This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. We got a complaint call about a new hire before she started
We hired a new executive director, who starts in a week. Did multiple reference checks (including a former direct report and a former supervisor), criminal background check, employment and education verifications, licensure verification, and some casual googling (by an internal HR professional, not an external service). We also have been getting unsolicited “this is an amazing hire/human” calls from various people in the industry around the country. We don’t ask on our application whether there are any pending or potential outstanding liabilities, and have not yet directly addressed this with our new hire.
Yesterday, our comms manager (whose info was on the press release about the hire, which went out six weeks ago) received a call from a woman who identified herself as a former employee of the new ED’s current organization. She said she was filing a lawsuit against that organization for wrongful termination, her program area was not prioritized by the ED, and a couple of irrelevant personal gripes, “just to make us aware.” Our comms manager asked her to put it in writing and send it to our HR (she has not done this yet). A quick google of this woman turns up multiple lawsuits she has filed — not saying any are not legitimate, just that there are several (for varying things, none of which appear to be similar to her current claims).
I feel like our organization has met both our legal obligation and followed reasonable industry best practices for prehire screening. That being said, what would you do in this case?
It’s less an issue of legal obligations and more about guarding against a new organizational leader who could bring serious issues along with them.
But I’m not terribly concerned in this case. It’s hard to say for sure without knowing all the specifics, but when two of the three things mentioned are that the ED didn’t prioritize her program area and some irrelevant personal gripes, there’s probably nothing here you have to pursue. Caveat: I’d be more concerned if the wrongful termination claim is based on truly alarming facts, like if the ED personally led a damaging retaliation campaign after a good-faith complaint of discrimination. But assuming it’s nothing like that, and with the rest of the context provided, this doesn’t sound especially damning, assuming you had a thorough interview process along with the post-interview due diligence you described.
2. Employer sent my rejection to my father, not me
I went into the same industry as my father works in. Recently I applied and interviewed for a position where the manager happened to know my father. There were no chances of me ever encountering my dad while working this position, and in fact even the manager rarely interacted with him. It was really just down to a happenstance of networking. We have an uncommon shared last name and a family resemblance, so while I never made any reference to the family relation in my application or interview, it wouldn’t be difficult to make the connection between us.
The manager ultimately chose not to hire me. Rather than tell me that, though, they reached out to my father to explain that I was a wonderful candidate, someone else with more years of experience interviewed, etc. It was humiliating and infantilizing, and my father wasn’t very impressed either. It’s not like I was a teenager looking for a summer job at my dad’s shop, I’m an adult who simply followed the same career path as him.
How do I avoid being demoralized from this, and at what point does networking become living under my father’s shadow? I’m absolutely mortified, and it was one of the few jobs in the industry that even interviewed me. I’m beginning to question my own qualifications. Was I only considered as a candidate because of my last name? What do I even do about this whole thing?
Is this part of a pattern where you’re continually referred to as “Portius Warbleworth’s daughter” and people see you as an extension of your dad and don’t recognize you for your own skills and achievements, or was this just one weird hiring manager? I’m guessing it was one weird hiring manager since you don’t mention it being part of a pattern … and if that’s the case, you’re giving them much too much power in your brain. There are outlier hiring managers who will do all sorts of weird things, but they’re not representative of what you can expect to find while interviewing.
For what it’s worth, my guess is that the interviewer didn’t decide, “I will relay the rejection through her father, as he is the proper conduit for all matters concerning her professional life” but rather this an employer that doesn’t send rejections at all (which is super common) so you weren’t going to receive one regardless. But then the interviewer wanted to mention it to your dad, the same way they might contact someone who had referred a candidate to let them know the person was great but they ultimately didn’t hire them. That’s still not okay; this is your work life, not your dad’s, and he didn’t refer you — but I suspect it explains what happened.
3. Recruiter asked me to rank my enthusiasm for the job on a scale of 1-10
I’m interviewing for a new job and, for the first time in my career, I’m working with a third party recruiter. After a first round interview last week, I had a phone call debrief with the recruiter, and they asked me: “On a scale of 1-to-10, with 10 being ‘I would accept an offer for this job right now, the organization sounds great’ and 1 being ‘I’m not interested in this position, I’d like to be taken out of the running,’ where would you rank things after that interview?”
I like the recruiter—and I really like the organization!—but I didn’t like the question. I replied that what I’d learned about the organization so far seemed great, and that the interview I’d just participated in was encouraging. But, I said that I didn’t have enough information to accept a job after just one interview. I made it clear that I wanted to move on to the next stage of the interview process, but that I wasn’t looking to rush into a new position without hearing more.
The tail end of the debrief wasn’t awkward, per se, but there was definitely some silence after my answer. I don’t think the recruiter was happy with my response.
Did I misstep here? Is it worth contacting the recruiter (or the company itself) to further clarify that I’m interested in this position? (Beyond what I said to the recruiter and in my thank-you note after the call?) Maybe I’m just overthinking things. Thoughts?
Your answer was fine and you didn’t misstep. Some recruiters try to ensure that candidates are Really! Enthusiastic! at every step, because they don’t want a situation to get to the end of the hiring process and have the candidate turn down an offer. They’re assuring their client (the employer) that you’re interested as the process moves along, and they feel it will reflect badly on them if they put you through the whole process and then you turn it down — or they at least want the opportunity to make sure any concerns you have addressed early on. (Alternately your recruiter is just used to people playing along and giving a number and didn’t like that you declined to partake of their scale. Either way, your answer was fine.)
4. Am I supposed to leave work when I run out of things to do?
I have been working in blue-collar jobs for the past decade (construction, warehousing, etc). My early work experience was mainly in customer service, including front desk/secretary work. As I am transitioning away from manual jobs to more office work, I am having a hard time with the pace that comes with sitting in front of a computer. How much work am I supposed to get done in a day?
I am frequently under-tasked, and since my positions are for small companies and at an arm’s length, it can be hard to get clear answers and/or more work assigned in a short time frame. So I end up leaving early for the day rather than sit around and twiddle my thumbs. I am always scrupulous about only charging for the hours worked. However, that means contracts that are meant to be 24 hours a month are often only bringing in 18 hours of pay. Some of my friends who have more experience in this environment say I am being too honest and that it is up to my employer to make sure they provide enough instruction / tasks to fill my shift. I am so used to being in roles where if you are not actively (physically) working, you aren’t being paid. (Note: none of these roles are public-facing — if I leave one hour early and miss a late in the day email, nobody is affected.)
Your friends are right. It’s not about being “too honest,” but the expectation of most office jobs is that you’ll stay for your whole shift, even if there’s a bunch of downtime. You’re not expected to leave (and decrease your pay) when you run out of tasks, unless that’s something your manager specifically instructs. Part of what you’re being paid for is your availability to take on work if it does materialize. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won’t — but they’ve hired you to be there for a specific set of hours, and you don’t need to leave early when you run out of things to do.
If you want to be conscientious about it, you should ask your manager if there are long-term projects you can work on when things get slow. Or you could see things that need to be done and propose your own projects. But even if you don’t do those things, there’s nothing unscrupulous about staying until the end of your scheduled day.
5. Network access and equipment return after a layoff
My questions are about my responsibilities around network access and equipment return. I’m a remote worker with a company-issued laptop, and was told to expect an email from IT about how to return the laptop; so far, a week has passed and I haven’t heard from IT. What’s a normal timeline for this kind of thing?
I was also told my network access would be revoked at 5 pm on the day I was laid off … but a week has passed and I still have access! (I know this because I have MS Teams on my phone and am still getting chat messages; I have not accessed the company’s cloud storage, VPN, or email servers, or even turned on my work computer.) About 48 hours after my access should have been terminated, when returning my signed severance paperwork, I told the HR person that I still had access and shouldn’t. Do I have an obligation to keep mentioning it, or should I just offload Teams from my phone and forget it?
You don’t have any obligation to keep reminding them to secure their systems. Remove Teams from your phone and forget about it.
With the laptop return, you should have heard by now but sometimes it does take longer (especially if IT was affected by layoffs too). Give it two to three weeks before you get concerned; email again at that point and say you need instructions for returning the laptop ASAP as you’re not comfortable being responsible for it indefinitely.
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