Ask a Manager: Why did you leave your previous job?

The Finishing School welcomes our guest manager,  "Miranda Bailey," to respond to a recent Ask the Manager question. Note:  some facts in the letter below have been omitted or altered to obscure the workplace.  The letter is otherwise genuine.   Hi there, Came across your web page and "ask a manager" section particularly interested me. Here's my query: hope I get some guidance. An overview to my profile: I am an MBA graduate. An HR professional (Based abroad) I've worked for 5 yrs with mostly start-up organizations. Throughout my career I made sure that I give my best to the organizations (for which I did...

Read more »

My Interview Story

Guest Instructor, M. Cipriani  Whenever things happen that make me think, “This is not how it used to be,”  I realize I am getting old. I long for the days when job offers were made over the telephone, rather than through email.   When you were courted by a company that wanted to hire you, rather than having to remind them – “Hey, you have a job to fill, remember?” Perhaps it is the economic downturn that has left the state of human resources and recruitment in such a mess, as those folks along with the sales and marketing teams are usually the first to be escorted to the door.   Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations...

Read more »

Real and Imagined Business Panic

Bunny Watson, Student at Large A story comes to us this morning that Spokesduck Gilbert Gottfried has been dismissed by Aflac for a steady stream of tweets making light of conditions in post-earthquake Japan.  We might all agree to cry "Too Soon!" on this play; when you are the voice of an insurance company.... well, that just won't do. Oh, our Tweets will undo us, won't they?  Tweets are the new Send-All email gaffes we all made 15 years ago.  We all have a story of accidentally sending to an entire distribution list an off-color joke or response to the company meeting.  And that was just an extension of being caught passing...

Read more »

Ask a Manager: Taking one for the Team

The Finishing School welcomes our guest manager,  "Patty Hewes," to respond to a recent Ask the Manager question. Note:  some facts in the letter below have been omitted or altered to obscure the workplace.  The letter is otherwise genuine. I am so frustrated.  For 3 years I had been telling the VP that my staff's salaries (and mine) were depressed.  I had been told that we would be benchmarking the exempt positions and at that time would make the adjustments, [so]  I beefed up my job descriptions for my department  [and] the consultants [recommended] my job [go] up 3 pay grades.  But my company will...

Read more »