Edna writes in with this burning question:

Dear Working Girl,

I am applying for jobs and EVERY SINGLE POTENTIAL EMPLOYER is asking for my references upfront.  Let me enumerate the things that are wrong with this approach.

1. As singular and special as employers demanding references may believe themselves to be, most of us unemployed types are applying for a LOT of jobs.  That is called “being smart.”  That also means, however, repeatedly asking our references if they are still willing to serve.  And reminding them each and every time we start a new round of applications.  This is so they aren’t caught off-guard, don’t splutter and sound like idiots, and don’t make us sound like idiots, either.
2. If my references are submitted at the get-go, I can’t tell any of them WHEN or even WHETHER to expect a call, because who knows at what point in the screening process that any calls will be made?  When it takes three months or more to hire, as many of the jobs I’ve applied for have done, that window of “reference preparedness” is far too long.
3. References should not be called upon, at all, until an applicant is a finalist.  Potential employers who call them before that, instead of doing the work of properly screening the resume and conducting an interview first, are both lazy and abusive of my references’ good will.  
4. I very much NEED my references’ good will.
5. I’d rather not participate in a joint practice that keeps reminding my references that I have not found a job yet.  After all, my references are supposed to be vouching for my employability.
6. Many applicants are currently employed, and may need to list their colleagues as references.  Having to ask these folks for referrals is pretty risky unless there’s a strong possibility that one will get the new job.
7. It is never polite to ask more than one is willing to give.  I’ve already sweated bullets crafting a customized resume and a well-written cover letter.  Unless an employer commits to seriously considering me, it is wrong to ask that I seriously invest any more of my own resources in return–especially not the very valuable resource of people who are willing to vouch for me.

(Note:  Jill Walser of “I Got The Job!” has generously agreed to answer this question.  Here’s Jill……)

Dear Edna,

The adorable Working Girl has requested that I address your references question from the perspective of a former corporate and agency recruiter.  I’m not privy to your industry or particular situation, so I’ll address the matter purely from the recruiter’s point of view.

First, treat your references list with the same care that you treat your credit card numbers.  Identity theft and privacy abuse are real risks.  Never put your references on job boards or send them with your resume when applying for jobs.  Only disclose them to employers with whom you’ve fallen in love–AFTER the first interview, when you think you’d like to work there.  They may ask in advance.  Who cares?  As a corporate recruiter, I’ve never avoided a candidate because they didn’t fork over their references immediately.  I actually consider it revealing of a candidate’s judgment and ability to recognize an unreasonable request.  It’s a bit of a game, like salary negotiation.  I can understand why some recruiters would request references upfront.  They may have been burned in the past when presenting candidates with weak references to the hiring manager and want to avoid a similar situation.  They may be getting their ducks in a row for a demanding or time-strapped manager.  They may just think they’re “supposed” to get them in advance.  Regardless, this is personal information and should be treated as such, in as graceful a manner as possible.  “I’ll zip my references over to you the second I learn I’m a finalist.  Can’t wait to get that call!” or “Gosh, it seems I’ve left my references in my other briefcase.  I’ll send them over as soon as I find out I’m the top candidate!” or “My ex-boss Joe said he’d be happy to provide a reference.  I’ll email his contact information as soon as we’re at that point.” Smile and change the subject.

If you have several irons in the fire, one strategy to avoid over-burdening your references with phone calls is to ask them for a letter of reference.  Offer to write it for their signature if they agree but don’t produce one.  Try to get it on letterhead.  Having letters of reference available will help you to appear organized and well liked.  Note:  In the future try to get this task done before you leave the job.  How do you do this without spilling the beans that you’re looking for another job?  Say you have a volunteer opportunity and the agency wants to check your references in advance.  Better yet–actually pursue a volunteer job where you get to do something that’s a bit of a stretch for you.  It’s good karma, great experience, and lovely networking occurs when you’re working alongside other volunteers.  Another great time to ask for  a reference letter is when your boss is leaving the company.  Even when your boss is just moving departments, it’s easy to say, “We’ve had such a great working relationship, and I’ll miss working alongside you.  Could you write a letter so that in five years when one of us leaves the company it will be easy to remember my accomplishments in this role?” When you actually announce your departure some time later, ensure that your manager is still willing to serve as a reference, remind them of the fabulous letter they wrote, and you’re all set.

At the end of the interview, if you’re pretty sure you’re interested, you can show your prospective employer the original reference letters.  At your discretion, provide a copy of the letter or offer to email one if you need to buy some time.  Pleasantly ask the recruiter or hiring manager to make the reference check call when you’re the final candidate.  They’ll already have the letters, so that should tide them over.

Another consideration regarding reference letters is that many agency recruiters and headhunters use reference sheets as shopping lists.  You’ve provided the name, job title, direct number and email address of decision makers and potential ”steals” that they’ve been searching for for months, how nice of you!  Sure, they’ll call your references and talk about you, but their objective is also to talk up their agency’s services or a fabulous opportunity with your reference’s competitor.  If a recruiter won’t set you up on interviews without seeing your references, that’s a red flag that they are shopping your references list. 

Best of luck, Edna!

That was super, Jill.  Thanks.  Working Girl will share her thoughts on all this tomorrow…..

I’ll show you mine.”

Which is apparently, according to Alex Williams in this Sunday NYT story, what the “new generation” of workers known as the Millennials is doing.

When it comes to salary, that is.

According to Williams the old bugaboo of “never tell people how much you earn” is not a problem for twenty-somethings, who “consider frank talk about income a valuable tool.”  They claim that comparing what you make to what others make can be “crucial.”  You can tell better if you’re under (or over) paid.  It helps tremendously when you’re negotiating salary during interviews and at raise time.  Sounds pretty obvious, actually….. 

Yet the article implies shock! dismay! concern! at such rampant openness and honesty.  Yes, controversy is the lifeblood of journalism, but is this “news” really so alarming?  

Indeed, Working Girl wonders if sharing salary info is really such a sea-change after all.  Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and WG was twenty-something-ish, she and all her cohorts told each other how much they earned.  It didn’t seem like a big deal.  Maybe because we weren’t making diddly-squat?  Maybe because we hadn’t yet been bitten in the butt by telling too much about ourselves?  Maybe because at that age, before you’ve formed families of your own, your friends are your family?

If it is a sea-change, then WG says, Go to it.  It was a stupid rule anyway.  More information, rather than less, is better.  Companies that encourage/require you to keep your salary a secret do it to protect them, not you.  What better way to determine your market value than to compare your compensation with that of others doing the same thing?

Always realizing, of course, that jealousy happens.  If someone tells you her salary and asks you to keep it private, then certainly do so.  And with money, as with the rest of life, it never hurts to keep in mind this little gem from Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus: 

“The first reaction to truth is hatred.”  

Okay, so it’s Monday and you’re thinking, “Boy, I sure could use some cheering up.”

Yet at the same time you realize that it’s impossible to feel truly cheered up on a Monday.  It’s what we in the biz call a contradiction in terms.

That’s why Working Girl is pleased to pass on to you a new way to feel depressed and cheered up at the very same time.  Just sashay on over to Despair Inc. and check out their revolutionary (their word) line of “demotivational”  products.  Heck, you can’t feel less motivated than you feel right now!  May as well wallow in it.

Some sample demotivators:

CONSISTENCY:  It’s only a virtue if you’re not a screw-up. 

GIVE UP:  At some point, hanging in there just makes you look like an even bigger loser.

INSPIRATION:  Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.

MISTAKES:  It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

TRADITION:  Just because you’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly stupid.

Bet you’re feeling better already…..

Monsieur G. L. Hoffman, over at What Would Dad Say, has very kindly sent this DIG YOUR JOB badge.  For Working Girl! 

Thanks, Dad!

Yesterday Working Girl actually got out of the house for a change, took the bus to a hip Belltown wine bar, and had a grown-up glass of wine with Vocation Vacation guru Brian Kurth.

Note to self:  It’s good to get away from your work every now and then.

Anyway–didja know?–Brian has a new book out, “Test-Drive Your Dream Job” and it’s the perfect thing for folks who can’t afford one of Brian’s full-on vocation vacations (WG kvetched about the cost of these admittedly wonderful programs a while back). 

Brian, with co-author Robin Simons, provides friendly, compassionate, realistic, and doable advice toward creating your very own “vocation vacation.”  The subtitle, “A step-by-step guide to finding and creating the work you love,” says it all.  And, hey, the book UNDERSTANDS–there’s a whole chapter on “fear”!  Also ones on research, finding a mentor, and how to move forward from the test drive.

Hugely worthwhile for anyone who’s harboring an unfulfilled dream and wondering if it’s time to go after that dream. 

Because:  If not now, when?

But it ain’t easy and that’s why books (and programs) like Brian’s are so tremendously helpful.  There, that’s your commercial for the day.   

Here’s a guest post and a most interesting tale from Liz Handlin over at Ultimate Resumes:

Earlier this week I received the following email from a client/friend of mine:

Hey Liz,

I hope you’re doing well and business is still booming. I wanted to ask your opinion of something. After nine months, it has come to my attention that a former colleague/friend has plagiarized large sections of my resume (the one you helped me with). I offered it to her to use as a template when our employer was downsizing. We have been competing for the same contract jobs and she has recently undercut me for $10 less per hour on a 6-12 contract gig working with client of our former employer. The client assumed we had the same background and experience because we worked for the same employer and because she copied my resume. She’s even posted part of it on LinkedIn along with other falsifications.

Any thoughts/ideas about what I can do?

Thanks,
Brad

My response was this:

Dear Brad,

I am so sorry to hear about this. If I could sue this woman for copyright infringement I would. This happened once before when another client did exactly what you did and shared his new resume that I wrote with a co-worker. The way I found out is that the co-worker/idiot who plagiarized his resume had the nerve to contact me to ask if there was “anything I could do to improve his resume” – I told him that he had already copied my work enough and that unless he wanted to pay me for the work he had copied that we had nothing to talk about.

In the future I recommend that you not show co-workers your resume because you really can’t trust people not to screw you the way this woman has done. Plus, since you paid for the resume I would think you wouldn’t want to give away the contents for free. I always get pissed when I find out that someone has plagiarized my resume work but I don’t think there is much I can do about it short of copyrighting every resume I write and that probably wouldn’t make my clients happy. This woman will get what’s coming to her…what comes around usually goes around.

Regards,

Liz

The point of this post is: keep your resume to yourself unless you don’t mind if ambitious co-workers copy your work or, possibly, take credit for your accomplishments. A huge part of the service I provide is helping my clients to target and articulate accomplishments. Do you want your co-worker to see the way you have described your success on a project and say, “Hey, I worked on that project too so I am going to put that great sentence on my resume.”? What if, like my friend Brad, you wind up competing with this co-worker for the same job?

There are many ways to support friends and co-workers that don’t involve giving away your resume so think defensively and don’t share personal information that others could use to boost their careers at the expense of yours.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Working Girl reveals all–okay, some–in this interview with the lovely Whitney Keyes in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

You can check it out here.

One of Working Girl’s cooler friends, Karen Story, appeared on TV last week.  With goats.

Haven’t you heard?  Goats are all the rage this Earth Day as an all-natural, organic, ruthlessly efficient, and kinda cute solution to the thorny (heh, heh) problem of blackberry overgrowth.

You working girls in the Pacific Northwest understand.  Blackberries flourish everywhere, spread like a bad flu, and are impossible to kill.  Prickly, too.  (Although in the summer it is nice to take walks along the railroad tracks and pick the berries.)

What does all this have to do with work?  Well, above-mentioned cool friend is, in addition to being a writer and a singer, a community activist working to save native trees and plants from non-native invaders such as blackberries and ivy.  Her answer:  goats.

Which leads us to the most unusual job WG has heard of for a while:  goat wrangler.  Tammy Dunakin runs her own business, Rent-A-Ruminant, here in the Seattle area and has more business than she can handle.*   Job duties involve care and transportation of her herd of 60 working goats to various parks and roadways around the region.  There’s more:  these are “rescue goats.”  Meaning that most of her goats are former pets given up or abandoned by former owners.

What’s not to love about this story?* 

Go goats.  Happy Earth Day.      

*A business opportunity for an animal lover……!

It’s Monday, so let’s talk about Friday.  Specifically, “Casual” Friday.  A phenomenon often thought of as a perk.  But is it, really?

Working Girl’s take:  Beware of the Casual Friday!  Some employers use it as a tool to discover what they consider/suspect to be the “real you.”  At least that’s what this article from the WSJ said last week (”Savvy corporate politicians know that casual days are the times when their appearance will be most closely watched.”)

Creepy.  But Casual Friday may be a thing at your job.  And especially if it’s a new job, you may be wondering how to handle it, maybe even leverage it to your advantage.

Here’s the simplest rule:  Notice what your boss wears on C.F. and then wear a version of that.

Okay, it can be more complicated.  Your boss is a guy and you’re not.  Or your boss comes in wearing cut-offs and flip-flops on C.F.  Or you work in a field where scheduled-at-the-last-minute meetings with clients are not unusual.  Clothes have always been a minefield for women, especially women at work.  It’s kind of a pain.  Fortunately, we’re up to the challenge.

If your boss ignores casual day (wears the same kind of clothes as on the other days), then you can go ahead and ignore it, too.  Isn’t that sort of a relief?  And isn’t it annoying that the whole concept of “business casual” practically forces you to buy and own a second-tier work wardrobe?  Which leads one to wonder if C.F. isn’t just a plot by clothing manufacturers to get you to buy more clothes…..

Where were we?  Right: If your boss makes only a token change on C.F. (leaves off his tie, for example), you too may feel free to ignore the whole thing.  However, if your boss wears cut-offs and flip-flops, that doesn’t mean you should do the same. 

Why?  Because your clothes are a reflection of you; plus, they have a great power to influence your mood.   At work, it’s a cool idea to wear clothes that show where your ambitions lie.  “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have”—-it’s a cliché because it’s true! 

Clothes are never just clothes.  Clothes broadcast a message about who you are and who you want to be.  So give Casual Friday some thought.  Pick out someone who has a life or a job that you’d like to have, and emulate that person.  Remember always that how you dress is part of the overall package of You.  It’s something you have control over.  Take advantage of it.

Closing note:  “Nice” clothes do not mean uncomfortable clothes.  If your dressy stuff is uncomfortable, it means it doesn’t fit you right.  If you’re wearing something you hate, or feel ugly in, or feel uncomfortable in, you’re not going to be happy.  Be happy. 

And be smart!  Know that style and comfort are not mutually exclusive.

Working Girl is a fanatic about grammar and spelling.  Not to mention usage, syntax, and diction.  So it was with perverted pleasure (also, unholy glee) that she ran across this list of the top 100 misspelled words on resumes from the Kentucky Office of Employment and Training (via the Pongo Resume blog).

Natch, both “accommodate” and “a lot” were there.  Ditto for “February,” “ninety,” “occasion,” and “principle.”  And, of course, “their.”

But “decision”?  There are people who can’t spell “decision”?  Depressingly, there are also folks who are stymied by “around,” “among,” “maybe,” and “until.” 

Nevertheless, these lists are always diverting because what’s more fun than to decry the failings of others?  Answer:  Few things are more fun.  Especially on Friday when we are pretty much brain dead.  Thanks, Kentucky Office of Employment and Training.  We editor wannabees and exhausted-end-of-weekers salute you. 

(Oh, and Pongo Resume?  Are you wondering about the name “Pongo”?  It’s named after the daddy dog in 101 Dalmatians–he leads the mama dog and the 99 puppies out of captivity!)

Typos, and puppies, too.  A Red Letter Day for Working Girl.

P.S.  Need more diversion?  Check out this great list of The Ten Worst Job Interview Questions Ever from Business Pundit.  The suggested answers will keep you laughing until the end of the workday.  Happy weekend.