we rehired someone who isn’t working out, responding to “dear sirs,” and more

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

1. My boss rehired someone who isn’t working out

My current manager, Michael, was my peer and was recently promoted. Shortly after that, he rehired someone who had been recently laid off from our company, Dwight. Allegedly the layoff was due to elimination of his role, not for performance reasons. This was confirmed by the previous manager and HR. Michael and Dwight had actually started in the same new hire cohort, but obviously Michael’s career has advanced much more. I think Michael was “trying to help out a friend.”

The problems here were 1) this role is materially different than what Dwight had been doing — think accounting versus sales, 2) the interview panel (including me) did not think Dwight was suitable for the role; he really flubbed the interview with a bit of a “I already have this job” assumption, and 3) the role was junior accountant vs senior salesman, so a lower title and compensation to match, the rationale being that Dwight needs to learn the space. I expressed concerns about this but it was the Michael’s decision and I didn’t choose to fight the battle. HR also help bring this all about.

Fast forward several months and it’s not going well. Dwight is struggling with the basics of the role and even Michael sees he probably made a mistake. It’s not that Dwight isn’t trying, he is, but he doesn’t seem well suited for accounting; he doesn’t have a head for numbers. Because my team has to work with him, this is having a negative impact on us and is overall an impact on the larger team.

It’s not impossible that with more attention and mentoring Dwight could turn around, but my instincts tell me it’s unlikely and no one has the bandwidth to invest that kind of time. And then there’s the negative morale impact of an underperforming resource when everyone sees it — it’s not an issue we can ignore.

So the question is what to do. I see Dwight is on a trajectory towards a PIP. I feel bad about this, as it would leave Dwight with a terrible narrative and at a lower level than he was previously in a tough job market. That said, I don’t know what to do or to offer Michael as options.

Michael needs to have a candid conversation with Dwight about his concerns and whether Dwight is well-matched with the role. Who knows, it’s possible that Dwight is well-aware that he’s struggling and would welcome a candid conversation about it — but either way, it’s time for Michael to clearly name the pattern he’s seeing and move toward quickly figuring out whether Dwight is going to be able to do the job or not.

Sometimes it makes sense for a manager to invest in some intensive but short-term coaching to see if someone can get to where they need to be (generally weeks, not months). Other times it might be clear that that will just prolong things. Michael needs to assess the situation and decide if that makes sense or not. But the longer he avoids dealing with it, the worse it actually is for Dwight: if this turns into a two-month experiment that didn’t work out, Dwight can easily leave that off his resume but if it drags on for months and he’s eventually fired, it’s a different story. (Still not impossible to explain with “I tried out a new area of work that ended up not for me,” but it’s not doing him any favors to put him in that position.)

This is why hiring someone into a role they’re not well suited for isn’t always a kindness to them, even if Michael intended it that way.

2. Part-time employee keeps pushing us to buy products he’s creating

I am a full-time staff member at a medical school. I oversee a cadre of part-time teaching assistants who are not medical professionals but are trained to help students practice skills related to patient care, like communication and physical examination.

I have one TA who is really fantastic with the students and always gets rave reviews. He is paid at the top of the pay bracket. A few months ago, he told me that he wrote and self-published a lengthy workbook for medical students to help strengthen their “soft skills” like empathy and compassion. He asked if our faculty could offer this to students as a resource. While I felt his project was impressive, I didn’t feel comfortable sharing this with faculty, because he’s not a doctor and it was self-published. I turned him down by saying that sorry, but I have no control over what is taught in the curriculum. Then, he asked if he could lead development workshops for other teaching assistants, using the workbooks he developed. We host training and development sessions regularly, led by our full-time staff and faculty members. Our department is budgeted very strictly and we have to set our budget a year in advance. I told him that unfortunately we didn’t have the budget to compensate him for that. Now, I just received an email from him asking if our school would consider purchasing another product he designed.

It’s great that he is developing his own educational products/materials, but the thing is: even if we did have the budget, I wouldn’t want to pursue this. I’m just not comfortable with the way he keeps trying to sell his materials and services to me. To be frank, I find it pushy and annoying. I need to give him a firm “no” and ask him to stop trying to sell things to me! He is a great teaching assistant and I don’t want to burn any bridges. How do I ask him to stop without insulting him?

Any chance this poses conflict of interest issues you could cite (i.e., that you can’t buy products or other services from teaching assistants)? If so, that might be the easiest way to explain it.

If not: “We love having you as a teaching assistant, but I want to be up-front we’re not likely to buy other products or services from you. I don’t doubt their quality — it’s just an area that we already have covered.” If he continues to ask after that: “I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear earlier — we’re not the right target audience for these products and can’t accept additional sales pitches for them.”

3. Hiring test asks about depression

I’m in the later rounds of interviewing with a company that I’m really excited to potentially join. However, they just had me complete what is essentially a 200+ question personality quiz. I don’t love the idea of personality quizzes in hiring, but what really rubbed me the wrong way is that a few questions seemed to directly correlate with mental illness. For example, one question asked me to rank, from strongly disagree to strongly agree, if “I often feel blue,” which I believe is exactly what would appear on a medical questionnaire for depression.

Is it legal to judge candidates on how they answer questions that have a strong correlation to mental health, even if you’re not outright asking about a diagnosis? This quiz was done through some third-party software company touting the amazing potential of AI in hiring (barf), so I’m guessing they’ve done their research, but it feels so wrong to me.

Yes, someone could challenge that legally. It’s illegal to assess candidates on their answers to questions about health, including mental health. I would definitely not assume they’ve done their research to ensure they’re complying with the law; it’s incredibly common for employers to buy into pseudoscience personality tests without even thinking about whether they conflict with discrimination law.

4. Responding to letters addressed to “dear sirs”

I read your 2021 column about “dear sirs” being outdated and sexist and wholeheartedly agree. What can you do to push back?

In my residents association, I’m one of two people who need to complete a form when someone sells their house. Both of us are female. I had one solicitor (we are in UK) write to “Dear Sirs” when requesting the information. I provided it and at the bottom of the email I said, “Just to note, your email started ‘Dear Sirs’ and both the people you were addressing it to are female.” Their reply was again addressed to “Dear Sirs” and their explanation was that they were addressing the residents association. Last I checked, our residents association does not have a gender. My response to that was to take several days more than usual to respond with the follow-up as, given I’m not a client of theirs (and never will be), I didn’t have much standing to say anything more. I was tempted to reply that as I was not a Sir, I was unable to assist further but felt that was inflammatory. Thoughts?

Well, you could respond to his latest (and ridiculous) message with, “Our residents association includes women. Please correct the correspondence going forward.”

But personally I’d rather just write back to him and address it to “Dear Madam.”

5. Resumes when switching back to a previous career

I’ve been working for about 20 years. About five years ago, I switched careers to something related but different. Let’s say I was a teapot maker and left to focus on painting coffee mugs. It’s become clear that mug painting isn’t as fulfilling as I’d like, and I want to go back to teapots. How do I structure my resume to make my teapot work most prominent? My mug work isn’t completely irrelevant, so I don’t want to leave it off entirely.

You can have a Relevant Experience section that comes first (for the teapot work) and then an Other Experience section after that (for the mug work).

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