my mom called the CEO when I broke my ankle, I’m drowning in informational interviews, and more

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. When I broke my ankle, my mom called my boss’s boss

I broke my ankle pretty severely earlier this year (three bones and a dislocation). I was out of it to the point that I didn’t feel in pain; I was cracking jokes with the ambulance workers and my lawnmower guy (who thankfully happened to arrive just after I fell, as I didn’t have my phone on me at the time). My mum left her job early to come and see how I was and then called my company’s CEO (who is also my boss’ boss) to say that I wouldn’t be in for a while because of the accident.

I have to admit I lost it at her a bit after finding out because I feel that it was extremely unprofessional that she called the CEO on my behalf. My mother’s opinion was that I was in no state to call myself (possibly true, but I wasn’t working until the next day so had time to become more coherent and functional – the accident happened mid-morning) and the CEO wouldn’t mind (also ended up being true, but not the point). I know it worked out in my particular situation, but I’m curious as to — in a general situation — would you think that this is okay or should I have made the call myself?

If you were expected at work that day (or if your mom thought you were), it’s reasonable that she called on your behalf. You describe yourself as out of it; that’s a point where it’s okay for someone else to alert your employer that you won’t be in because of a medical emergency.

The thing that makes it an overstep is that you weren’t working that day and thus your employer didn’t need an immediate notification. Your mom could have just left it to you to handle however you wanted once you were more capable of doing it (or could have asked you later that day if you wanted her to, or assessed for herself later that day whether you’d be able to field it with reasonable lucidity or not).

That said, I wouldn’t call it “extremely unprofessional.” It was unnecessary and a bit too much mom-ing from your mom, but it’s not the sort of thing that you should worry an employer would judge. (That said, if your mom has a pattern of overstepping and not respecting your agency as an adult, I can see why you’d be more pissed off.)

Related:
when you’re sick, can you have someone else call your office on your behalf?

2. I’m drowning in informational interview requests

I am drowning in informational interview requests. I’m filled with dread when I think about opening LinkedIn and seeing the next batch of them. My job sounds cooler than it actually is (biotech venture capital), and I’ve also worked in pharma business development and have a PhD. As a result, I get requests from anyone touching this background: students looking to learn what biotech VC is, graduating PhDs or MDs seeking advice on how to break into the field, people a few years into biotech careers looking to make a switch, advice for how to get a job in pharma.

I turn down requests where I can come up with a clear reason why (for example, someone coming from undergrad or from an MBA, I recommend they reach out to someone with a more similar background). But otherwise, I feel like a jerk saying I’m too busy to talk! Many people donated their time when I reached out for interviews, and I want to pay it forward. I also always feel a bit bad taking the call knowing they want me to give them some secret to getting the job of their dreams, but the reality is, I was lucky and I don’t have any secrets.

Are there any ways to make this more manageable? Could I host something like “office hours” for an hour each month and invite anyone who wants to join to drop in on Zoom? I’d be super grateful for any advice you could provide on how to maintain my sanity while continuing to support young folks in their careers.

Well, first, you’re allowed to say no just because you’re too busy. I get that you want to pay back the help you were given, which is great, but that doesn’t mean you need to turn your life over to it or do it when it will be a strain. During times when you’re particularly busy, or where the thought of doing it makes you internally groan, it’s fine to say, “I’m in a particularly busy period for me and unfortunately I’m having to be be disciplined about not adding anything else on my calendar.”

You can also decide you’ll do these calls one week a month (or whatever frequency works for you; it’s fine it it’s less than that) and that you’ll say yes to the first three people who want to book for that time period.

You also absolutely can do something like your “office hours” idea and say, “I hold a monthly Zoom for anyone who wants to drop in to talk about this stuff. Here’s the info for this month.” I actually love that idea; you’ll get it all out of the way in one call per month, and people will learn from each other’s questions. It will also help weed out the people whose sole motivation is “maybe I’ll magically come out of this conversation with a job.” In fact, I worked with an organization that got so many prospective job candidates asking for one-on-one conversations before applying that we set up a monthly drop-in call exactly like this. It gave us somewhere to funnel the many incoming requests, made the time commitment more manageable, and allowed us to say “yes” in a way that worked for our calendars.

3. Different teams are held to different standards

I have been promoted to a senior role, which means that I now do some supervisory work across multiple teams. Each team is headed by a senior manager. Doing this has made me aware that the standards that are considered acceptable by the different managers are wildly different: on one team, higher quality workers are put down and their work isn’t considered good enough so they end up being micromanaged, while worse workers from the other teams are deemed fine and are allowed to act without supervision. To me this seems fundamentally wrong. I don’t expect every team leader to act identically, but it feels like wrong to keep saying one team’s work is not good enough when far worse quality work is routine for the other team.

I have quite a fixed view of right and wrong and am struggling to accept this approach to the point that I don’t know if I can continue at the firm, but maybe this is normal, acceptable behavior and I’d encounter it at any firm? When I have raised the point, the main comment I get back is that I shouldn’t compare others people’s work and look for errors, but part of my job requires that I see the work and I can’t help but notice the major errors being missed in one team, while even work that is fine is still having to be checked in the other.

It’s fairly common for different managers to hold their teams to different standards. Sometimes the differences are minor (but can still grate to those on the teams in the question) and sometimes they’re more significant. Ideally organizations should set a culture of high performance across the board — without being unrealistically demanding — and should hire and manage managers through that lens, but a lot of organizations aren’t well-managed enough to do that. So what you’re seeing isn’t necessarily that uncommon, although that depends on the extent of the differences (how bad the worse work is, and how unrealistic the expectations on the higher-performing team).

Whether or not you have standing to do anything about it is a different question. It’s possible your job is one that does give you standing — particularly if the work from the weaker team isn’t at the standard needed, but also if the better team is being managed in a way you can see is unsustainable (since that will mean burn-out and turnover). It’s also possible that your job doesn’t give you that standing; it depends entirely on the nature of your role, the outcomes you’re charged with meeting, how much seniority and influence you have in your organization, and how the internal politics work there.

4. Removing the dates of your work history on your resume

My wife has been job hunting for six months without an offer, and we’re open to trying just about anything to get her resume through the initial screening process. She has written it, re-written it, paid other people to rewrite it, and asked multiple HR professionals for their feedback during resume reviews at job fairs. She has gotten some good advice, and she has gotten some that sounds very strange.

Just today, an HR professional told her that she should refrain from including anything like dates of employment on her resume, and instead list her tenure there, rounded to the year. For context, she has spent her time since the beginning of the pandemic working remotely for startup tech companies, and this has led to a little more company-hopping than she’d like. They said that instead of writing, for instance, “May 2020-Feb 2022,” she should write “two years” without including the actual months or years. This person’s argument was also that it makes it easier to rearrange your roles according to what fits the position you’re applying for best, rather than showing any chronological information.

This feels like a dicey gamble to me, and runs counter to just about everything I’ve ever heard about resume writing. It certainly won’t work for any website that requires employment date information in your application profile. In my experience, resumes tend to be a very conservative medium, but maybe things are changing! Before I dismiss this particular piece of advice, is this something you’ve run across before?

She absolutely should not do this. It will look like she’s trying to hide something and has no familiarity with how resumes work, and 99% of employers will toss the resume rather than trying to parse it out. She’d have to be a staggeringly extraordinary candidate for most hiring managers to keep looking after seeing a resume written that way (and if she’s not getting bites after six months of a resume with normal dates, she’s definitely not going to get bites after weakening the way she presents). It’s truly terrible advice.

Employers want to know how recent your job experience is, and they want you to adhere to basic resume conventions like, you know, years so that piecing together your work history isn’t a mystery project.

5. How do I give notice at a job I’m passionate about?

I took my current job a year ago. I was hired to build a program and, while we have made excellent progress, I would say the program is about 60% built out.

I wasn’t looking for other opportunities, but I have been headhunted by a company I’m familiar with in the same industry. The role would be less high-profile but would suit my skills, pay more, and offer more opportunity for advancement. I am still in the interview process but I feel I’m going to be offered the job. And I’m so stressed about how to tell my boss if in fact I need to give notice.

My reasons for wanting to leave have much less to do with the core work of my role, which I am passionate about, and more about surrounding circumstances (like lack of support for our work, lack of structure and process because my current company is small, and the isolation of working on a small team without other senior people to bond with). The role I’m interviewing for will solve these things — bigger company, established in the work, more folks at my level. Plus it will pay a lot more.

If I am offered the role, how do I tell my boss? I really enjoy working with her and remain passionate about the work we are doing. I know making the move is the right one for me, but I can’t help feeling like I’m letting down the folks who hired me. If this opportunity had come in six or eight more months, I might not feel so bad. But it’s only been a year and this was definitely a passion project for me.

“This fell in my lap — I wasn’t looking but they approached me and it’s too good an offer to pass up.” If you want, you can add, “I’ve loved working with you and I’m passionate about the project, but I can’t turn this down.”

That’s it! That’s the truth of it (although frankly you could say it even if it wasn’t), and this is normal thing to happen. Other opportunities come along, and some of them will be better for you than whatever you’re doing currently.

I think you’re looking at leaving as somehow being a sign that you don’t care about the project as much as they might believe. But none of that is in play; you get to leave work you like and managers you like if something else comes along that’s better suited to you.

And it’s not like you’re not leaving after two months. You’re leaving after a year, because someone made an offer that you can’t responsibly refuse. It’s fine.