It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Can we ask an employee to use a less ethnic-sounding name?
Am I allowed to ask an employee to go by a shortened nickname instead of their ethnic name. We are hiring an employee with a very ethnic name. Can we ask her to shorten it to something more friendly? Think Sally for Salma. This is a sales position and we are concerned about potential client prejudice and we think it’s easier for people to pronounce the shorter name but we also don’t want to insult her. We also don’t want to get sued…
Oh my goodness, no. Absolutely not. Under no circumstances.
That’s her name. It’s not friendly or unfriendly; it’s just what she’s called. It would be incredibly rude, alienating, and xenophobic to ask her to use a different one.
2. How should I tell job applicants about our office’s drinking culture?
The company I work for has a “youthful,” “fun” culture, and that seems to mean that alcohol is sometimes part of the work day. (I don’t mean to say that anyone is pressured to drink, or that we drink often! But alcohol seems to be a regular part of any special occasion at the company, there’s beer available in the fridge for after work, and there were several bottles of wine and liquor as gifts in a recent gift swap.)
I hope I’m going to get to hire someone to join my team next year and I think this aspect of the company culture is something I should tell applicants about, but I’m not sure how or when to bring it up. On the one hand, this could be a difficult work environment for anyone who’s in recovery from alcoholism, so I want to give enough information to let anyone in recovery self-select out if that’s what they need to do; on the other hand, I would really rather not hire someone who thinks drinking at work is a great perk, so I don’t want to put too much emphasis on it. Do you have any suggestions for what to tell applicants about this and at what point in the hiring process I should bring it up? I don’t want to ask anyone their history with alcohol, just give them the information they need to make a good decision–whether that’s to self-select out or plan to request some form of accommodations.
We’re also a dog-friendly office and I have similar concerns there, but I can probably use a similar approach to warn applicants about that.
(My main complaint about the occasional drinking and about having dogs in the office is that I think it must needlessly weed out some good candidates. But neither the dogs nor the drinking are anything I have the standing to change, so I usually just enjoy the cute dogs and try not to worry about it.)
What you described doesn’t sound especially unusual to me! If it’s really mostly champagne on special occasions and some wine in the gift exchange, I don’t know that you need to specifically flag it, and I’d worry about making it sound like more of a thing than it is.
But if it is indeed a big part of the culture, then at whatever point in the interview you’re talking about the work environment, you could say it this way: “Like most companies, there are some aspects of our culture that some people enjoy but won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, so I like to tell people about them up-front. One is that we’re dog-friendly, meaning (fill in with specifics about what that means at your company). Another is that we’ve got beer in the fridge that some people will drink after work, you’ll often see alcohol on special occasions, and (insert another example of the culture here).” If accurate, I’d also add, “To be clear, I’ve never seen anyone be irresponsible about it and that wouldn’t fly here, but I know it’s not for everyone so I want to be up-front about it.”
3. I’ve been invited to fly in for an interview without knowing what the job is
I’ve been job hunting for a few months now with not much to show for it. One difficulty is that I’m trying to relocate to a new state and there’s a huge pool of local qualified candidates. So I was very excited when I was contacted for a phone screen with the recruiter.
The first call was mainly to determine if I was basically qualified and which position I was more interested in (I had applied to two postings but expressed that I was more enthusiastic about one than the other).
Next, I had a call with the department head. This was apparently to determine what role I would be best suited for, which confused me since I applied to a specific job. When I asked about it, she made it seem like I wasn’t qualified for what I applied for but that they had something that would be a good fit. We talked more about the company in general and she said she’d refer me to the hiring manager she had in mind for another phone interview.
The next week I got an email asking when I can come for an on-site interview. When I explained that the plan was for another phone screen to learn more about the job they were considering me for, I was told they didn’t have a job description yet but they wanted to schedule me to come up there anyway for a panel interview.
It feels weird to do a panel interview for a position I know almost nothing about. I don’t even have a job title to go off of. Is it normal to screen candidates this way? Can I push back on this at all? Since I’d have to take time off work and fly there, I’d rather not waste my time if it turns out it’s not something I’d be interested in anyway.
Do they realize you’d be flying in? If so, it’s pretty weird that they haven’t told you more about the job they have in mind, but you can definitely ask. Say something like this: “Since I’ll need to fly in from (city), can you tell me a bit more about the job you have in mind? I’m very interested in the work you do but before making flight arrangements would want to learn a bit more about what job you’d be considering me for.”
4. Can I wear headphones as a brand-new employee?
Next week I’m starting in a new position that I am so, so excited for.
I’ve been listening to music via bulky headphones to help me focus. I don’t mean just to drown out distracting noises — it drowns out my own head’s chatter, too. I always keep one ear uncovered and I’m quick to pull them off when someone needs to talk to me. But I still feel like it’s gonna look bad if I’m wearing them as a brand-new employee. Thoughts?
I wouldn’t wear them on your first day at least. It might be fine to wear them later that first week, but wait to get a better feel for the culture first. (And if no one else is wearing headphones, I’d hold off a bit longer than that too.)
There’s no real logical reason for this. It’s just about optics — but those matter, especially when you’re new and people don’t know you yet.
5. Why do we list the geographic locations of jobs on a resume?
When listing past jobs on resumes/LinkedIn, why is it convention to include the geographic location of each job? I understand an employer wanting to know where you are currently (to determine if you’re local or not), but how does location matter for all the past positions? Someone may commute from another state or work remotely, and in this day and age the location for any company can be found with a quick Google search.
You list the city and state of each employer because helps verify that they actually exist. That doesn’t matter so much when the company is widely known or when all your past employers are local to the area you’re applying in, but otherwise it maters. If you just write that you worked at “Ernie’s Diner,” there might be 35 Ernie’s Diners online and the person reading your resume will have no idea which one you worked for or whether you made it up entirely. Locations are context and signal “this is real and verifiable.”
asking an employee to use a different name, telling candidates about our drinking culture, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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