It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. We were instructed to bake cookies for our IT team
This happened a few years ago but I wanted to get your take on it because it always seemed a little iffy to me.
At my job, IT had created a new program for my department (as is their job) that was much needed and we were all very appreciative of having it. My manager decided that we needed to express this appreciation by having each member of our team bake their own batch of cookies to give to IT on a specified day. It was strongly encouraged that we all do this. We even had to sign up ahead of time with the specific cookie we were making so they wouldn’t get too many of the same flavor. As far as I know, everyone on the team contributed a cookie batch.
A few months later, IT completed another project for my department and my manager instructed us to do this cookie drive again. So we did.
To further put the optics of this in perspective, my department was mostly women (including my manager) and IT was all men. Is this a normal thing to do to thank a department for doing their job? I always wondered if someone told my manager to stop since we did this twice and then it was never mentioned again.
No, not normal! Instructing women to do this kind of traditionally female caretaking work for their male colleagues, even as a thank-you, is awfully problematic. It’s also just odd; if your manager wanted to express appreciation to the IT team, there were lots of better ways to do that, like recognizing them to their management. (And if she wanted to get them a food treat, she should have ordered something and expensed it; if it’s enough of a work thing to order people to bake for it, it’s enough of a work thing to expense it).
I hope you’re right that someone told her to stop.
2. Can I keep my quarantine hair color when I job search?
So I went a little nuts in April and dyed my ordinary brown hair bright blue. We’ve been working from home, my clients and coworkers know and enjoy me, and I’m going to be 50 in a couple of years so if not now, when? My current employers have no issue with it at all, it’s been fun on Zoom meetings, and even when we go back to the office it likely would be perfectly fine in this workplace. For what it’s worth, it looks good.
However, given [waves hand vaguely at everything] I have been thinking lately about what job-hunting might be like in a few months depending on how well my office recovers. I am, of course, entirely prepared to go back to brown for a new workplace; I 100% get that wild colors are not appropriate for most workplaces and I don’t begrudge it. I just would prefer not to until I know for sure I need to. I’d happily go back for a new job or a dream interview, but not necessarily for an interview I’m lukewarm on.
In your opinion, is there any way to pull this off? I write a strong cover letter; I’ve been half wondering if there was a way to pull off a “I’m always ready to try new things, but of course I have the good judgment to know when common custom is appropriate” hair analogy to lay the groundwork before any face-to-face. Possible? Or should I just plan to restore order before I make any moves in the direction of a job search?
If you were invested in keeping the color and it was important to you to find a workplace that was fine with that, I’d say to keep it for interviews — which would let you screen for employers who had a problem with it. But you don’t sound terribly invested in keeping it and you seem fine with the prospect that you’ll need to change back in a new job — so honestly, in this job market, I’d change it before you start interviewing. I’m annoyed to have to give that answer because it shouldn’t matter, but there are still enough people who think blue hair is unprofessional or excessively wacky that I’d rather you not build in a potential strike against yourself.
And to be clear, there are plenty of places that won’t care! Unnatural hair colors are way more accepted now in professional jobs than they used to be. But you generally won’t know from the outside how it would go over in this particular job or with this particular interviewer — so if you want to maximize your chances, the safest route is to make it a non-issue (and then you can see about changing it back later after you start the job, if you want to). That said, in some industries (like, say, design) you could more safely assume it would be fine than in others … but I’m guessing if you were in one of those industries, you wouldn’t be asking.
I wish I had a different answer!
3. Candidates sending additional exercises we didn’t ask for
I’m helping interview for a position I have been leading on an interim basis. I’m eager to hire so I can go back to my role. We do a phone screen, exercise, first interview, and final interview. I come in at the first interview, as does one of my teammates.
We have had four to five of these first conversations, and in their thank-you emails, at least three candidates have done additional work and amended their answers. I’m talking, like, putting together documents that re-demonstrated ability in a strategy, based on an example we have in a conversation, or two-page follow-up memos with “better” examples of questions we asked. So not just “you said X and with more time ….” but a couple hours of work.
Two were obvious no’s but one I am moving forward to the final interview. Is this a flag? Or just passion, perfectionism, and nerves? And where the heck did this practice come from?
I don’t think it’s a flag. It’s people wanting to show you what they can do and thinking they didn’t show it as well as they could have the first time. And yes, maybe with some perfectionism and nerves mixed in, along with an awareness that the job market is really tight right now and they have a lot of competition.
In general, I wouldn’t recommend to a candidate that they do that — it can come across as too much, and sometimes it’s even an imposition (if it’s asking the employer to invest extra time in reviewing work). But sometimes it’s worth it for them, especially if they felt they had additional insight into what you’re looking for after the first conversation. On your side, I do recommend that you take the time to review it because there can be real insights for you about the person’s capabilities — in either direction (i.e., it might impress you, or you might come away thinking, “If you were going to take a second stab at it, I would have expected it to be stronger than this”).
4. What name should I put on my resume?
I go by my middle name, and usually a nickname version of it. If my name was John Edgar Hoover, I publish as “J. Edgar Hoover” and go by “Ed” in the workplace. What’s the best way to title my resume? Writing out John Edgar (Ed) Hoover seems unwieldy. Should I just assume if I spell out all three, it covers getting my legal name out there and also explains why I go by Ed?
If you don’t use John at all, you don’t need to include it on your resume. I’d go with “Edgar (Ed) Hoover,” “Edgar Hoover,” or “Ed Hoover.” Any of those are fine.
It won’t be an issue that your legal name is longer — lots of people go by a shortened version or a middle name, and it’s no big deal to just supply the full legal name at whatever point it’s needed (background check, payroll paperwork, etc.).
5. Employer emailed me on Sunday morning and asked me to interview that day
I applied for a few administrative jobs this past week. On Sunday morning, I received an email asking if I was available for a job interview that day. I emailed back within 10 minutes of the original email that I wasn’t due to a family commitment but would be happy to discuss the position any time the next day. I had already arrived at a family gathering and wasn’t comfortable doing an interview under those circumstances.
I did not receive a reply to my email, so I have only to conclude that the interviewer moved on to another candidate or that it was a test to see how badly I wanted the position. If it was a test, I am not upset that I failed. Is it reasonable to expect an applicant to drop everything for an interview or am I being unreasonable not dropping everything for an interview?
You weren’t unreasonable; they were. It’s not reasonable to email someone on a Sunday for a phone interview that day. (And if this isn’t a business that normally works on the weekends, that’s even odder.) It’s also rude of them not to respond once you emailed back — but not terribly uncommon either.
It’s unlikely that this was a test; most employers won’t deliberately be excessively demanding simply to see how candidates respond to it. They might be excessively demanding for other reasons, disorganization and incompetence is a far more likely explanation. (In fact, in hiring, candidates are about 10 times more likely to think “is this a test?” than something is to actually be a test. Job searchers tend to read into everything employers do and assume there’s more strategy to it than there often is. More often than not, the employer is just scattered/unprofessional/inconsiderate/etc.)
we were told to bake cookies for our IT team, keeping quarantine hair, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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