updates: interviewing while visibly pregnant, LinkedIn exaggeration, and more

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. Interviewing in person while visibly pregnant (#2 at the link)

Thanks for your advice about addressing my pregnancy during an interview process. I had to make my decision before I saw your response, but it was reassuring that I hadn’t messed up!

I was invited to in-person second-round interviews for two positions through that recruiter in the same week, so I let him know I was pregnant and gave him permission to share that with the hiring committees. He responded with congratulations, but said he’d let me handle the conversation with employers. Weird, because he knew I didn’t have contact information for anyone I was interviewing with – all the arrangements went through the recruiter. So, both times I announced my pregnancy by walking through the door. Both interviews went pretty well, but I didn’t get offered either job, and I’ll never know whether pregnancy had anything to do with it. Also, the recruiter apparently just happened not to have any other postings I might be a good candidate for until approximately two months after my baby was born – which could absolutely be a coincidence. I typically hear from him every few months, but around the time I wrote to you, he’d sent me four or five jobs very close together, so the timing of the lull stood out.

During my pregnancy, there was only one job I applied for on my own, and for that one I had an in-person interview the day before my scheduled C-section! When I confirmed the interview, I let them know I was pregnant and planning to deliver the next day – I wanted them fully informed in case I had to cancel last-minute, and I figured my cheerfulness about interviewing that day might speak to my enthusiasm for the role. This was by far the most comfortable of the interviews for me, and I think telling them in advance contributed to that – they were warm and friendly and made small talk about their own pregnancies and kids (in a professional, non-TMI way) and I ended up with a very positive sense of the friendly culture and work-life balance at that organization. I was one of two finalists they invited back for a final interview via Zoom the following week, but they went with the other candidate. That person has a specific relevant (but not required) certification that I don’t have, but it’s also true that I passed up multiple openings to pitch myself as a person who “hits the ground running” – while that is usually me, it wouldn’t have been at that job, with how soon they wanted someone to start.

Most importantly, I now have a wonderful, healthy, mostly happy, almost four-month-old baby. Second most importantly, my old job (at a company that was going out of business) managed to keep me long enough that I qualified for our state’s paid family leave, which turned not having a new job yet into a good thing. And third most importantly, I have just accepted an offer and I get a whole five weeks before my start date to enjoy my baby without a job search hanging over my head!

2. How much exaggeration is too much on LinkedIn? (#3 at the link)

My coworker is no longer at the company, but things have taken a real turn on the LinkedIn exaggeration front. (For the commenters worried I would do something to sabotage my coworker, rest assured that this is filed firmly under “interesting topic of discussion/food for thought, but decidedly not my place to intervene in any way.”)

Since departing the company, this person’s LinkedIn page is now wildly inaccurate and does not represent their true work history at all, especially for their time at my company. Some examples include:
– a job title that is completely different from the actual job title (think HR representative vs accountant levels of different, not teapot specialist vs teapot designer different)
– designing and creating learning programs for the whole organization (listing a specific number of people that is about five times the number of employees at the company); these programs do not exist
– creating a large number of complex work products that do not exist using software we never had access to
– meeting every single deadline they ever had (not possible with the type of work we do, and project management was one of their biggest struggles)

I don’t know if this rises to the level of bananapants, but it has been interesting to see the evolution of their personal branding. I think I now have a very clear read on how much is too much embellishment.

3. I’m sick of being the only person who can manage our old technology (#2 at the link)

I’d like to thank you for your advice, along with the many kind commenters who weighed in with their similar experiences. It seems like it’s a pretty common problem for a lot of people working in tech.

I spoke to managers about how much was on my plate and they were very understanding and were willing to support giving me as much time as was needed to keep everything running, without having to worry about other responsibilities. Unfortunately, projects to remove these legacy systems kept being delayed and there was very little interest in others picking up the work, which still left me nervous about if a problem were to come up over the evenings or weekends.

Ultimately, last year I decided to leave. While the issue I wrote about was a big factor, there was also a huge loss of staff in our department to competitors, a lack of promised career progression, and a significant change in attitude towards my team that I became increasingly frustrated with. I initially looked for similar jobs at a similar salary, but through some hard work and a massive amount of luck I was offered a role by a much larger company that offered a title promotion, massive raise, and fully remote work. I have now celebrated one year with the new company and genuinely enjoy it.

I spent my slightly ridiculous three-month notice period documenting all the tasks I had been doing and supervising other engineers as they (somewhat begrudgingly) learnt everything I had been doing. As cathartic as it may have been for the whole system to crash and burn within days of my absence it seems like they’ve kept everything ticking along, and hopefully they’ve kept up pressure for the old systems to be sent to the great e-waste recycler in the sky.

4. Can I use an offer to try to get a second offer? (#4 at the link)

Despite my confidence in getting an offer from a local city government, that didn’t happen. I did receive an email a few weeks later saying they went with someone else. So, I wasn’t able to leverage that offer to get a full time position from Company A. But the great news is that Company A decided to hire a full-time person. As a consultant, they let me skip any screeners and jump right to the first round virtual interview. Then they had me do a virtual interview with the CEO, and they told me at the end of the interview they wanted to make me an offer! So, I’ve been happily working full time at Company A since July!

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