Dear Jewish Fairy Godmother:

I am so tired of dealing with human resources. I have a real job to do
and my boss dumped hiring three people into my lap as though there’s
nothing else that I am responsible for. The problem is that I first I was
flooded with people who are not right for the job, and now that I may
have actually found a few who could be trained, the boss is getting
antsy about making a decision. I swear if he doesn’t just give me the
authority to make a decision I am gonna bonk him with my laptop.
Thanks, I needed to vent! But seriously, what should I do? I have two
applicants who might actually be able to learn the job, but not one
who has experience in our field. I am scared if I pass on both of these
possibles that I will lose them and be stuck having to go through this
process again. Aaarggghhh! Can you tell me something I can say to
my boss to get this to closure, and/or to the applicants to keep them
on the hook while I do what he said, which is “run the ad again.”

Re-Run

 
Dear Re-Run:

He’s the boss so he gets the last vote on whom to hire. My advise is to
play for time. Let the non-starters off the hook and send the other two
(separately) an email that goes roughly: Dear Applicant – Thanks for
applying and interviewing for the ___ position. You have many of the
skills we are looking for in our future hire. FYI, we have more than fifty
original applicants, did phone interviews with half, and personal
interviews with fewer than a dozen. You are still on our short list of
fewer than five. That said, the owner of the company is not ready to
commit to a final decision at this time. I understand this many be
disappointing, and that you will continue to look for full-time
employment. We plan to post the position for two more weeks, and
depending on who applies, maker a decision by _______. I&'ll contact
you then if you are our first choice, and we can discuss where your
career goals intersect with our needs. Best …This doesn&'t obligate you to do anything other than sending the email.

If you don&'t have a better candidate you can go back to these two and
let your boss decide. If you do, tell him how wise he was to wait.

Dear Jewish Fairy Godmother:

I just got promoted from within to the executive directorship of a mid-
size regional non-profit I have worked here for seven years, first in a
midline capacity, then in senior management to the twenty-year
director. I was one of several dozen applicants including other internal
candidates, but the only internal one who survived the various
elimination rounds and who became a finalist. One criterion was the
ability to implement our new strategic plan. I was the unanimous first
choice of the board of directors, but the second choice of the staff. I
genuinely don’t know id there’s a personal reason why some of them
did not want me, or if the idea of any insider didn’t feel good to them.
I know the “new shiny penny” can always be attractive and also that
there is at least one senior staff person who is a rabble-rouser against
me. What can I say in my formal announcement to the troops that will
inspire them and get their backing?

New at This

 
Dear New at This:

Don’t be in too much of a rush to feel like you have to “win” their
support. These kinds of transitions take time. Some organizations that
have had a long-term leader intentionally choose an interim one, with
the proviso that that person NOT be a candidate for the long-run job,
just so people can get over their attachments to the outgoing boss and
begin to adjust to someone new.

 
Here’s a draft for your opening remarks that you can tailor for your
organization: I’m pleased to accept the position as the next Executive
Director of the [orgname]. As you know I’ve worked here for x years in
my capacities as y and z. I have a profound respect for our mission
and for the strong, talented, and committed professional staff with
whom I’ve had the pleasure of working. Though this phrase is often
said as a cliché, I do not mean it to be one. I want to have an open
door policy and to always be available to listen to each of you. We
have a strategic plan and a board of directors who have asked me to
implement it. I will need your help. I’m making a commitment to meet
individually with each of you over the next few weeks. I will listen to
any and every thing you want me to hear. I won’t be making
commitments about specific actions. In fact, I anticipate that for
every strongly held view there may be an equally strongly held
opposite view. But these very issues will help us identify priorities, so
we can all work for solutions. But I do want to understand everything
that you think I should know, from the state of our funding to the
changes we need in our computer system. This is a chance to educate
me about how our organization runs, from your point of view. Please
help us all serve the greater good. I’m very much looking forward to
these conversations and to a strong and thriving future together.

Dear Jewish Fairy Godmother:

I just took a halftime job as a Jewish Federation social worker (what I
did eons ago in my twenties and thirties) after fifteen years as a real
estate agent. I loved having my own hours and for the first ten years I
actually made decent money. The last five, not so much. Actually, the
last five, almost nothing. I put in lots of unpaid time and get paid
exactly that. So I decided a job with a paycheck and benefits was
worth giving up my ostensible freedom. I’m now in the process of
negotiating my employment agreement. While I’m pretty good at
lingo-ese when it comes to houses, I’m not so good on labor words. I
asked a lot of questions about vacation time, sick leave etc that they
answered but one biggie is still open: The chair of the Board who hired
me said that they wanted to give me health benefits but that they
didn’t have all the details worked out yet, but trust them. Perhaps
they’ll add me to a synagogue group plan, or maybe to the pool of a
larger Federation, or….? I really want medical benefits. How can I
make it happen?

Change of Life

 
Dear Change of Life:

I’d email this: Thanks for clarifying my questions about the
employment agreement. The only remaining issue yet undocumented
are the discussions I have had with various people throughout the
process about medical benefits. Would it be possible to add a sentence
that says roughly the following: “Federation will provide medical
benefits to Employee effective January 1, 2014, either by adding
Employee to an existing group policy or by reimbursing direct costs for
an equivalent independent insurance policy coverage that Employee
would purchase through a state-operated exchange.”
Unless the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare is overturned by the politics
of divisiveness, we’re all going to have access to health care. Even
without the new job you’d have the safety net you have not had for a
long time. But if the Federation has offered, get their Yes in writing.

Dear Jewish Fairy Godmother:

I have a young colleague who looks up to me in a maternal, almost
fairy godmothering advice-giving kind of way, though I have neither
children nor a wand. She and her husband struggled to get pregnant
and after much trauma decided to go the IVF route. She is now
certifiably one month pregnant and in a few weeks will find out if she’s
bearing twins. Yesterday she approached me about her indecision,
caution, fear, sense of obligation, ambivalence, etc about attending a
conference four hours drive away. She made the commitment to speak
two months ago, before she was pregnant and didn’t back out sooner.
It would be a big feather in her professional cap to wow the attendees
and do some marketing. But the baby is the most important thing in
her life. I told her to go sleep on it, but am unsure what I should or
shouldn’t say.

Tongue-Tied

 
Dear Tongue-Tied:

Your mouth should stay shut for good reason: If you push her to put
duty first, she attends the conference, and then loses the baby, which
can happen just like in any other early pregnancy, IVF or natural, you
will feel guilty and she may blame you. It’s simply not your job to tell
her what to do. Even if you were her supervisor, this is personal
medical territory and not the domain of anyone but her and her doctor
to decide. Even if losing her job were on the line, it’s still her call.

 
It’s fine to give advice and flattering to have people come to you with
their problems. But this is a case where the decision should not be in
any way influenced. You can tell her to write down all her pros and
cons, or even suggest she recruit a colleague as backup should she
decide not to go. Perhaps if this were a few months down the road
she’d feel easier. But it isn’t and unless she’s ready to quit work, she
will have to figure out how to balance a job and a baby in the long run.
But absolutely no one except her can make the decision now in this
most fragile and changing of times.

Dear Jewish Fairy Godmother:

I just started a new job as the marketing director in an old company.
Among the draws for me was the established character of the firm. It
had a great external reputation, and frequently competed with my
former employer (and won more often than we did). So I switched
teams, moving from being at the top of a small department to having
just one assistant. The pay was more or less equal but I liked the
management and growth philosophies of the new firm. From the
outside. Inside, I am finding a history of hurts, insults, and grievances
that are a decade or more old. I’m so tired of being told who did what
to whom when that I could scream. It’s old, juvenile,
counterproductive, and annoying. How can I move them out of the
past into the future? PS there’s no going back for me.

Newbie

 
Dear Newbie:

You’ve got a good handle on the problem. But getting feuding office
mates to reconcile is akin to standing between the Hatfields and the
McCoys. Old grudges deeply embraced can create an air of self-
righteous indignation that Moses, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther
King, would have a hard time gentling. You need to invent a new
company culture to supplant the old one, or you’re going to get sucked
into the old mess.

 
Think about team building activities that break down the existing units.
If people are used to working together, see if you can split them up.
Identify task-oriented working groups to identify recommendations
that address specific problems, whether that’s pooling contact
databases or cleaning up the company bios. Set up a FaceBook page
for the firm; have people use it for happy things, like babies,
weddings, and their kids’ achievements. Institute regular happy hours
and brown bag lunches. Alternate between sharing information about
work in progress and theme events that have nothing to do with the
office. Job one: get them used to talking to one another. Make sure
management supports changing the corporate culture. Having them
send the message that old grudges are old news will do a lot to
support your agenda and progress.

Dear Jewish Fairy Godmother:

I’m in a tricky human resources situation. I’m the administrator of a
mid-sized synagogue. The person who was key office support left us a
year ago for what turned out to be an ill-advised marriage. She moved
back and has been job hunting, without success. The Board just
decided to set up a new position as an outreach coordinator, because
our membership/outreach committee doesn’t do enough and I have far
too much to keep trying to get the needed chores done. The position
will be half time to start though may grow into more. I know we need
someone warm, friendly, outgoing, good with people, and generally
everything that’s the opposite of this person on her best day, which
she is far from having had in a very long time. I have two questions:
Should I notify her when the job is posted, and if so what should I
say? How should I handle it if she chooses to apply? In case it’s not
clear: I think she’s a bad fit for the job.

Need Good Help

 
Dear Need Good Help:

Here’s what you should not, repeat NOT do: Call her up and say,
We’re posting a position but I think you’re all wrong for the job so
don’t both applying. That&'s inviting a lawsuit. You can send her the
announcement with a simple FYI in the headline, to forestall the
inevitable, Why didn’t you tell me you had a job available? The reality
is that she may be as uninterested in returning to her old employer as
you are in having her. But more likely, if she is indeed unemployed,
she will have some expectation that you would want her back,
assuming she was good at her former job and if you’ve written her a
letter of reference.

 
Send the FYI, and when she calls (as she almost certainly will) to ask
about the job, her chances, and everything else that’s positive, do the
following. Speak in a measured voice and say it is an open search, and
the priorities are for skill sets very different from what she
demonstrated before. Explain that you are not the only person making
the choice, and then be sure that you are not. Get two board members
to interview with you (the head of membership for example). Hopefully
those people will have values similar to your own. End with, You’re
welcome to apply. We definitely want to find the right person for the
job. Unless she’s dense she won’t expect a lot of help from you. But
you cannot and should not stop her from applying.

Dear Jewish Fairy Godmother:

I’ve taught in a poor, rural, school district for the past twenty years. I
was hired to teach shop, mechanics, etc. In the course of time I have
subbed as everything from a teacher of math and biology to history. In
addition, each year I spend hundreds of uncompensated hours and
dollars advising and helping out with the yearbook. The only thing I
have asked that is “coloring outside the lines” has been to attend,
twice a year, with unpaid leave, a school held by my spiritual teacher.
Now the school administrators have said they are cutting my job to
half-time, and that they will not renew even that contract if I plan to
attend school again. I thought of calling in sick but it’s dishonest and I
would be 1,000 miles away if they call my bluff. (BTW my 98-yr- old
mother is on route so I visit her too.) I am 62, and need health
insurance, or I would consider retiring. It seems to me that some
better planning would help both them and me. Once I looked at all the
regulations I could use, we are two days apart, twice a year. What
pitch can I make to keep my life as I want it.

Teach/Student

 
Dear Teach:

Here’s the letter I’d write. Dear School Board: I want to keep teaching.
I’ve been with the district since 19xx. In addition to teaching shop,
math, science, and history, and filling in as needed I have helped
produce the yearbook, an activity to which I’ve donated hundreds of
unpaid hours and dollars each year. I’ve done all this without
complaint, shifting my class schedule and availability as needed to
serve the district. When you told me that my job would be reduced to
50% I also accepted the change. The only thing I have asked is the
right to schedule unpaid vacation to accommodate a religious school
commitment that occurs twice a year. In the past I have combined
that with a trip to my 98-yr old mother. If necessary I can limit the
commitment to four working days on my new work schedule.

My suggestion is to negotiate as hard as you can for the part-time
contract to continue, so that your family’s medical benefits last at least
until ObamaCare kicks in. If you choose to leave after that, at least
you’ll have access to health care. Focus on fall term. If it goes well, try
to renegotiate the vacation issue again for spring, when they will be
even less likely to disrupt staffing and the yearbook. My bet is that you
can make this last at least six months, maybe a year, given how close
to the beginning of term we are. You might also consult a labor lawyer
to see if there’s any protection for a religious issue.

Dear Jewish Fairy Godmother:

For a very long time I was the executive assistant to the boss of a
department in my organization. In that role I learned a lot about
various co-workers and had to listen to my boss dissect their flaws,
often in the least flattering and least compassionate ways. Now my job
has changed. I am working with many of the same people as peers, as
people I now supervise, and in one case, as my new boss. The old
boss still tries to corner me in his office with his snarky and mean-
spirited comments, like he needs an audience to validate his
unkindness. In addition to being mean, he’s long-winded, and I don’t
want my new boss to think I am ratting him out to the old one. I really
like the new guy who does not do the same. How can I unplug from
the old boss?

Hear No Evil

 
Dear Hear No Evil:

When roles change in organizations there is always some re-calibration
that is required. Mature adults handle this kind of process better than
people with a middle-school need to be unkind to others. You have the
unenviable job of educating your old boss Fortunately you have a new
boss as an umbrella, should you need one.

 
Next time Old Boss tried to corner you, stay in a public place for the
discussion. When he starts on one of his diatribes, say very simply: My
job and my role has changed here. I no longer want to hear you talk
about people. I’ll talk to them directly. Please don’t ask me to listen
again. Then go to your new boss and, without revealing what might
have been said about him in the past, explain the old behavioral
patterns. Tell him you’re hoping they’ll stop on their own. But if not,
you may ask him to say something because you so very much value
working for him that you don’t want to give any impression that you
are not a good team player for him. It may come of syrupy, but if you
are doing a good job and don’t linger too long at the proverbial water
cooler with others, he’ll be able to see you for who you are, not how
your old boss treated you.