do not become your friend's boss

Thinking about hiring a friend to work for you, or thinking about taking a job where your friend would be your boss? Think carefully before you do it.

Contrary to what nearly everyone thinks when they’re first considering it, it’s really hard, and very few people come out of it with their friendship intact. For some reason, no one believes this at the beginning. Everyone thinks it will be different for them. But it rarely is.

Over at U.S. News & World Report this week, I wrote about 7 reasons you won't want to manage a friend. Check it out, leave comments over there, and consider yourself warned.

how to explain previous boss was demented?

A reader writes:

My last job was really successful and exciting and I would love to talk about it at length with future employers since I think it's very interesting and highlights a lot of my strengths. I started as an unpaid intern and was promoted to paid assistant within two months. I had a massive amount of responsibility as it was only me, my boss (the owner), and a couple part-timers and interns. In fact, I can honestly say that I ran the office singlehandedly when the boss had a personal emergency that caused her to be out of town for five weeks. All the bills got paid, all the clients were taken care of, I cleaned the office, and I rounded up some new business, all on my own.

The problem is with the reference. My boss has undiagnosed dementia. She has eight out of ten of these symptoms. I have a family member with Alzheimer's and what those symptoms don't really go into detail about is that a person with dementia, especially early-stages, can be really paranoid, angry, and lashes out. My boss was always "eccentric," in fact, everyone I spoke to said that the mark of a good assistant to this woman wasn't any progress in trying to streamline or organize her business in any way, but merely to survive her daily abuse and mercurial moods and whims.

However, after she got back from her emergency, she sweetly told me that she had to let me go because her business was suffering terribly. I asked if there was any feedback or any problems with my performance and she said that no, she loved me and would give me a glowing reference. At first I was ecstatic. I would make way more money in any other job and frankly, it was like I'd suddenly been released from a terrible prison camp. We emailed once or twice over the next couple weeks, when I got two painful surprises:
1. I had been replaced with a paid assistant (i.e., "secretly" fired, I guess).
2. I asked her for that reference and she sent an email that said, essentially, "how dare you ask me for help after all that you did!" along with some personal insults.

I know as well as I can (my personal experience, and asking others who worked with me) that I worked my butt off and I didn't hide dead fish in her office or anything like that when I left that would warrant such anger. My best guess is that this is like my relative with Alzheimer's. She'll accuse other family members of "stealing from her" when they merely pay her utilities, etc. I think that instead of being happy that I took care of the office in her time of need, the experience terrified her, and anything I had moved was stolen, any bills she later forgot to pay was actually something I had messed up, contracts that disappeared into her hoarder apartment I had probably taken away, I stole clients.....I really have no idea since she won't elaborate. I sent her a long apologetic email to that end, but no answer.

The best solution I can come up with is to allude to "difficult working conditions" in my applications, use my coworkers as references, and if I get to the interview stage, plainly state that my old boss has dementia. I can't help but thinking that some future employers may not believe me and that this is hurting my career tremendously. Any ideas?

I think your plan is the right one to use, up until the point where you mention dementia. I wouldn't mention the dementia -- because, no matter how confident you are in your diagnosis, it's your diagnosis, not an official one, and -- when you're talking to people who don't know you and thus don't know that you're not in the habit of throwing around such terms lightly -- it could end up sounding like you're being pejorative or overstating the situation.

But fortunately, you don't need to specify that your boss was suffering from dementia in order to make the basic point you'll need to make to prospective employers if they ask for a reference from her -- which is that your boss promoted you and promised you a glowing reference when she laid you off for financial reasons, but was extremely mercurial and since you left has been freezing you out, but that your coworkers can vouch both for your work and for the difficult temper of the boss.

By the way, any chance you have got a written performance evaluation while you were there? If so, you could also offer up a copy of it to demonstrate that it wasn't until you left that your boss changed her tune.

By the way, speaking of terrible, crazy bosses, I highly recommend this two-part horror/comedy from Radiant Veracity: The Devil Really Does Wear Prada and Part Two.

boss forces coworkers to all share an email account (really)

A reader writes:

Four of us share a gmail address at our small nonprofit. We all work remotely and meet face to face once a month. We label individual mail by name with the gmail folder system. The director encourages staff to read each other's gmail.

The rationale for this system is that as we work remotely it allows us to keep abreast of each other's business. As you may have surmised, the director is the only one who reads all emails and comments not only on pending work, but timeliness, and content of employee correspondence.

The staff would prefer individual email, but are unable to get around this impasse.

This is the one of the weirder practices I've ever heard of. Really?

Your manager is all of the following: a control freak, an ass, a snoop, and a bad manager.

And he needs to learn more appropriate ways of overseeing work so that he doesn't have to rummage around in people's email. I would bet a substantial amount of money that this isn't the only way in which he's managing poorly; you don't do something like this if you're managing effectively in other areas.

Of course, it's often very difficult to deal with an ass when he's in charge of you. I suggest that you and your coworkers talk to him as a group and tell him that the current system is inefficient for all of you and that you're going to set up individual email accounts like the rest of the world.

There are plenty of other ways for you to "stay abreast of each other's work." Set up some shared Google documents or something. You can't work effectively when someone is micromanaging every aspect of your communications with others.

Now, will he go for it? Maybe not. But your best bet is to approach him as a group and frame it as something that's impeding your effectiveness and efficiency.

Screw this guy though. I hate him, just from your seven sentences.

how the hiring process works on the employer's side

A couple of people have asked about this recently, so I've put together a description of how the hiring process works on my side. Keep in mind that this is just how I do it -- other hiring managers do it differently, and larger companies often automate the early stages of this.

1. A job is posted and applications start coming in. The number of applications we get varies depending on the position, but it's unusual to get fewer than 100 for any job. For some types of jobs, we'll often get 200 to 400. (That's most often the case with jobs that don't require a specific type of experience, but just require being generally smart and competent. And once when I advertised for a writer, I got close to 500; apparently everyone wants to get paid to write.)

2. The applications get printed out and come to me in hard copy, thanks to someone fabulous who helps me with hiring, because I like to be able to write notes on them. I may be alone in doing that; a lot of people do it electronically at this stage.

3. I do an initial screen, which means I scan the cover letter and scan the resume. Often this initial scan is as short as 45 seconds, because on many, many applications it's immediately clear that the person doesn't have the experience or skill set I'm looking for. Partly this is because of people who are applying to every job they see, and partly it's because of people either not believing or not paying attention to the job requirements. I use some flexibility here; I'm definitely not 100% rigid about sticking to the listed qualifications, but I'm only willing to deviate so far, since I listed them for a reason.

4. Then I'm left with the group who didn't get immediately discarded in the initial scan. Now I look at each of these more closely. I read every word of the cover letter this time and really scrutinize the resume. As a result, some more people get cut.

5. The group remaining is the candidate pool who I'm going to interact with. This group generally gets asked to submit a writing sample, do a written exercise, or provide some other sort of supplemental material relevant to the position. (Many places don't do this at all, and many places that do do it after the interview. I do it at this stage because I've found it's hugely helpful in identifying the strongest matches early on.)

6. Now it's on to phone interviews, for the best candidates who made it through after the last step. I usually do anywhere from 8 to 15 phone interviews for a position. These are pretty short -- 15-20 minutes (or shorter if I realize while we're talking that the candidate isn't right), and they're just to gather more information about the candidate, including whether or not she's crazy. A lot of people get cut at this stage, because once you get on the phone with someone, you often quickly discover it's not a good match -- either because (a) once they start talking about the details of their experience, you discover it isn't quite what you need, or (b) they take themselves out of the running through their behavior, as described here.

I make lots of notes at this stage, some of them weirdly enthusiastic. When I like a candidate, I've been known to excitedly write "yes! yes!" on her resume. If there were a hiring manager version of writing "Mrs. Brad Pitt" like a schoolgirl, with a heart over the "i," this would be it.

7. Now that I'm done with phone interviews, I figure out who the finalist candidates are, and those are the ones I bring in for in-person interviews. I generally want to bring in four or five people.

And you know the rest. There are interviews, reference-checks, a job offer is made, rejections are sent, blah blah blah. But that's what it looks like on the inside, at least for me.

What about you guys, those of you who hire? How different are we?

graduated a year ago, still can't get hired

A reader writes:

I graduated from college last spring in June of 2008 and have been searching for employment since then but unfortunately I haven't been able to find a job. I have even looked at minimum wage jobs outside of my field as a dishwasher, custodian, painter etc. I was in competition for those jobs with people who were laid off with mba's and regular blue collar workers. It was a rather interesting experience, almost like something out of a twilight zone episode.

The advice I've continually gotten from employers was that I should try to attend graduate school. I can understand where they're coming from but I honestly don't think that's the best idea to do, to hide out in graduate school and accumulate more debt. I realized something was wrong when I was speaking with some of my friends about student loans. We were all talking about how much we owed, you know the usual numbers came out 50k, 30k, 90k and then when it came to me I said 5k. I knew something was horribly wrong being that I can't even get a measly job that will help me pay off 5k of debt.

I'm no stranger to working menial jobs, that's how I paid most of my way through college, earning skills from graphic design to driving forklifts, yet I still can't find employment. I sometimes wonder is it me? Or is it that I have just been brainwashed into thinking this piece of paper (bachelors degree) that I bought would actually help me to gain some footing? I keep updating and changing my resume and cover letter but sometimes I feel as if I'm making paper airplanes over and over again. I just would like to know if you have some advice for me or any other people like myself having difficulties.

I'm sorry. That sucks. You're not alone, and because you're not alone, it's even harder -- all those other job searchers are making it even harder. Simply put, there are more job searchers than there are jobs right now. That means that an awful lot of people are going through this. And it's even harder for recent grads without an established work history. I linked to this scary article the other day, showing that only 19% of recent grads have found work so far.

So yeah, it's kind of crappy right now.

Of course, it could still be you. Without seeing your resume and cover letter and knowing how you come across in interviews, I can't say that it's not you, in addition to the economy. It could be -- and if it is, frankly that's good news, because it means you can change it. There is a ton of advice available on how to write a good resume and cover letter and do well in an interview -- are you reading it and living it? Slog through the archives here and at other similar blogs and see if any of that helps.

Aside from making sure you're coming across as a good candidate, consider all the usual advice about volunteering, networking the hell out of everyone you know, blah blah. Here's a recent post that covers this more extensively: advice for a recent grad

As for graduate school, I think these people might be advising it because it's an easy answer. But unless you want to go into a field that requires a graduate degree, it's a very expensive and unnecessary way to just put off the day of reckoning.

Hang in there.

how college students can prepare now to job search later

With recent college graduates pouring into a tight job market -- and only 19 percent finding work so far -- it's an unnerving time to be looking for a first job.

I receive all too many resumes from recent grads who have literally no work experience: nothing, not internships, not temp jobs, nothing at all. And since they're competing against candidates who do have experience, they're at an enormous disadvantage.

If you're still in school, there are actions you can take now to prepare you to have a leg up when you graduate. Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I explain how you can ensure you're not at the bottom of that pile of resumes when you graduate and start looking for work. Please check it out -- and maybe pass it along to current students you may know!

I'm going to stereotype you and tell you YOU're biased if you disagree

Brazen Careerist does it again.

On Friday, they ran an article by someone with little expertise in the topic, explaining how to manage different generations. It was full of condescension and ignorance. Examples:

Schedule flexibility is also important to boomers - not that they’ll ever be late, though. I am pretty sure it all boils down to a Baby Boomer not wanting to be told what to do by someone younger because seniority is what they believe still rules in the workplace and, naturally, because they’re older they expect to be respected.

and

Gen X: Indeed they too need to feel respected because they’re close enough to GenY’s age to still kick your ass remember what it’s like to be your age and take advantage of what they know you don’t know.

(Typos are hers here and in the excerpt below.)

Okay, so whatever, this is typical Brazen Careerist BS at this point. But today, she posted a follow-up, defending herself against all the people who left criticism at her original post. Here's her conclusion:

it identified to me that there are people out there who instantly react negatively when confronted with generational stereotypes. By exposing what possibly could be viewed as a bias an condemning me for it, the commenters in turn showed their biases as well, without even realizing it.

In other words, rather than consider that the commenters criticized her for a reason, instead she accused them of just being biased. We're biased against ... bias, I guess.

Is anyone else getting sick of bloggers with no experience giving out terrible advice that could actually harm people professionally? And in this case, it's going to harm the author when a future employer finds it. Brazen Careerist might be the worst of it, since it's obviously encouraging its writers -- most/all of them inexperienced new workers -- to be provocative rather than to be right or to write what they know, as we saw here and here.

It's one thing to be mistaken originally; it happens to all of us. But when people point out how your thinking might be mistaken, attacking them is a really weird response. (Notice I'm not following the author's lead and attributing this kind of thing to Gen Y -- frankly, no one I know in Gen Y behaves this way, so I'm not sure where they're finding these writers.)