unless she manages the conference differently than it's been done in the past.

I guess my question for you is whether this is really so offensive. Are there other things your manager is doing that make you feel she doesn't trust you to behave like a competent, responsible adult, or is it just this? If there are other things, are they things that could not be interpreted any other way, or are they things that might simply be the result of having a new manager come in, with different ideas about how to structure things?

I'm not prejudging the answer to that, but it's worth considering that there are situations where it would make sense that a new manager would be more heavy-handed than her predecessor. For instance, if the old manager was very hands-off and the results weren't as outstanding as they could have been, the new manager might be doing everything right in trying to run a tighter ship ... but it could feel to you and your coworkers like the new sheriff in town is a real pain in the ass, because of the way it contrasts with what you were used to before.

On the other hand, maybe that's not the case at all, and your new manager is being inappropriately heavy-handed/micromanagey. I don't know -- but you will, if you evaluate the situation and all the context you have (objectively, by the way, which is the hard part). If your objective evaluation leads you to conclude that she's not being an ideal manager, the next step is to figure out what to do with that info. The answer may be nothing, depending on the extent of the problem and how much it bothers you, or it may be to talk to her about ways you can better work together.

Good luck!

listing volunteer work on a resume

A reader writes:

I am currently doing freelance consulting to make a little extra money (and I mean little) and keep my resume active while I am job hunting. I also do extensive volunteering, but some of that volunteering has turned into more substantive program development and outreach that I am proud of, and I am even referred to as a consultant by some of the organizations (although, alas, unpaid at this point).

My question is: Is it appropriate to list this unpaid consulting experience on my resume together with my paid gigs as a freelancer without mentioning the monetary distinction, or does protocol demand that I keep the two separate or identify it specifically as "volunteer," even though they are both equal in terms of utilizing my skills and resources to help make good things happen for people? For some reason, I get the queasy feeling that some prospective employers will think I am resume-padding if I also highlight my unpaid freelance achievements along with my paid ones, although I would be more than willing to disclose this in the interview process. This is particularly true for the dreaded online application forms that ask for beginning and ending salary.

And maybe it is my own insecurity talking here, but do you think that prospective employers might devalue my unpaid work (no matter how substantive) when considering me as a candidate? I don't want to be disingenuous on my resume about paid vs. unpaid work, yet I don't know if I have to make such sharp distinctions, either, if I don't have to. I just feel that, even in the non-profit world that is supposed to be more progressive, people sometimes still judge you on how much you make, or don't. How to handle this?

I think it's fine to lump the the volunteer work in with the paid work. As an employer, the only concern I'd have here is whether the organizations you were donating your time to were holding the bar lower/holding you less accountable since your work was free. But that's pretty easy to address, by focusing on accomplishments in your resume, rather than just listing duties.

Your accomplishments are your accomplishments. It's no one's business how much you got paid for them, even if that amount is zero. But perhaps it would help to think of yourself as "taking on pro bono work" rather than "a volunteer."

And by the way, I'm glad you're listing this stuff. Sometimes in the course of an interview, it comes out that someone has highly relevant experience that they left off their resume because it was volunteer and so they thought it "didn't count." It counts.

no, you really do have weaknesses

Apparently there is a new superhuman breed walking among us, utterly free of weaknesses.

In interviews, I always try to get candidates to speak honestly about their downsides. I do this because I'm trying to have an honest conversation about their fit for the job -- and about the job's fit for them. I do this not because I'm trying to trip them up, but because don't want to put someone in a job they're going to struggle in, never excel in, or that I'll end up having to fire them from.

I do this in a bunch of ways -- obviously, by delving into past experiences and probing around about their skills, approach, etc. But I also do it by asking questions like, say, "What kind of feedback have you received from managers, both in terms of what they say you excel at and things you've been encouraged to do differently?" Yeah, it's the old strengths and weaknesses in a not-so-good disguise.

Sometimes candidates can't or don't come up with critical feedback they've received. Fine, maybe they've had crappy managers who don't bother to give feedback. So then I ask this: "If you were your own manager and could wave a magic wand over your head, what would you tweak?"

Lately, I've encountered a lot of seemingly stunned candidates who are clearly at a loss for an answer.

This baffles me for two reasons:

1. If you're job searching, how are you not prepared to be asked to speak about weaknesses? Did you really have no inkling this might be coming?

2. More importantly, are you so lacking in self-awareness and insight that you don't have an answer to this? Or are you just unwilling to answer it honestly? Either way, you fail.

Today, a woman actually told me, "I really can't think of anything I'd change. It's hard for me to imagine something I couldn't do well."

Wow. I think pretty damn highly of myself, and there are still hundreds of things I could rattle off at a moment's notice that I'd like to be able to do better. Some of them are serious weaknesses.

This phenomenon is such a weird combination of naivete, arrogance, and lack of thoughtfulness, and it is happening so much lately that it's making me want to stab someone with a fork.

6 reasons you failed the phone interview

Made it to the phone interview stage? Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I talk about six things not to do. Check it out, and as always, please leave your own thoughts in the comments over there!