Career development

AJ Rosso

21h

Did I do something wrong by asking my boss for a raise? I’ve been doing the whole project alone for two months since my coworker left. But instead of answering, my boss said I should just be grateful to work in such a nice team. He even said my questions could hurt trust in the company. Should I tell him I might quit so he’ll think about raising my salary?

1

Tumusiime Innocent
2h
If your passionate about what you are doing don't quit please 🙏
arthur kateeba
3h
Before you quit, have an exit strategy and from the looks of it, you would rather not list him as a reference.

Career development

3d

Woman refused job at Midland estate agents because car 'too old'

An 18 year old woman was left furious after being denied a job interview at an estate agency - because her CAR was too old.

Alanah Thompson French applied for the position of trainee lettings negotiator but was rejected because she drove a 2014 Citroen C1.

The industrious teenager spent over a year juggling two cafe positions to fund the £2,800 vehicle which she believed would boost her... employment prospects.

However, when she put herself forward for a £20,000 position at haart Estate and Lettings Agents in Nottingham, her aspirations quickly stalled.

She was astonished upon receiving an email from the firm stating she would not be invited for interview.

Alanah was informed: "We regret to inform you that you have not been shortlisted for interview on this occasion as it is a requirement to have access to a vehicle under 10 years old."

The peculiar requirement meant Alanah's cherished Citroen exceeded the age limit by two years despite having clocked merely 33,000 miles, alongside a complete service history and MoT.

Alanah, from Burton Joyce, Notts., said: "I was really shocked when I received the rejection letter saying it was down to my car.

"I worked really hard whilst doing my A-Levels to pay for the car myself and pay the £700 insurance.

"My reason for getting a car was because I wanted to be able to drive for work but now it seems it was the reason I didn't get the job."

Alanah, who resides at home with her mum and dad, submitted her application for the trainee role last December. Despite nailing the application form, it seems she hit a snag when asked "is your car under 10 years old" and she marked "no".

Alanah commented: "If I hadn't got onto the shortlist because I didn't have the skills then fine but to be told it's because of the car I drive is a kick in the teeth.

"It's hardly an old banger and I keep it really clean inside and out.

"I'm only young so an older car was all I could afford. Obviously if I got the job I could save for a newer model but I need the job first.

"I finished my A-Levels and just didn't want to go to university and saddle myself with tens of thousands of pounds of debt.

"I wanted to get out into the world and really want to have a career in property but I've literally crashed at the first turning.

"It's really frustrating."

Danielle Parsons, employment partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell, stated that the car policy highlighted the obstacles young people encounter in the job market.

She expressed: "I'm concerned that this policy may disproportionately exclude younger less affluent applicants from applying for this job, particularly as this is an entry level position and job vacancies are currently few and far between.

"The response from haart doesn't point to any alternatives to this sort of blanket ban."

A spokesperson for haart responded: "It's extremely important that people who work for us use reliable vehicles for their own personal safety particularly where they travel many miles each day and often work alone.

"Evidence from motoring organisations shows that the likelihood of mechanical problems increases as vehicles get older.

"For that reason, and in line with many organisations that require staff to use their own cars for work purposes, our policy is that vehicles should normally be under 10 years old." more

Pro essay
2
5h
It's crazy storyline... Worth listening
Steward Tony Pacheco
67
2d
The reputation of firm is number one, the vehicle insurance terms is number two, the ability to negotiate an alternative if hired is number three....

Ask for the position, offer to upgrade vehicle if the position is in line with a positive interview.

Do this with confidence and commitment. The Boo Hoo story does not resonate well with movers & shakers!

It never does and it never will!

The other mistake was to post this drama online, already posing negative views towards a prospective employer (which you named) for all eyes to see.

THINK! This is business, not a personal attack on you!

Leave the emotion at home! more

Career development

9h

CUNY adds career work to classrooms

When I had the chance to hire a student to work in my research lab at Hunter College, I noticed a trend. While all were prepared to do the work, fewer were prepared to land the job. It wasn't that the students lacked accomplishments. It was that success in the classroom wasn't translating in the interview process.

Our students needed help presenting their skills, communicating what they had... learned on their résumés and identifying careers they would be qualified for.

To do that, our human biology program received city funding through the CUNY Inclusive Economy initiative to recruit new staff to work closely with our students to improve their career-readiness.

Under the initiative, Hunter's human biology program was assigned two dedicated staff members. The integrated academic and career adviser works with students to determine what skills they're missing -- whether it's interview prep or resume format -- and what they might need in their careers. The industry specialist was tasked with keeping a pulse on the needs of employers.

Almost two years later, and the program has been a gamechanger, one that offers important lessons at a time when higher education is grappling with public skepticism about the value of a college degree. For instance, employers said our students weren't leveraging Microsoft Office software to their full potential so we incorporated use of these tools in class assignments.

Our integrated adviser was able to arrange one-on-one interventions to help students practice their sector-specific interviewing skills and craft their résumés.

The next chance I had to hire a student, it was clear which of them had worked with our integrated career adviser. They could better explain their experience. Since July, our team has connected more than 120 students to jobs and internships, out of a cohort of 200.

My fellow professors appreciate what this work can do for our students. We want to see them succeed, but our roles typically focus on the academics. This can leave a gap between what we teach and preparing students for the workforce.

We have 200 spots in the CUNY Inclusive Economy initiative and more than 600 additional students in our human biology program are interested in being part of it. Demand will only grow as more students hear about how successful this has been. In fact, we've received inquiries from high school students who plan to choose our major at Hunter College because of what we offer.

I was excited when CUNY announced that it will make this kind of support more broadly available across the university system.

CUNY Beyond, as it's called, will integrate career preparation and work experience supports -- much like what we've been able to offer through CUNY Inclusive Economy -- into every undergraduate degree program.

With this new effort, that conversation will start with students as early as high school and leading into freshman orientation. Advisers will be empowered to walk students through the non-academic steps they need to take to be prepared for different jobs in their fields, all the while making sure that they are up to date on their skills.

Expanding access to paid internships and apprenticeships early in students' academic journeys will further set them up for success.

As educators, if we want to make sure that we can continue to meet that demand for talent, initiatives like CUNY Beyond have potential to achieve just that.

Rothman is a professor of anthropology and director of the human biology program at Hunter College. more

Career development

12h

They Lied To Us About Having It All, And It's Costing Us Our Children

They Lied To Us About Having It All, And It's Costing Us Our Children

The women who followed every rule, hit every milestone, and built every résumé are now the ones crying in fertility clinic parking lots, and it's time someone said why.

I was in elementary school the first time I heard it. "Girls can do anything." The poster in my school hallway showed a little girl, fists on hips, staring... down the world like it owed her something. "Girl power!" "The future is female." The messaging was everywhere -- in my classroom, on merchandise, in the TV shows that told us we were destined for boardrooms, not bassinets.

Love and family? Those were for women who gave up. Who settled. Who betrayed the sisterhood.

I believed it. We all did.

I grew up in the nineties, came of age in the aughts, and hit my twenties during the golden age of the girl boss. Sheryl Sandberg told us to "lean in." Beyoncé sang about running the world. Every magazine cover, every TV show, every commencement speech hammered the same point: your career is your identity. Your womb can wait. Marriage is a trap. Babies are a detour.

So we did what we were told.

We climbed. We hustled. We put off dating "seriously" because who has time for that when there are careers to chase? We dated the wrong men because the right ones wanted families, and families, we were assured, could come later. After the corner office. After the book deal. After we'd become someone.

As I shared in my article last week for Evie, I was twenty-six when I fell in love with a divorced father of three. He was kind, steady, and clear: no more kids. I told myself it was fine. I didn't need to be a mother. I could be the cool stepmom. The career woman who chose differently. I could still be significant. I was very influenced by the modern feminist messaging.

Years passed. Perspectives changed. We realized we were in different life chapters and my fiancé was worried I'd resent him in the future for not giving me children of my own. The relationship ended. Now I'm in my thirties, single, and suddenly, terrifyingly aware that the future I'd dreamed of as a girl might not show up.

Last week the internet lost its mind over Brad Wilcox's piece in Compact. The sociologist laid out the data with the cold precision of a coroner: women who reach thirty without starting a family have roughly a fifty-two percent chance of ever having children. Not great odds. Not the odds we were sold.

The outrage was immediate. "How dare he?" "Misogyny!" "Stop telling women when to have babies!"

But here's the thing no one wants to say out loud: the people sounding the alarm aren't the villains. The villains are the ones who spent decades lying to us.

They lied when they said fertility is a light switch you can flip at thirty-five. They lied when they told us egg freezing was a reasonable Plan B instead of an expensive, low-success Hail Mary. They lied when they painted motherhood as the thing that would limit us instead of the thing that would give us purpose deeper than any title or expensive handbag.

France just did something radical. They're sending letters to every twenty-nine-year-old in the country, men and women, reminding them that biology doesn't negotiate. That the window is real. That "later" has a terrifying habit of becoming "never."

The French are being called fascists for it. I call it mercy, because I've seen what happens when we don't get the memo.

I have a friend who turned forty and decided to freeze her eggs "just in case." At the clinic, the nurse looked at her with something between pity and exhaustion. "Hunny, you should've done this years ago." My friend cried in the parking lot. She'd believed the magazines. The Instagram influencers. The celebrities who announced their first pregnancy at forty-two like it was no big deal. She thought she had time.

Another friend was one of the best editors in Hollywood. By thirty-five she'd won awards, had the big office, the assistant, the recognition. She also had the creeping realization that the life she actually wanted -- a husband, kids, Sunday dinners -- was slipping away. She started dating men she didn't even like, just to try to make it happen. At thirty-nine, her two-year relationship imploded. She called me in tears. "I put my career first because that's what we were supposed to do. Now yeah, I'm at the top of my game, but I've lost the only thing I actually wanted."

A third friend is in her thirties, married, and has been trying to get pregnant for two years. Every failed round, every negative test, every well-meaning "have you tried relaxing?" from people who don't understand. She said to me, voice cracking, "They lied to us. They told us it would be easy. Why did they lie?"

I hear versions of this story constantly. In DMs. In coffee shops. In the group chats where millennial women gather to compare notes on the lives we were promised versus the ones we're living. The successful ones who cry in their luxury apartments. The now-older ones who froze their eggs and have a slimmer shot at a live birth. The ones who say, "I don't regret my career, but I regret believing it was the only thing that mattered."

And here's the part that makes me uncomfortable to say: I'm in that camp too.

I may still get to be a mother one day. But I'm also a realist. The choices I made -- the years I spent telling myself I didn't want children of my own, I'll just be the best stepmom, chasing the wrong kind of significance -- might mean that prayer goes unanswered. And that grief is real. It's not theoretical. It's the empty nursery I walk past in my mind every single day.

For years I've spoken out against the female victimhood mentality. I still do. Believing you're doomed because you're a woman is the fastest way to become exactly what you say you are. But if we're going to talk about victims, let's be honest: a generation of women were victims of the most successful propaganda campaign in modern history. We are victims of "girl boss" feminism.

We were told that traditional womanhood was oppression. That wanting a husband and babies was basic. That prioritizing love over status was weak. That our bodies were inconveniences to be managed, not miracles to be celebrated.

And now we're shocked that so many of us are alone, childless, and devastated.

This isn't about shaming women who chose differently. Some women genuinely don't want children, and that's their business. Women having choice was the supposed goal of women's liberation after all. This is about the millions who did want them -- who still do -- and were never told the truth about what it would cost to wait.

The data is brutal. Fertility declines sharply after thirty. Miscarriage rates climb. The chance of abnormalities skyrockets. Yes, there are miracles. Yes, science can do incredible things. But miracles aren't a business model. And "you can have it all" was never a promise. It was a sales pitch.

I'm tired of watching my friends mourn the children they'll never hold. I'm tired of the gaslighting that says pointing this out is "anti-woman." Telling women the biological reality of their own bodies isn't misogyny. It's the opposite. It's love. It's the kind of love our mothers and grandmothers used to give before we decided feelings mattered more than facts and self, status, money, and power mattered more than nurturing others.

We owe the next generation better. We owe them the truth that career is wonderful but it will never love you back. That status is fleeting but loving your children is eternal. That the most significant thing most of us will ever do isn't closing a deal or becoming famous -- it's raising human beings who know they are loved.

We owe them the warning we never got: the window is real. The clock is ticking. And no amount of girl-boss mantras can stop it.

If France can send letters, we can at least start telling the truth in our culture. In our schools. In our families. In the conversations with our younger sisters and nieces and the girls scrolling TikTok and Instagram thinking they have forever.

Because they don't. And neither did we.

It's not too late to change the story. But it is late. Later than we were ever told. And the women waking up in their thirties and forties with empty arms and full résumés deserve to hear, finally, what no one had the courage to say when it still could have made a difference: We were manipulated and lied to.

And the cost could be our children. more

Anonymous member

Career development

1w

Hi! People at work look at me like I’m crazy or from another planet. When we collect money for someone’s birthday, people usually ask for simple things like a toaster or a frying pan. But I said I’d like an art book. I’ve wanted one for a long time, but I can’t usually afford it, so I thought it would be a nice group gift.
Some people didn’t like that. They said it’s a waste of money and now they... look at me strangely.
Should I try to change their minds, or just let them keep dreaming about frying pans? Thanks

more

1

Steward Tony Pacheco
12h
Gee, who's the ringleader of that committee? HR issue for hostile environment?Get Them Your Own Gift. 1/2 price books, good will, etc. It's Not Part... Of Your Job Description. more
Michelle Bolton
2d
In that case, everyone should be able to add their opinion on what type of gift to purchase. Maybe writing on a piece of paper your thoughts on a gift... idea and pull from a hat, basket, jar or whatever is available. Especially with a group of people. No stale gifts desired. Thought (It would be great if we switched up the thought process of gift giving for the employees. Everyone writes their idea and someone who is voted on to pick, picks the best maybe 2 out of three choices and gifts should be under a certain amount. How does that sound? It would give others an opportunity to feel their gift ideas are special and meaningful.) This is something I would say. Or I would say it a different way but still have the chance to switch the gift ideas received. more

Career development

21h

A Woman Was Called 'Inconsiderate' For Trying To Shake A Job Interviewer's Hand

A woman had a strange experience when she tried to shake a job interviewer's hand, but was told she did not have consent to do so. Now, she is trying to make sense of the bizarre experience and if, in fact, shaking hands is an act that requires consent.

Interviewing for a job is incredibly stressful. There's a lot on the line, and you want to put your best foot forward. One woman believed she... was doing just that until the interviewer let her know that her completely normal behavior was apparently unacceptable.

The woman named Lauren, known as @scratchqueenlauren on TikTok, shared her bizarre job interview experience."I just had the craziest thing happen to me in a job interview that's, like, ever happened to me," she said in a video.

She described the job as a "pretty simple full-time office job." She stated that she had already completed one interview over the phone and was asked to come into the office for a second, but things felt off from the beginning.

"It's a lady. When I go to meet her, she's very, like, standoffish," she said. The two then had an awkward conversation in which the interviewer asked Lauren questions about how she handles workplace drama.

At the end of the interview, Lauren prepared to do the customary thing and shake the other woman's hand, but it didn't go well."I go to, like, put my hand out to shake her hand, like, 'Thank you for meeting me,' and she goes, 'Don't touch me' ... She's like, 'I don't give consent for you to touch me,'" Lauren said.

She tried to explain that she didn't actually touch the woman and just wanted to extend a kind gesture. "'I didn't touch you,'" she said. "'I'm just trying to shake your hand to thank you for meeting with me.'" The woman's response shocked Lauren. "She was like, 'That's very inconsiderate of you.'"

Lauren was so upset by the interview that she decided she no longer wanted the job, although she doubted the woman would call her about it anyway.

Lauren made a second video to update viewers and answer some questions she had received. "The position I was applying for was actually for a construction company," she explained.

Lauren stated that many people commented on her first video and recommended that she report what happened to her to the company's human resources department. However, that might have led to an even stickier situation.

"When I researched the company on who I needed to reach out to regarding what happened, the HR director has the same last name as the woman I interviewed with yesterday," Lauren said.

At first, she ignored the strange coincidence and sent the email anyway. Then, she decided to do a bit of sleuthing and discovered the HR director was the daughter of the woman she had interviewed with. "My email is probably going to be laughed at and disregarded completely," she lamented.

Handshakes are a regular part of job interviews, even used by recruiters to gauge candidates. According to Indeed, "When you first meet a professional employer, you often greet them with a handshake ... Your handshake can actually leave a significant impression on a hiring manager."

If handshakes are such a typical part of the interviewing process, it seems exceptionally strange that this woman would not want to shake hands. And, even if she did not wish to, there was probably a kinder way she could have informed Lauren of that.

This interaction was undoubtedly a red flag, and she's probably better off looking for a job elsewhere. more

Steward Tony Pacheco
67
13h
It's Pretty Simple Corporate Etiquette To Always Wait For The Interviewing Manager To Offer Their Hand First If You're Coming In Like An Employee. If... You are Dynamic & Will Be Contributing As A Team Member Than By All Means Offer Your Hand Because You Are A Professional, Not A Subordinate.

When Remarks Like What Was Shared With You Pop Up, Just Smile & State, "Well I Am Interviewing Your Company As Well. I Am Sure You Understand?"

You Are A Leader & Another Leader Will Recognize That Tid-bit About You. A Manager Would Not And Unfortunately Could Not. more
11 reply

James Savitsky

Career development

2d

Hi everyone! I was recently promoted to head of a department and I think I’m a pretty easygoing boss. I always listen to my team and try to help them. The only thing I really expect is that the work is done perfectly by the deadline. Is that so hard? Am I asking too much? Why do my employees work so slowly and poorly?

Steward Tony Pacheco
13h
That Is The Difference Between A Manager Mindset And A Leader's Mindset. Your Employees Will Jump Hoops If You Lead Them, Not Manage Them. Start On... You Personal Development Training ASAP.

John C. Maxwell Material Is Available In Books, Video & Training. Share What You Learn In Meetings With Your Team. Get Everyone Involved In The Growth Of Their Work Ethic & Corporate Pride. Anyone Can Manage, But Team Members Follow Leaders.
more
Anthony Wambua
1d
As a former PM. I learnt by engaging with my expectations, work systems, staff and internal programmatic deadlines, you get a complete picture.... Through dialogue, consultations, and brainstorming, seek to understand the operational rationale of each of the quadrants mentioned above. If not, you will become a bully. Expectations will be met but at a cost of staff morale, discontentment, discomfort, etc etc. Seek to understand the system first before setting standards. more

Jarmila O’Neal

Career development

1d

I’m really confused about how to answer the salary question in interviews. After reading a bunch of “tips” online, I said that “a comfortable range for me is from … to ….”. But they told me I wasn’t a good fit because I’m not a straightforward person and give vague answers instead of being clear.
So what’s the right way, should I state an expected salary?

1

Steward Tony Pacheco
13h
The Appropiate Answer Is "I Am Seeking No Less Than $###K Annually But I Am Flexable If The Benefits Package Is Of Some Value To My Standard Of... Living"
(Remember to have your number ready)
Hold firm because you are a professional & you have researched other firms payouts for similar positions.
Bonuses are never guaranteed as they are based on a number of external issues which you have minimal control. more
1
Peter Wafula
1d
In my opinion, if you are invited for an interview or when making an a job application that requires you to indicate a salary expectation in the... application, it is good to make some research about the role's salary range in that organization you're applying or going for an interview. Don't wait to be ambushed with that question. Always give a range that falls within their lower and upper limit and give a leeway for negotiation based on various cirmcumstances more