“my coworkers won’t cut expenses, pop culture references in interviews, and more” plus 3 more Ask a Manager

my coworkers won’t cut expenses, pop culture references in interviews, and more
should I apply to jobs I’m not fully qualified for?
how do I tell my boss to fire our new hire?
how do you avoid burnout when your work is under-funded and emotionally draining?

my coworkers won’t cut expenses, pop culture references in interviews, and more

Posted: 24 Jan 2019 09:03 PM PST

It's four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. My coworkers won’t help me cut expenses

A few months ago we received an email from the Big Boss (head of our business unit) that we are entering a “cost cutting” exercise due to business needs and they need everyone to make efforts to ensure our costs/expenses are “as close to zero as possible.”

I’m in an internal role that doesn’t deal with contracts, purchases, software licensing, travel, etc. so there’s only a limited amount I can contribute to that cost cutting. But I’ve done what I can — e.g. I walked five miles with heavy equipment rather than take public transport which the others did. I “forgot” to claim for overtime payments that I should/could have claimed (not in U.S. so those laws don’t apply), didn’t claim mileage for driving two hours out of my way multiple times, etc. It’s galling every month the department admin sends out the emails asking for “overtime forms” and “travel expenses” and I know I have a lot I could claim and don’t.

We have to work late a couple of times a month due to client deadlines (the company usually orders food in) and I’ve gone on “hunger strike” conspicuously refusing to eat or order, and working through while others eat the company-paid pizzas, etc. (we know in advance when we’ll have to stay late – why didn’t they bring their own food?!) because I don’t believe that’s a legit business expense. I’ve tried to convince the others but without success.

I’ve now asked to reduce my retirement contributions (matched by the company) which will save them thousands a year. I’ve indicated to HR that I want to opt out of the healthcare insurance at the next renewal date.

I’ve done pretty much everything I can at this point other than asking for a pay cut (which I could — I’m senior, single and have enough money but I realize this could affect my prospects in the future) but I’m becoming more and more resentful of coworkers who haven’t even considered the things I’ve done. They still submit overtime, travel expenses, etc. At some point we all have to pull together but I feel like I’m the only one pulling,

Whoa, you are making way too many sacrifices here. You should not be walking five miles with heavy equipment or not getting paid for time you worked, and conspicuously not having a slice of pizza isn't going to make any practical difference. As for reducing your retirement contributions and opting out of health insurance (!!) — NO. Is it too late to undo that?

"Help us cut costs" means "watch for extraneous spending and be frugal with business expenses." It does not mean "take on great personal sacrifice for the benefit of a company someone else owns." What are you doing is way beyond the realm of anything that would be expected, some of it won't even matter (the hunger strike), and the rest of it is so extreme as to be entering the realm of the absurd unless this is your own personal business and you get all the profits.

You should of course respect requests to watch expenses, but it's actually not helpful to do what you're doing because it creates a false idea of what various projects cost. It's also going to look incredibly weird to your coworkers, especially when you pressure them to join you, to the point that it could reflect on your judgment long after this is over.

Leave your retirement account and your health care alone. Submit for the money that you're owed. Quit the hunger strikes. Be responsible with expenses, and leave it there.

2. Can you reference pop culture in an interview?

Is it okay to reference pop culture in a job interview as long as the reference itself is not inappropriate or obscure?

For instance, in previous interviews, I have referenced my "Monica Geller-esque sense of neatness," how I consider Leslie Knope to be one of my role models, and how I had learned to work with a supervisor like Angela from The Office.

For what it's worth, in each of these positions, I was applying for something relatively junior and in a pretty liberal field/office environment, not, like, the CEO of Morgan Stanley or something.

There are better ways to convey what you want to convey. It's just too likely that your interviewer hasn't seen the show you're referencing and so misses your meaning entirely — and maybe doesn't even know you're referencing a show and has no idea who this Monica Geller is or why you're mentioning her. (There's also a risk of it making you seem less professionally mature — not because you're referencing pop culture, which isn't inherently unprofessional, but because you're not realizing that not everyone will get that particular reference.)

3. Candidates who ask "how did I do?" at the end of an interview

I’m a corporate recruiter, and lately, at the end of phone screens I’ve had people asking me how they did on that very call and asking for performance feedback. Everyone who has asked me this question hasn’t done very well. I think its a really awkward question that puts the interviewer on the spot. What’s your take? Is this the new normal? What’s the best way to respond to this, especially if the candidate hasn’t done well?

Yeah, this is a terrible question to ask at the end of an interview. It's fine to say "are there any reservations I could address for you?" But "how did I do?" puts the interviewer on the spot, and while some interviewers will be willing to answer it, far more are going to feel uncomfortable and mildly annoyed that you're asking them to deliver potentially awkward info to you with no preparation or time to think it out.

You're not obligated to answer that question candidly with no preparation. When I'm asked it by a candidate who wasn't strong, I generally say, "Oh, I always prefer to spend some time reflecting on our conversation before I can answer that."

4. Can I contact my replacement to ask why they left?

I left a job on my one-year anniversary about two years ago. I left for a seemingly innocuous reason and on good terms (I was moving across the country and got a new job). But in actuality, I was waiting for the second I could run away from this job. What started as an in-office marketing position with support and a budget quickly turned into a nightmare. I was moved to work from home permanently (I HATE working from home). In addition, whenever I would submit my health insurance reimbursement every month, which I had to negotiate to even get, my boss would respond directly via email to my premium invoice with comments along the line of "So, sales are down, what’s on your agenda today?” and other passive aggressive items. The thing is, I was not hired to do sales, I was told that we were hiring a VP of sales, but suddenly I was responsible for that too. On top of it all, I watched a married coworker book an escort from start to finish because he didn’t realize his screen was mirroring to a monitor that was right next to me. When I brought this up, nothing was done except telling me to work from home when he was in office if I felt uncomfortable.

All that aside, I held my tongue when the CEO hired someone else for my position, even though I wanted to warn them. I now see they only made it eight months and no longer work there. I would like to reach out to them on LinkedIn and talk to them about their reasons for leaving. I guess I just want confirmation I am not crazy from still having nightmares surrounding my life that year. Is this a bad idea?

I think you already know everything you need to know about this job. Just based on your short letter, your boss was a jerk, you were given a major area of work you hadn't signed up for and didn't want, you were denied office space, people were booking escorts at work and no one cared … You had good reason for disliking it there and for leaving.

The more interesting question, to me, is why you're looking for outside confirmation that it was a bad situation when it clearly was. And what's more, even if it wasn't a situation that everyone would have hated, you hated it and that's reason enough to leave. Are you worried on some level that you should have been able to hack it? Are you looking for the satisfaction of hearing someone else thought it was awful too? That last one is perfectly human, but it probably doesn't warrant emailing a stranger with those questions and I think is likely to keep you mired in the drama of a past job rather than moving forward.

I’ve been applying to jobs that I believe I could do, but for which I don’t have all the qualifications (it calls for a masters but I’m still writing my masters, or it asks for experience with one database but I have experience with a similar but different one), but I feel like I’m wasting my time. I haven’t gotten one phone interview from these kinds of jobs out of the 20+ applications I’ve sent out in the past month or two. One additional detail; I’m applying to jobs in a niche field within nonprofits/universities, and I know that my specific field has a problem with over-education and under-employment. Is the situation in my field affecting my chances, or is this just bad advice overall?

It depends on the specific qualifications and how important they are.

It's absolutely true that people get hired all the time without being perfect line-for-line matches with the qualifications listed in job postings. Sometimes ads are more like wish lists, where an employer is describing the dream candidate but would be willing to settle for most of what they listed rather than all of it. In other cases, the qualifications they list truly are requirements and they're not going to consider candidates without all of them. In still other cases, employers think they're in the second group (they don't intend to compromise on any of the qualifications they've listed) but they end up hiring someone who doesn't have every qualification because (a) they realize their original list was too rigid and they can find great people who will excel at the job with only some of those qualifications or (b) they realize their original list described a unicorn. And in still other cases, there's a disconnect between the person who wrote the ad (often HR or a recruiter) and the person who's doing the actual hiring, who really doesn't care if you have a particular degree or eight years of experience with a software that's only existed for five years or so forth.

Of course, you can't know from the outside which of these situations you might be dealing with.

The best way to think of the requirements in job ads is that they're intended to give you a sense of the profile of the type of person who would be right for the job. Instead of starting by measuring yourself against each line of the qualifications, step back and look at the qualifications as a whole. What's the picture they're painting of the person who they envision in the job? How close are you to that picture?

Then you do need to get more granular, of course, and look at how well you match up each of the listed qualifications. If they're asking for 10 years of experience and you have two, that job isn't for you. But if they're asking for 10 years and you have eight and believe you can point to evidence that you'd excel at the job, it probably makes sense to apply.

In general, a good guideline is that if you meet 80% of the qualifications and you can point to evidence showing you'd excel at the job, go ahead and apply. The exception to that is if one of the qualifications you don't meet is clearly a really key thing they're looking for (like a teaching certificate for a teaching job or a science background for a science writing job). In that case, refer back to what I said above about getting a sense of the profile they're looking for. If you're missing a really core qualification, you're not that profile. But if there's a long list of 15 qualifications and you're missing one or two that don't seem central to the work of the role, go ahead and try.

But the people telling you to apply for jobs where you're only 50% qualified … that's too optimistic and is likely to be a waste of your time. Plus, when you're in a highly saturated field with lots of under-employment, it's easier for employers to find candidates who check off everything on their wish lists, which means that your success rate at even 80% is going to be lower than in a field where that's not the case. That doesn't mean you should stop, just that it'll be harder.

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