coworker got promoted and I didn’t even get to interview, do other people like forced fun, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My coworker got promoted and I didn’t even get to interview for it

I’ve been in my job about five years. I’m in a specialized role in my large organization, along with Rachel, who I helped hire and train. We each handle separate areas.

It’s been rewarding work, and I feel like I’ve found something I’m good at. I like the mission, and the pay and benefits are good. But the office politics are a struggle for me, and we’ve been going through some big changes with a reorganization and significant leadership changes.

As part of the reorganization, last year Rachel and I were absorbed into a different department. While I get along well with our new manager, I’m realizing they are overloaded and are kind of flaky and disorganized as a result.

There’s a recent vacancy in our department that our manager announced Rachel is being promoted to. While I want to be happy for her, I’m upset. Typically my organization would post an opening internally, but it sounds like that’s not happening and Rachel stepping into the role is a foregone conclusion. I feel spurned that I wasn’t offered an opportunity to apply, because I would have been interested. In many ways, I’m more qualified for this promotion, but the team admittedly has some important upcoming work that is more in line with Rachel’s focus.

I just had a glowing performance review that included some vague reference to professional development opportunities, but this is leaving me feeling unappreciated and stagnant. I’m a little worried they consider me indispensable in my current role and aren’t serious about my growth or appreciative of my work.

Do I say anything to our manager about how unhappy I am about this? I want to express that I’m not cool with how this was handled, but I’m trying to consider what it would even accomplish to say anything now. I’m not seriously considering leaving over this in the short-term, but it’s making me rethink everything about my role and my future in this department. How do I approach this professionally, but preserve these relationships? Or should I just leave this be, since I’m unlikely to change the outcome?

There are times when it makes sense to promote someone into a job without opening the role to internal candidates. If your manager, who has worked with both of you, knew that Rachel was best suited for the work because of those upcoming projects, it’s not necessarily outrageous that she just moved forward with that decision; depending on the circumstances, it could have been the right choice — and if she was set on it and knew enough from working with you both that interviews wouldn’t change the outcome, there’s an argument that she was right not to give you false hope. (And most of the time, a long history of working with someone provides much more nuanced info about their fit for a job than interviewing them will.)

That said, you can certainly talk to your manager; you’d just want to do it in a way that allows for the possibility that she had good reasons for the decision. You don’t want to sound like you think you were owed a chance to interview for the job since you weren’t. But you could tell her that you would have been interested in throwing your hat in the ring, although you understand there may be reasons why in this case the job wasn’t opened to other applicants, and ask for her help in figuring out what a path to promotion could look like and how to ensure you’re considered if another potential promotion opens up in the future.

Related:
I wasn’t given the chance to apply for a promotion I really wanted

2. Do other people really like all this forced fun?

I worked for an organization which at first appeared to really focus on developing its people. While the industry is evolving, I would say we still work in a fairly corporate field overall. I quickly was surprised by some of the behaviors there. For example, we would spend the first 10 minutes of a meeting (that already had a packed agenda) with a random ice-breaker, from posting a meme to being asked to communicate the feelings of the day. There was a ton of time spent on exercises related to personality types and how to work together. Larger meetings were almost required to have an element of “fun” where someone presenting would dress in a silly outfits or make updates into a game. People were encouraged to put every little thought in meeting chats to the point that you couldn’t read it and follow what was happening.

It felt awkward and unproductive to the point where I tried to avoid it. I don’t mind an activity or something outside the norm every so often, but over time it felt unprofessional in many circumstances, but saying anything was perceived as not being a team player or against the culture. Do others really find this engaging or am I the odd one out?

Some people find it engaging! Other people enjoy or don’t mind a smaller amount of it but would be annoyed by it being as frequent as it sounds here. And other people were probably internally rolling their eyes or thinking “just get to the agenda already!” but not saying anything because the culture as a whole was enthused about these activities.

Sometimes you can get a feel for how many people aren’t Fully And Enthusiastically On Board by watching other people’s reactions; you can usually see a difference between someone who’s all in on this stuff versus the people who are just trying to get through it.

3. My new manager rejected me for the same job last year

I interviewed at a company for a role for which I was highly qualified. The manager rejected me for not being strategic enough / more content focused, which is patently untrue, but okay. I then interviewed at the same company a month later for the same role / different product line, was the unanimous choice, and accepted.

My current manager just told me they are reorganizing the team and I will now report to the first manager who rejected me for being unqualified for my role. This company culture, my direct colleague, and my current manager are not a fit (although the role is a high fit), but I’m here until I can find a new position.

However, I’m a contractor. How do I bring this up to my agency? Owing to the lack of fit, my current manager already reached out to them to go over areas of improvement (instead of working with me directly — part of my issue with them, conflict avoidant). Now I fear manager 2 will do the same since she already thinks I’m not qualified, and I don’t want my agency to think I’m a major red flag. I was thinking of keeping it informative and casual, along the lines of, “Updating you on changes in the contract. Will be reporting to a new manager beginning April. BTW, I interviewed for a role on her team last July and did not make it past the first round with her – funny, huh?” Or something like that.

Also, what in heck do I say to my new manager at our first 1:1? My gut is to not say a word and only briefly respond if she mentions anything.

I don’t think you need to say anything to your agency at all. If your new manager has concerns about you, she’ll make them known, but you’re not obligated to raise an alarm before she does. Of course, if your agency expects you to inform them about a change in manager, you should do that, but you don’t need to flag that she didn’t hire you last year.

Also, this manager now has access to a lot more information about you than she did when she interviewed you. She’ll be able to see how you’ve been performing and will be working with you directly. She’s far more likely to base any assessment on that than on the interview impression she formed with far less info last year. It’s still possible that she won’t think you’re well-matched for the role based on your current work (because she may prioritize different things than the manager who hired you), but any halfway decent manager will look at the work you’ve actually been doing before leaping to any conclusions.

For that reason, you don’t need to bring it up with her either! Just move forward with the relationship that exists now, which is a different one than candidate/interviewer.

4. How to ask to go part-time

I’m a new mom trying to figure out how to balance work and parenting. I technically work a 35-hour work week, but in practice it’s often more. I’m contemplating asking to go down to part-time, but I’m not sure how to make the case for it. Leaving this job isn’t a good option, so I wouldn’t want my reputation too damaged if the answer is no, and I’d also want to maintain the ability to go back to full-time in the next few years. Do you have any advice on how to ask for this? Ideally, I would figure out a situation where I work three or four days a week, rather than reduced hours across the board, since my sense is that the latter would be harder to build true boundaries around.

The biggest question on your manager’s mind is going to be how your workload would get covered, so go in with a specific proposal for what that would look like. If you’re working three days a week, what happens to the work that normally would be done on the other two? In a lot of jobs, that would be really tough to pull off without hiring more staff (which is probably a no-go unless you’re very valued), but in others where the work is very self-generated and/or you’re extremely efficient, it’s more feasible.

It also helps to know exactly what your employer’s policies are about schedule flexibility and part-time work, if any; larger companies may have established policies that you can look at. You can also propose a short-term experiment (like for a month) to show you can make it work.

Ultimately, this will often come down to how much they value you and how highly motivated they are to be sure they keep you. You essentially want them to decide that having you part-time is better than hiring someone else full-time.

5. How should my resume list accomplishments as a manager?

A resume is meant to describe your accomplishments, not your job duties. How do I describe my accomplishments as a people manager? I’m not the one who revamped a big report, I’m not the one who closed X cases, and I’m not the one who served Y clients through a webinar series — my team did all that. I supported them in prioritizing their work, provided feedback, and made connections within our team and to other teams, but that’s just the job of a manager.

I’ve been working as interim manager for an adjacent team to my usual team for several months while HR gets the permanent position ready to post. (Interim manager while also doing my regular job, so I’m not at risk of losing my employment — just going back to my regular job as the “worst” possible outcome.) HR should post the position in a few weeks, and I don’t know how to update my resume to reflect what I’ve done in this interim role. I have a lot of examples for an interview, but I need the resume first.

As a manager, your team’s accomplishments are your accomplishments (just as its failures are also your failures). So often for your resume as a manager, the formulation you want is: “managed a team that achieved X.”

To some extent, this depends on exactly what your role was in the work being discussed. If you were the person who, say, created and managed the strategy for a fundraising campaign that raised $X, you might write, “Created and led successful fundraising campaign that raised $X, a 20% increase from previous years.” On the other hand, if other people created and managed the strategy for the campaign but you managed them, you might write, “Managed a team of six to successfully raise $X, a 20% increase from previous years.”

It’s a little trickier when you’ve been the interim manager for only a few months, since it might not be accurate to credit you for the team’s accomplishments in the same way it would if you’d been there longer, but you can still talk about processes you oversaw to ensure they continued functioning smoothly (which is very much an accomplishment). And while you don’t want your resume to be heavily activity-focused (as opposed to achievement-focused), it’s fine to include a couple of lines that do cover the responsibilities themselves, such as assigning and prioritizing work, monitoring progress against goals and course-correcting when needed, coaching and giving feedback, addressing performance issues, troubleshooting obstacles like X and Y, keeping operations running smoothly while short-staffed, and so forth.

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