don't mention your "affluent family" in your cover letter

Seriously, it's really not relevant that you come from an "affluent political family." Why is it in your cover letter?

too young/immature for a promotion?

A reader writes:

I'm young (19) and work for a video store chain. My store manager has told me she thinks I'm too young and too "emotionally immature" to become a manager. I'm not sure what to think of that. She's said some seriously inappropriate things to me in the past, such as berating me about my lack of religious beliefs and the like.

I'm not sure what to think. I'd really like to become management, I'm more than ready for it performance-wise, I've shown that left right and sideways. She's actually going to hire outside the company and train them from the ground up to be a manager (which is very rare in our company, which promotes within, very very few managers are hired from outside) as opposed to promoting me.

I hate to constantly put her down, but everyone saw it coming, because she's the kind of person who would put the store in a bad place just to be cruel/make a point. I know it'd be better for me to NOT seek anything UNDER her management, but I'm trying to make due with what I've got.

I figured I'd ask what you thought of the situation, and let me know: Is it ageism? Cruelty? Just a wish to keep someone from moving up?

There are a few possibilities:

1. The problem is her. She's not a good manager, has an unwarranted personal issue with you, and/or believes age matters more than abilities.

2. The problem is you. Maybe you are too "emotionally immature" for the promotion, although that kind of explanation is unhelpful in the extreme -- if there are real issues here, she needs to explain to you exactly what behaviors are problematic and what you should change, not just slap a vague label like that on you.

3. Some combination of the above. In fact, if the answer is indeed #2, she still sucks as a manager for not providing you with better feedback.

Now, you're pretty sure that it's not #2. But keep in mind that when an employee is part of the problem, they very often don't see it -- especially when there's a crappy manager around who it's easy to attribute everything to. So keep an open mind about whether she might have any sort of valid point underneath her crappiness.

So how to proceed? Talk to your manager. Drop any defensiveness (I'm not saying you have any, but many people would in this situation ... and if you do, getting rid of it before this conversation will increase your chances of a good outcome here). Tell her that you really want to move up in the company, if not immediately then in the future, and that you'd like her help and advice on figuring out what you need to do to lay the groundwork for that to happen. Ask her to give you candid feedback on how you can begin preparing yourself for eventual increased responsibility.

If she gives you vague, unhelpful answers like "emotionally immature," ask her to help you understand what that means with specific examples. If she just tells you that you're too young, ask her to help you understand how that affects your work performance so that you can work on whatever the obstacle is.

A key point: Be truly open to hearing what she has to say. Don't write her off just yet, no matter how tempted you may be to do so. Even if she's a terrible communicator (which seems pretty likely), it's possible she actually does have useful input to give you. And even if you end up deciding it's not useful, it's still helpful for you to know what she's thinking, so you can make your decisions with fuller information.

Of course, you do have another option, one I probably don't recommend: You could go over her head to your regional manager or whatever system the company has set up for that sort of thing, to explain that you haven't been able to get useful feedback from your manager. But that can potentially backfire on you, so you'd want to proceed very, very carefully with something like that.

By the way, a side note: Berating you about religion is a huge problem -- depending on the specifics, it's probably illegal (there are laws against religious discrimination in the workplace). She apparently doesn't realize that and it would be reasonable to point it out, either to her or someone above her. But again, proceed with some diplomacy on that one.

Good luck!

why you didn't get hired

The job looked perfect for you. The description matched your experience and skills so perfectly, you could almost visualize yourself at your new desk. But now you're staring at a rejection E-mail and can't figure out what happened.

Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I lay out some of the most common reasons you might not have been chosen for a job, no matter how qualified you felt you were. Check it out.

4 questions with Ask a Manager

Check it out. It's four questions with me, over at William Tincup's JPIE blog.

can volunteering lead to a job offer?

A reader writes:

I've just starting reading your blog (obsessively) and completely love it. I'm about to graduate, completely terrified, and the advice you provide has made me feel infinitely more confident that I might not end up living in a cardboard box clutching my Bachelor's Degrees and sobbing into my UMass sweatshirt.

My question is this: There's a non-profit company in Boston that I really would love to work for. Their mission is in line with my own passions, I think that working for them would make my work feel truly valuable, and there are a lot of things that I could do there that I think I would enjoy. As a new grad however, I don't know that I have the experience to get hired for them, but I do have the option of volunteering. They have a lot of positions for volunteering, including some office positions to help with things like mailings and filing. I feel as though that might be an excellent way to get a foot in the door; I could meet people at the company and prove my enthusiasm and work ethic first hand. However, I worry that this is pointless either because volunteers are never really considered for paying positions, or because it might even be seen as underhanded because essentially I would be volunteering my time with an ulterior motive.

What do you think? Should I forget it entirely? Give it a chance but be upfront about hoping to land a job? Just go be the best volunteer they've ever had until they're begging to hire me? I should note that I completely understand that volunteering would in no way entitle me to a job, and I would be happy to give my time to a great company even if it didn't work out as I hoped.

Thank you so much for doing what you do! It really makes a difference. Reading your blog makes me feel that I might have a shot at getting to show someone what I am capable of. It's so frustrating to know that on paper you are someone that will just be tossed in the trash, and your advice gives me hope that I might be able to get someone to take a second look. Thank you.

I normally edit out compliments out of some weird sense of ... propriety? But what the hell -- these are so nice that I left them in. I enjoy lavish praise.

Absolutely you should volunteer! And you should tell them that you're hoping to be considered for a paying job at some point. People do this all the time; it's completely normal and you will not look underhanded in the least. To the contrary, they'll welcome this evidence of your engagement in their work.

If you want to work for a particular nonprofit, volunteering is a great, great way to get a foot in the door. You get to meet inside players and form relationships, get early leads on upcoming openings, and you get to demonstrate that you are reliable, talented, organized, efficient, skilled, and all the other things people look for in new hires.

Here's the most important part: By volunteering, you become a known quantity. If I have a candidate who's qualified for a job and she's a known quantity -- meaning that I know from direct experience with her that she's reliable, competent, sane, etc. -- I will almost always go with the known quantity over a marginally more qualified candidate who is a stranger to me. The reason for this is that you simply can never get to know someone as well in interviews as you can by actually working with them. The candidate who seems great in interviews can end up being flaky, disorganized, difficult to work with, all sorts of problematic things that someone can manage to hide during the hiring process. But someone you've actually worked with? You know what you're getting. And volunteering lets you become that known quantity.

(Of course, you have to be a good known quantity. That means you should treat your volunteer work as seriously as you would a paying job.)

By the way, I got one of my first jobs by volunteering. I'd been volunteering in a nonprofit's office for a few months when someone suddenly quit. They knew me and my work, and they plugged me right into the position without ever advertising it. In fact, that job led me on the path that put me in the job that I'm in today.

Go for it. Worst case scenario is that you don't end up being offered a paying job there but you've spent time helping a charity you feel good about, you've made new contacts, and you have additional work to put on your resume (because yes, volunteer work should absolutely go on your resume). Good luck!

rejecting candidates because of their neighborhood

A reader writes:

During a workshop I attended, an employment counselor mentioned that some candidates can be rejected simply because of their zip code. Apparently, some hiring managers will screen out applications when residences are in zip codes implicating problems, such as being chronically late for work. Is this something you've been aware of?

Not only am I not aware of it, but it would almost certainly raise legal issues if the neighborhoods being screened out happened to have predominantly minorities living there. But legal issues aside, it's obviously a terrible idea.

In fact, this is such a bad idea (and as far as I know, not a normal practice) that I can only conclude that the "employment counselor" at this workshop didn't know what the hell he or she was talking about. I'd love to know what else she told you.

phone interviews: the sanity check

I don't know how I didn't know about Rands in Repose until just now, but somehow I didn't. Go read the Sanity Check, his brilliant essay on phone interviews!