Ask a Manager

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Is this application process excessive?

I am applying for a director position that I was recruited to apply for (via a LinkedIn recruiter). The job description has changed and so have the requirements. I am beginning to think the application process is excessive? The process is such: cover letter, resume, four-question response (one-pager), behavior assessment, cognitive assessment, provide five work samples, six questions on culture/climate as relates to the company’s mission and how candidate fit (they stated they expect candidates to spend one hour at least on it), and re-creating a work sample project based on one of the companies core competencies/beliefs/plans, then email the project sample and ask questions, get feedback, and re-tweak as needed.

This to me is asking lots for a candidate before the interview. Am I off-base, or is this the new norm as companies have less face-to-face time with folks they hire? (This is a remote position.) Maybe I’m old school but cover letter, resume, interview, and even work samples seem adequate.

This is all before you’re even interviewed?! Yes, this is excessive. No, it’s not a new norm. No, you’re not old school or off-base.

This would be excessive even after you’ve been interviewed. Before you’ve been interviewed, it’s ludicrous — you haven’t had any chance to learn about the position and ask your own questions to determine if you’re even interested … and if they haven’t done even an initial screen to determine that you’re a plausible candidate, it’s in the realm of full-on offensive, given how utterly thoughtless it would be of your time. (To be clear, it’s utterly thoughtless regardless, but asking you to do all this before even bothered to assess you against their needs and the rest of the candidate pool would move it to a new level.)

Before you’ve been interviewed, it’s reasonable to ask for a resume, cover letter, and one existing work sample or possibly some very short answers to a very small number of very short questions. After they’ve done some initial screening and determined you’re plausible, it’s reasonable to ask for a very short exercise/work simulation. Once they interview you and you’ve been able to ask your own questions and establish mutual interest, it’s reasonable to ask for a little more — but at no point all of it. (And asking you to spend time pre-interview writing out answers to questions that they could just ask you in the interview — or going through a work/feedback/revise cycle — is just ridiculously thoughtless.)

Pass on this company.

2. How do I answer coworkers’ questions about all my band-aids?

I have obsessive compulsive disorder, autism, and ADHD, which my coworkers do not know about and I’d like to keep it that way. As you might be able to imagine, just making it through a day can be tough sometimes (in addition to my neurodivergencies, I also have depression and PTSD; talk about a cocktail!). One of the ways I soothe my anxiety is by picking the skin around my nails, often to the point where there are wounds. I’m working with a therapist and have been for years, but since it’s an anxiety behavior related to my three conditions, it’s not an easy habit to break. I’m quite good at hiding the actual habit from my coworkers, but not the consequences.

In order for me to, you know, not have giant gaping wounds on my fingers, I wear band-aids so that any particularly bad wounds can heal. But it’s never just one band-aid — sometimes it’s eight, nine, or even all my fingers. I even keep band-aids in my work bag in case I’ve had a particularly bad episode so I can patch myself up, or just replace one that’s looking kinda raggedy.

I recently had a coworker ask me about the band-aids (I was wearing seven at the time) and I just stammered out a response about being clumsy in the kitchen, because I both have never had anyone ask me about it and am afraid of accidentally saying something about my conditions (which would probably open a whole other can of worms). My company is very clear that they support people with disabilities and have committed to having at least 15% of the workforce be people with disabilities, but I’m still afraid of saying something and being treated differently. Nobody is so clumsy as to cut eight or nine fingers in the kitchen and I could tell my coworker was skeptical. I know bringing awareness to different types of neurodivergencies is important, and I’m okay with being the way I am, but I’ve disclosed to other employers before and have been treated differently, reprimanded unfairly, or even let go as being “not a good fit,” so I feel like my hesitancy is warranted. Do you have any advice for things I could say when people ask about my fingers?

“Oh, it’s a medical thing! Nothing to worry about.”

Because it is. They don’t need to know the details. “Medical thing” could cover anything from bad eczema to skin ulcers to who knows what.

Generally people who ask questions like this just assume there will be an interesting story about a one-time injury that you won’t feel uncomfortable sharing and they aren’t considering that it might be something more personal. If you breezily say “it’s just a medical thing,” most reasonably polite people will understand the subtext is “that’s all the info I want to share.” If someone does push for more, you can say, “Oh, nothing I want to get into at work, but I’m fine!”

3. Spotting mistakes in my cover letter after sending it in

I am a high school English teacher. I also tend to make typos when I’m tired or when stakes are high (for example, I filled in the wrong boxes on my college applications so my name — let’s say Harry James Potter — got printed as Harry James Potter James Potter). I am also experienced and good at what I do, so this hasn’t held me back as much as one would expect.

With that said, I am casually applying for other teaching jobs (I don’t need a new position but wouldn’t mind moving to a better paying district) and I noticed that I wrote the wrong school name repeatedly on one of my cover letters and email sending the cover letter in. It’s not a major difference (think “Fair Hills Magnet School” vs “Fair Hill Charter School”) but it does imply I haven’t done my research and that I don’t understand the type of the school. I’m tempted to email the hiring principal again and correct my mistake, but I’m worried that will look desperate and draw her attention to the matter.

Obviously this job is out the window, but should this happen to me — or anyone else in the future — what’s best practice here? Immediately email and correct? Ignore until it’s brought up? Change my name and move to a different country and never work in the field again? I’m aware of the irony with the specific subject that I teach and I know if I was on the other side of the table, I’d blackball myself from the district.

With a little, insignificant typo, ignore it and hope for the best. People are human and make mistakes, even outstanding candidates. But with something significant (like the name and type of the school, something they’re likely to notice and wonder about), it does make sense to email to correct it. Don’t make a big, lengthy thing out of it — just “how mortifying, I just realized I wrote ‘Fair Hills Magnet School’ but I of course realize you are a charter school and your name is Fair Hill.”

But more importantly, since it’s an ongoing issue, can you build a check into your process to catch it before stuff goes out this way? For example, can you have a checklist of things you look at before you consider a cover letter final, like employer name, date, your name, etc.? I’d rather you take an extra minute to spot it before it happens than have to correct it afterwards.

4. How to help underpaid female coworkers

My fiance recently started his first salaried office job at a small (less than 10 employees) company in a large city. He has two female coworkers who both work in the same role he does. One of them has been at the company in that role for two years, and the other was hired at the same time he was. He recently found out he’s being paid more than both of them by about $3,000 for the same work. His industry is a struggling one that pays poorly overall, and he’s working in an entry-level role, so his pay is already barely enough to cover a rented apartment with roommates — and his coworkers are making even less!

He’s incensed about this and I encouraged him to advocate to his boss (the man who owns the company) on behalf of his coworkers since his boss has already demonstrated he values my partner more. From what he’s told me, the boss is a holdover from a different time — one where paying women less for equal work was acceptable. He also sounds like he’s very easily angered by trivial things, and my partner is afraid that bringing it up will result in retaliation either against him or against the two coworkers. Because it’s such a small company, it doesn’t have an HR department my partner can go to.

But I really think that if women who aren’t receiving equal pay don’t have solidarity from their male colleagues, this whole stupid gender pay gap our society has insisted on maintaining is never going to be fixed. Is there anything he can do to help his coworkers receive equitable treatment without bringing the wrath of an out-of-touch and regressive boss down on all of their heads?

He can talk to his coworkers and tell them what he’s making, and he can tell them about the Equal Pay Act (which makes this illegal if they’re doing the same work, unless the pay difference is due to an established seniority or merit system, which doesn’t sound like the case). He should also tell them about the National Labor Relations Act, which protects employees’ right to discuss salary with each other, because the owner sounds like the type who will try to come down on them for that too. (That protection only applies to non-supervisory employees, but since this is an entry-role role, they’re covered.) From there, his coworkers can decide if they want to use the info about his salary as background info or explicitly in their own negotiations and whether they want to make this a group push or not. But the first step is for him to share the info with them.

5. I need to move up my resignation date

I finally landed an absolute dream of a job and am leaving my current company on good terms. My new job initially gave me a start date four weeks from when I signed the offer, so I was able to give three weeks notice and also take a week for myself.

They’ve now come back asking if I could start earlier, and I told them yes. Now, though, I have to move up my resignation date to the standard two weeks. Honestly, I’m tempted to just skip the time off I’ve taken to avoid the awkward conversation.

How would you got about having this conversation? Can I just send an email?

Don’t skip the week off you were planning! You tried to give extra generous notice but things changed and now you’ve got to give the standard two weeks. This isn’t like suddenly leaving them with only one week of notice, or if you’d sprung on them halfway through your notice period that actually you’re going to leave tomorrow; it’s just as if you’d first resigned today and given the normal two weeks. That’s not a major crime.

If you work in-person, don’t do it over email. Go talk to your boss in person (today!) and say, “Unfortunately I was hoping to be able to give extra notice but I’ve just found out circumstances have changed and I need to give a standard two weeks after all, starting today, so my last day will be (date).”