my manager refuses to give me better pay or better hours

A reader writes:

I have been working at the same job going on four years and I am still part-time. This would not really bother me other than the fact that there are a few guys, younger than myself, who get better hours and better pay and haven't been there nearly as long as I have.

It's not that I don't work, I bust my butt every single day and my manager sees this, but still refuses to put me on full-time or give me a better wage. The only reason I can think of why these other guys are getting everything over me is because they are just like my manager, they drink, party, etc. I do not do any of these things.

I've approached him a few times about a better wage or full-time, every time it's the same about the wage, "the company can't afford it." This I understand. The thing that gets me with this is when I ask about being put on full-time, he tells me there is a "hiring freeze" and he cannot. Then a week or so later there is a new guy/lady working full-time making better money than myself and they are not worth a cuss. They won't work and they are all ARROGANT! I'm at my wits end!

What should I do? Should I stick it out here or quit? I'm in college and barely making it right now, money-wise, but I have time to work more, but as I said my manager refuses to help me out!

Something's going on here, but I don't know what it is. Your manager clearly isn't being straight with you -- telling you there's a hiring freeze and then hiring someone else a week later, and not even bothering to come back to you to explain. The fact that he doesn't circle back to you to provide some sort of context sends a pretty disrespectful message.

If you want to give it one final shot, you can say to your manager: "I'm confused. When we've talked in the past about the possibility of me going full-time, you've told me there's a hiring freeze, but each time someone new has been hired soon after that. This makes me think that something else is going on -- is it something about my performance or something that you'd like to see me doing differently? I'd really like feedback if it is." And if he denies there are any performance problems, then say, "Can you tell me what I can do to work toward full-time hours?"

It's possible that you'll learn something you didn't know, about something he doesn't like about your work. But I wouldn't count on it -- it sounds like this guy is either (a) a wimp who can't bring himself to tell you that the quality of your work isn't good enough or (b) a jerk who just doesn't like you and is setting your hours and pay based on that.

At some point, you need to assume that nothing will change, since all signs are screaming that pretty loudly and really, it's been four years. And so you need to answer this question for yourself: Assuming that nothing is ever going to change, do you want to stay or leave? For all I know, maybe you want to stay anyway. Maybe you like the work well enough, despite these aggravations, that the answer is to accept that nothing is going to change but that you're going to continue working there anyway. 

But if not, then why on earth wouldn't you look elsewhere? After all, you can't make your manager do what you want, but you do have power in this situation -- the power to decide whether or not to accept what he's offering you. 

Often in these situations where people feel angry and feel mistreated, they lose sight of the fact that they do (usually) have options, and I think that's happening here. If you don't like what's being offered, go out there and see what other offers the world has for you. You might find one you like a lot better -- or you might decide that you'd rather stay put, despite the current terms. But you'll be picking it deliberately, rather than just accepting it by default and feeling frustrated.

update from reader who asked about long hours and low pay to get experience

Remember those "where are they now" updates that we did late last year? Here's a new one.

You might remember this reader from back in June, when she wrote in to ask if she should take a job with really long hours and low pay in order to get experience. Complicating her decision was this: "I haven't had any success with my job search (the numbers are just depressing, so I'll spare you) and I would feel guilty, and somewhat desperate, if I turned down a resume-building job."

After her letter was published here, she and I had some further back-and-forth about the particular organization she was considering, nonprofit jobs in general, and her cover letter, which I thought was too generic (as most are). Here's her update:

After reading the thoughtful advice you and your readers provided, I ultimately turned down the job offer. I liked the idea of the work, but the long hours, low pay, and placement - downtown Boston - made the reality of the situation seem rather impossible.

I took a long, hard look at my resume and qualifications and decided to pursue careers in a very specific segment of non-profit work. I tailored my resume, rewrote my cover letter, and signed up for job board alerts dedicated to the field I had chosen. After receiving your advice, my applications started to get noticed by a wide variety of employers, and I found myself interviewing potential organizations! It was pretty exciting to be seeking an employer I meshed with rather than desperately applying to a slew of jobs that I only had the vaguest of interest and experience.

Narrowing my job search ended successfully this afternoon, as I received an offer for an entry-level position at my favorite organization. I'm so thrilled to have this opportunity, and amazed that I was able to land my "dream entry-level position" three months after graduation without previously building a strong network. The advice you offered, both privately and through your blog, was truly invaluable, as I doubt I would be embarking on my career this soon without it. Thank you for helping me transform from a "recent grad" to a "young professional"!

This is pretty awesomely inspirational, and a real testament to the power of a focused job search, a great cover letter, and resisting the unhealthy power dynamics that are so easy to fall into when job searching. Congratulations!

gimmicks have no place in the hiring process

I want to highlight something that I just posted in response to a comment on yesterday's post, because I think it's a message worth repeating more widely. This is in response to a question about using nice paper for your resume or sending it by Priority Mail:

The day that I'm giving candidates extra credit for using nice paper or high-quality ink or sending an application by Priority Mail is the day that someone needs to ban me from hiring, because I'm no longer doing my job right.

My job is to discern who the best candidate is. At best, gimmicks don't matter. At worst, they get in the way or even hurt. At least if you're dealing with someone who's good at their job (which, admittedly, you may not be).

And here's an additional point: If you get a job by using a gimmick to "stand out," you've just self-selected for a manager who responds to gimmicks over merit. Is that the place you want to work?

I think we're in danger of this gimmick issue becoming my new rant, right after companies that don't respond to job applicants.

surprise -- it's a phone interview that you didn't know was coming!

A reader writes:

Is it customary to surprise applicants with a phone interview?

I'm applying for an internal promotion with my current employer. I had an appointment to call my potential boss to ask questions about the position (this is standard practice at my company). HR told me I would have a phone interview Tuesday.

When I called the boss today - surprise! He had HR on the line, and asked if I could do the phone interview today instead of an informal Q and A session with him as we had planned. I was caught off guard and didn't give the best interview. I'm not sure whether they did this on purpose as a stress test or what. 

Do you think surprise interviews are a good way to produce qualified candidates? (I don't think so, but maybe I'm just upset because my interview didn't go well and I need to prepare further in advance or something.)

It's not uncommon, and it's not a good idea.

In fact, even worse than your situation, there's an epidemic of employers calling applicants and trying to phone-interview them on the spot, without any warning or advance notice. And many applicants are afraid to say that it's not a good time for them and to try to reschedule, because often they never get called back after that -- so you have people trying to do a phone interview outside the grocery store, frantically trying to remember which job this was at which company, with zero preparation. 

It's obvious why this isn't good for the candidate, but it's not good for the employer either: Interviewing a candidate who just woke up or is late for a meeting or just hasn't had time to focus their brain on your needs isn't going to give you the most useful information about that candidate. The only exception to this might be if you're interviewing for a position that requires really compelling extemporaneous speaking, and even then I'm skeptical.

Frankly, operating this way is the sign of a employer (or at least their HR rep) just going through the motions, trying to check off boxes as if hiring is one more chore to get through, rather than something that's crucial to the success of the organization.

Now, your case is a little different. You had warning that you'd be talking to your prospective boss at that time but you were told to prepare for a different sort of conversation. That said, you probably should have prepared for the informal Q&A session in much the same way as you'd have prepared for a more formal phone interview, since the boss certainly could have had his own questions to throw right back at you.  So I'd say that this is less about not giving you the chance to prepare and more about the fact that it can be mentally jarring to discover that the conversation you thought you were going to have is actually going to be a different type of conversation (in other words, it's more about mental preparation than substantive preparation).

I doubt they did this on purpose. That kind of conniving would be pretty unusual. What's more likely is that they're trying to move more quickly than than originally planned (or they moved too slowly at first and now need to make up for it) and when HR heard you were going to be talking with the manager that day, someone said, "Hey, let's do the phone screen at that time too so that we can keep this moving."

They should have told you in advance, but the fact that they didn't is -- I suspect -- less indicative of deliberate strategy and more indicative of the fact that employers often neglect to think about what kind of candidate experience they're creating, and what the impact of that experience is on their ability to hire the best candidate. That's a very, very common aspect of job-searching, and it's not in anyone's best interests.

let's ring the death knell for postal mail in the hiring process

Several people have asked me recently about whether there's any advantage to sending your resume -- or later follow-up -- by postal mail.

I'm sure there are still some hiring managers out there who would disagree, but I hate postal mail in the hiring process for the following reasons:

1. It takes extra time. I keep everything electronically, so getting something by postal mail (or fax, for that matter) requires extra effort to integrate it with the rest of my files. 

2. I can't forward it electronically. I like being able to forward a resume to others to get input, or even to say "hey, this guy applied for position X, but you might like him for position Y that you're hiring for." 

3. To me, it feels a little old-school, even almost oddly naive. Like you might have read a job-hunting guide from 1987.

If you're using postal mail to try to stand out, consider that that might not be the way to achieve it.

In fact, if you ever find yourself thinking "I'm going to do ___ to stand out from all the other candidates," you better be referring to (a) being an incredibly qualified candidate, (b) writing a great cover letter, and/or (c) being friendly, responsive, thoughtful, and enthusiastic. If you're filling in the blank in that sentence with anything not related to the actual quality of your candidacy, you're probably getting too gimmicky and losing focus on what really does stand out.

P.S. Totally unrelated: If you haven't taken my quick survey yet, please take it now ... and thanks!

tell me what you think

You ask me questions all the time, and now I want to ask you a couple.

I'm working with Ben Eubanks to create something kind of awesome, but I want to ask you a couple of questions in order to narrow down the direction we're taking it in so that we can make sure it actually has value to you.

Would you answer four short questions for me? All sorts of excitement awaits you in a few weeks if you do (including something free in exchange for your help) ...

TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

when I talk to HR, don't they have to keep it confidential?

A reader writes:

I had a conversation with the HR Director about something happening in my department. She went to my boss with the issue, citing me as the source. This was not an official complaint by me, as we were not in her office but in the lunchroom. However, I considered conversations with HR professionals to be in confidence. Was I in error?

HR people aren't doctors or priests; there's no confidentiality statute and you shouldn't assume confidentiality when talking to them, even if you're at lunch. Even if you're talking to them when you run into them at the grocery store over the weekend.

HR is there to serve the company; their loyalty and responsibilities are to the employer. If they hear information that they judge needs to be shared or used to address a situation, their job obligates them to do that. A parallel: Imagine you're a computer programmer and you learn there's a serious bug in the software you're working on, but you do nothing. You'd be being negligent and not doing your job, right? It's the same thing with HR.

Now, in some cases, you can talk to HR in confidence if you explicitly work out an understanding of confidentiality before you share. But even then, it might not really be kept confidential. I've seen plenty of cases where a HR person judged that the best interests of the company required that the information be passed along, even after promising confidentiality to the employee.

Additionally, there are cases where HR is actually required to report things, no matter how vehemently the employee requests confidentiality: They have to report any concerns about harassment or illegal behavior, even if you beg them not to.

Now, should it be this way? Is HR in the wrong to operate like this?  The reality is, HR is there to serve the interests of the employer. To the extent that they also serve the interests of the employees, it's in service of the larger goal of serving the company. For instance, they may do work on employee retention or morale -- but that's because it's in the employer's interests to retain good employees and to care about morale, not because their primary "clients" are employees. And similarly, if HR hears about, say, an incompetent or struggling manager, HR's job is (generally) to find a way to address it.  They can't remain quiet if that would violate their professional obligation to the company.

But there are good ways and bad ways of doing this:

Bad = letting an employee think something will be confidential but then sharing it anyway

Good = explaining to the employee that it can't be confidential and how the information will be used, and possibly agreeing to keep their name out of it to the extent possible (which may be zero, depending)

HR people (or managers, for that matter) who mislead employees about confidentiality not only are operating without integrity but are also pretty much guaranteeing that over time no one will trust them, respect them, or tell them anything.

But HR people and managers who are clear and direct about how they may need to use information -- and who don't promise confidentiality before knowing if they can really keep that promise, instead saying explicitly, "I can't promise you that I can keep what you tell me off-the-record; I don't want you to think something is private because I may end up being obligated to share it" -- are generally able to maintain trusting and professional relationships with those around them. 

So back to your situation: Was the HR director in the wrong? It doesn't sound like you asked for or she promised confidentiality. You could definitely argue that she should have made a point of telling you that she would need to act on the information, but you could also argue that she assumed that was understood by virtue of you talking with her about it at all. 

Overall, never assume confidentiality.