It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. How to set up a meeting to ask for a raise
I am gearing up to ask for a raise next week. I feel confident about my case, and confident about the numbers that I’m asking for. I have poured through your raise guide and it has been so helpful for me as I prepare. There is one part that I am nervous about, and haven’t quite figured out. How do I get on my boss’ calendar to begin with?
Some friends have advised me to schedule a week out and let him know that I will want to discuss my compensation. Others have suggested surprising him the morning of, and not revealing what I want to talk about. I asked a friend who is a manager, and he recommended I give a week’s notice and say I want to talk about “the status of my employment” — they say this will make the boss nervous I might quit and he’ll be more ready to give me a raise.
Do not ask to talk about “the status of my employment” a week in advance! That sounds like you’re quitting, he’s very likely to ask you what’s up on the spot rather than waiting for the meeting, and when he finds out it’s about a raise it’s going to look really weird that you worded it that way.
If you have regular one-on-one’s, you’d do it there, but I’m guessing you don’t. If you have a pretty informal relationship and talk pretty often, you can say toward the end of one of those meetings, “I’m hoping you might have a few more minutes for something that’s on my mind” and do it on the spot if he says yes. But if doesn’t feel right to raise it that way, then say, “I’m hoping to get a short meeting on your calendar to talk about how my work is going.” Or, if you prefer, it’s also fine to be more explicit and say, “I’d like to set up a short meeting to talk about my performance and my compensation. Would Tuesday at 3 pm work for you?” (Some people would tell you to only do the latter so your boss isn’t blindsided, but it really depends on your sense of your boss.)
2. My boss wants detailed reports of everything we do when we work from home
I work in a hospital setting and my boss is very old school. She is just getting open to the idea of working from home. She is aware that the neighboring companies around us have great benefits and allow working from home all the time or most days, but she seems to think that working from home is just “checking emails.” But after three years of us pushing for this, she has finally opened up to the idea and has let us do this one time per pay period. In our line of work, we do not need to be in the office. Some days, my coworkers and I don’t even see each other or anyone else. But she likes our butts in seats where she can monitor what time we come in and out.
She has now sent us an email requesting that we send her a detailed update of what we did on our work-from-home days. Is this crazy? Can I push back on this or will I dig myself into a hole?
Send her the updates. She clearly doesn’t trust that people really work on work-from-home days, so it’s actually to your advantage to demonstrate what you’re doing. Having a detailed account of what you got done on those days will make it harder for her to argue that you’re just “checking emails.”
Is it annoying? Yes. Does it indicate she’s unclear on how to manage effectively? Yes. But it’s still in your best interest to send those reports to illustrate that her beliefs about remote work are wrong. (Plus, pushing back will probably just confirm her worst fears — she’ll think you don’t want to be accountable on those days.)
If she’s still asking for those reports months down the road, you can push back then. But right now this is still an experiment that she’s unsure about.
3. What should I do before starting a new job?
Thanks in large part to your excellent resume, cover letter, and interview advice, I’ve received an offer for my dream job from an amazing company. My start date is in a few weeks. Until then, I have intermittent contracting work as well as travel and oral surgery :( planned, but I’m wondering if there’s any job preparing stuff I should be doing.
Yesterday I went Official Job Clothes Shopping and otherwise spruced up my closet. For now though, what can I do to make sure that I can hit the ground running on my first day?
My partner is urging me to start getting into a routine so that it’s not like toxic shock when I have to start going into the office every day. But there’s also the school of thought (mine. I guess) that my life is going to become way more hectic and busy when the job starts so I should enjoy these more relaxed days while they last.
I’m more of your school of thought than your partner’s.
I mean, know thyself and if you have a lot of trouble changing routines, then sure, take their advice and start easing yourself into the new schedule now. But if that’s never been a particular issue for you, I don’t think you need to give up sleep and relaxation now just to put yourself in that mode early.
Beyond that, there’s really not much you need to do! If you really want to be prepared, look through the company’s website, skim their annual report if one’s available, and check out the LinkedIn profiles of the people you’ll be working with. Check Google Maps a few mornings during what will be your commute time to see how long the commute will be at that hour on an average day. But honestly, all of that is more than most people do. You could skip all that, just get good sleep the night before, and you should be fine.
4. Employer sent me a survey asking what I thought of my interview
Last Wednesday, I was contacted about an interview over Skype the next day. The interview went pretty well and at the end I was given a skills test to complete with a 24-hour deadline. Due to a migraine, I did the test the next morning, and I judged the test to be perhaps too simple. And then I sat back to wait.
I have yet to hear back about either an official rejection or offer, but did get a puzzling email. On Monday, I was sent a post-interview survey that included questions like how I thought the interview went, what I thought of my interviewer, and what I thought of the survey.
I dislike being asked these questions without being officially told the results of my interview process. Am I overreacting here? I tried not to answer too harshly if at all on the survey. Am I right in thinking, however, that this is their way of rejecting me? Or is this normal and I am reading too much into this?
No, this is weird. This isn’t a rejection, though, unless it’s one being sent in deep code, which isn’t how rejections are usually done. That doesn’t mean that you haven’t been removed from the running — you very well may have been, and employers don’t always bother to tell you when that’s the case — but the survey doesn’t signal that.
That said, this kind of survey shouldn’t be sent out while you’re still waiting to hear, since few candidates are going to give honest critiques while they’re still in the running out of fear of it impacting their chances. Frankly, it would have been fine to ignore it and not respond at all, or to wait to respond until you were done with their process.
(Also, what you thought of your interviewer and what you thought of the survey? Someone there sounds needy.)
how to set up a meeting to ask for a raise, my boss doesn’t trust us to work from home, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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