Hatemail: Email I get that I hate

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People always ask me to answer questions on my blog. So I am sort of going to answer questions. Questions I hate (that I have edited to save people from the trauma I probably caused David Dellifield):

Email number one: The obnoxious reference check

[Name redacted] is applying for a position at our company and listed you as a reference. I was hoping that you could complete the brief questionnaire attached to this email to provide your feedback. Thank you in advance for your help, and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

This email is from InvestorGuide.com. Let me tell you something: That questionnaire was not brief. It was about ten essay questions and then insanely inapplicable multiple choice questions.

This company is ridiculous for sending an onerous questionnaire to references. For one thing, it puts me in a bad spot because I loved working with the guy who gave my name as a reference, so I want to give him a good report, so I have no choice but to fill out the BS questions and try to have a good attitude.

The other reason the company should not send a form like this is they look incompetent. Not just for destroying the relationships potential new hires have with their references, but also for not being able to make hiring decisions without asking a third-party if the candidate is professional. Seriously. Open your eyes in the interview, guys.

Email number two: The annoying request from mainstream media

I write for BusinessWeek Magazine and I am putting together a special report for Businessweek.com called “Managing Gen Y”. We are inviting a few experts such as yourself to contribute articles. I thought you might have some great thoughts on some aspect of managing gen y and I wanted to see whether you would be interested in contributing a column? We would need the piece in about 3 weeks. What do you think?

I know, you're thinking, what's the problem here? Who doesn't want to write for BusinessWeek. And, in fact, I did. (Here's the link.) But here's the problem: BusinessWeek doesn't pay me. That's problem number one. I wrote basically the same thing for Time magazine (here's the link), and they paid me. Which makes sense. Because I'm a professional writer. I mean, I have a book on the topic. I have a history of working in journalism. That counts, right?

Okay. So they tell me they are not paying me, but I will get a lot of traffic. Then they tell me how many zillions of page views Businessweek.com gets a month. But I wrote for Yahoo for a long time. So I know the page view game. These big sites get tons of traffic but the traffic is spread out over tons of pages. Zillions or something. So, the truth is that my most current post gets more traffic than 90% of the pages on Yahoo or Business Week.

So don't tell me I'm writing for you for free in exchange for traffic. Just because I'm a blogger doesn't mean I'm stupid. In fact, it means I have a lot of metrics at my disposal. (Another crazy thing: You never find out page views for your own article when you write for a huge site in mainstream media.) The week my Business Week article came out, here is a list of blogs that sent me more than twice as much traffic as Business Week without me having to write anything for them:

Lifehacker.com

Getrichslowly.org

Barstoolsports.com (not safe for work)

I'm not going to go on and on about Business Week because first of all they gave me the best review of my blog ever: A Business Week writer called my writing “poetic.” I love that. And when I complained about all this stuff, they were nice. I mean, they listened to me. That counts for something. And I really need Business Week to write favorably about my company when it's time for my big publicity moment. So. Um. I love Business Week so much.

Email number three: Salary gap whiners

[This is for every single person in the whole world who bitches to me that there is a gender gap in the salary department. All of you. Your emails are so annoying that I'm not going to print one. ]

The reason the emails are annoying is that I've spent the last five years interviewing the people who do the salary discrepancy research, and digging into the details, and I report on it constantly, and the people who tell me there is a salary gap do not read this stuff.

First: Women who are in their 20s earn more than men in major cities. So this means that any data you show me about salary gap is focusing on older women. They had less opportunities, they are gonna retire, and the world has already revolved around the baby boomers. I'm done talking about salary gap like baby boomers are the only demographic that matters.

Second: Feminism in the workplace is over (link one, link two). So everyone should just shut up about dividing the workplace into men and women. Men are helping women all the time. Women love working with men. And look! Workplace spouses are the only intense flirting outlet that Cosmo readers voted was within relationship bounds.

Even if there were a salary gap, which there isn't, women do not help themselves by bitching about it. If you work for a company that pays women less than men, just leave! Who controls you? You do.

Third: The gap is a result of women making decisions that men don't make. I have written about this so many times because the research pops up constantly. Here's another piece. From Cornell University (via Self magazine) A woman whose spouse works 60 hours a week is 52 percent more likely to quit her job than a man whose wife does the same.

Women choose different paths than men. Which means that women who have the same education and same skills set earn less than men because most women want different things than most men do. And this is okay. Really.

60 replies
  1. Frode H
    Frode H says:

    “here is a list of blogs that sent me more than twice as much traffic as Business Week without me having to write anything for them” – Great article. Traffic is a strange thing. I also experience that traffic might come from other places than those that seems logic. I have been cited on small sites, that sends a few links each day and on bnet.com that sent a lot of traffic one day, before the article drowned. All inn all, small sites does provide good traffic over time.

    I also hold a lot of job interviews, and I hire based on my impression, not by referals. One person might not fit in at one place but might bloom in another. I have seen it many times. Even within my company. And a bad referal might be the result of bad management. Trust your gut feeling during a job interview and hire those that gives you a good vibe.

    Cheers.

  2. John DeRosa
    John DeRosa says:

    Totally agree on the reference check e-mail, except that you *do* have a choice — you can refuse to fill it out. If enough of us do that, the message will percolate back up the chain.

    I’ve seen more of those in the past two years. Maybe some class of employer is getting more lazy, or cluelessly trying to be “Web 2.0” by using e-mail. Whatever. I always reply with a short message that I don’t do reference e-mail forms, and I’m happy to be a reference but they have to call. Every time I’ve done this, they’ve called and done the standard phone reference check.

    Push back!

  3. David
    David says:

    love it.

    Isn’t it common courtesy to contact the person before listing him/her as a reference? (Maybe he did, I just didn’t get it from the article)

  4. Joselle
    Joselle says:

    “They look incompetent. ..for not being able to make hiring decisions without asking a third-party if the candidate is professional. Seriously. Open your eyes in the interview, guys.”

    This is so true. I turned down a job offer when the organization was absolutely insistent on using my current employer as a reference. Even though I gave them several other references (including a former supervisor), even though they raved about how much they wanted me and were still interested in me after I previously turned down their offer after finding out some red flags about their workplace, and even after I said they could rescind the offer if they found out I sucked after talking to my boss, they wouldn’t budge.

    Even though I’m sure my supervisor would have been wonderful in handling this situation and understood I was just moving on, this told me that the prospective employer didn’t give a crap about my current job situation and financial stability. And it told me that they would never be willing to negotiate in the future. And it told me that they were pretty inept when it came to hiring decisions so who knew what else they would be inept at. Reading your post about how employers who use references as some holy grail litmus test are just incompetent brought all these points home even more. Hiring decision-makers should take heed. They will lose good people if they don’t know how to hire and trust their own judgment.

  5. Maureen
    Maureen says:

    Entirely agree with your statements about the salary gap. Women have a vast array of choices in today’s world (many of which men still do not – it is still uncommon for a husband to stay at home to care for children). Even in older generations, women who have the same education and experience as a man is paid the same. The difference is that often, very often, women choose to complete degrees that are not demanding (and lead to employment that is neither high paid or demanding), or to opt out of the work world for a time (and for good reasons such as child raising or taking care of elderly parents). But in the end it means that they do not have the same education/work experience that men do.

    • Kandeezie
      Kandeezie says:

      Employment currently revolves around male biology. Even their mood swings and hormones are supported in corporate environment. But there is a (downside) that we rarely address. Plus, the economy is just in our minds. It goes up and down based on human emotions of certainty and uncertainty. So it is possible then for employment to revolve around both male and female biology. But we would first have to value females much more than we do now. It’s is just plain stupid to suppress 51% of the world’s potential. It’s like trying to use only one hand to open a jar.

  6. kchicago
    kchicago says:

    Hi Penelope.

    Could you please connect the dots between this from today’s post:

    “Women choose different paths than men. Which means that women who have the same education and same skills set earn less than men because most women want different things than most men do. And this is okay. Really.”

    And what you wrote here:

    “Women need to be compensated at a higher rate than men if they are to give up their personal lives in order to work.”

    http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/06/02/new-gender-gaps-for-the-new-millennium/

    Thanks!

    • Penelope Trunk
      Penelope Trunk says:

      Good question.

      I think the gap in entrepreneurship — why more men start venture-backed companies than women — is that when faced with a high-risk, high-pressure, long-hours job that is startup CEO, women perceive they give up more than men in their personal lives. So women want to be paid more.

      This is a market-value thing. Women should ask for the amount of money they think makes it worth it to do the job. If the women are really good at the job, they will get what they ask for. And if a woman wants more money to do a given job than she can get paid then she should pick another job.

      So I guess what I’m saying is that women and men value different things and therefore value different jobs. And the more hardship someone endures in a job, the more they need to get paid to do it.

      Penelope

  7. Varun
    Varun says:

    Hi Penelope – Let me take the contrarian view regarding the reference check email and stick up for InvestorGuide. Granted, I might be a little biased given the fact that I have been working there for the last 4 years and love it.

    The first 4 questions basically ask you to describe your relationship with the candidate we are evaluating (i.e. how long have you known the person, if the candidate was a direct report and what kind of work the candidate did for you). These are the basic, essential questions.

    Next we ask you to rate the individual on certain personality traits such as quality of work, conscientiousness etc. Yes, we can certainly get a sense of these traits during the interview process but there is only that much you can learn from a 45 minute conversation. A reference on the other hand has typically worked with the candidate for years thereby providing a more realistic and unfiltered (at least in our opinion) view of the candidate.

    Then we ask you to rate the candidate on job skills such as writing ability, management skills. Clearly, some references will not be able to rate certain candidates on these criteria which is why we put in the – €˜unable to rate' option, so you feel free to skip some non-applicable items.

    And then we round up the reference check by asking for a quick 2 line summary of the candidate's strengths and weaknesses.

    So overall, we feel that these are pretty reasonable and non-time consuming questions and we have never received complaints from any references. Up until that now, that is:). Thanks for the honest feedback, we will review the reference questionnaire and see if there is anyway to make it even more efficient.

    And I absolutely agree, the onus should be on us when evaluating a candidate, not on the reference. However, the opinion of a reference does count for something which is why we like to factor it in as just another data point.

    • Noah
      Noah says:

      If your description of the questionnaire took that long, I can’t imagine how lengthy the real deal is. Give em a novella to fill out, just don’t call it “brief.”

    • Connie
      Connie says:

      Give me a break. Asking references to fill in a multi-part form is not a “data point”. You’re expecting the people who provide references to be unpaid workers in your recruiting process. From what you described your process provides value to your company – you just have no regard for the reference’s time and you don’t care what they think about your company.

    • Julia
      Julia says:

      Call on the phone like everyone else! You’re making this way more complicated than it needs to be. It’s rude and inconsiderate to insist the reference follows your (lengthy) format. I agree with Connie – it’s asking them to do your job. If I got this request, I would forward the survey to the person applying for the job and have them fill it out, then return to me for approval before I sent it to you. And that’s still a pain in the ass. I’m not doing your busywork, and I would want the person to know what kind of employer they were signing up for.

  8. Deadhedge
    Deadhedge says:

    Agree on the references. I’ve been railing against MBA programs for making their recommendation process so time-consuming that references have stopped filling it out themselves and just ask the applicant to do it.

    Which doesn’t matter anyway since the recommendation has a 0.0001 r squared of impact on the application. Everyone has good recommendations and if they are too good, no one believes them. It has the least value in an MBA application and is fairly time-consuming for often some senior level people (if they ever fill it out).

  9. Jun
    Jun says:

    For most of my career, I believe I have earned more than a man of the same age who is in the same industry. I am a woman in my 20s.

    I can’t imagine an employer choosing to pay someone less because she is a woman. Pay is directly proportionate to a person’s ambition and skills. (Including social skills.)

    Absolutely agree that women choose to make different choices and that results in a discrepancy. It’s all about opportunity costs right?

    • Sara
      Sara says:

      Come back when you’re a mother – I still have yet to see Penelope address the real issue – MOTHERS are blatantly discriminated against in the corporate environment. I could have written your post 10 years ago. I had always been the first to get a promotion and truly believed the gender gap was BS – then I had my first child. It was an incredibly eye opening experience. I worked for a major bulge bracket investment bank and went from being in the top 5% in terms of bonus – to getting the very lowest bonus of all VPs in the entire bank – despite having one of the highest revenue numbers – I’m sure the fact that I was 8 months pregnant was just a big coincidence.

  10. Angela Connor
    Angela Connor says:

    I’ll gladly jump on this bandwagon, Penelope. I don’t want to hear from any more super-influencers blatantly asking me to be part of their super-duper marketing campaign to launch their new book coming out in several months because the mere mention of their name will bring me monster traffic. Guess what big guy? I’ve written a book too, and it was just released this month and I too, am working on a marketing campaign. I just choose to reach out to those bloggers I’ve developed relationships with across the social web. So let’s try this. You do the same for me. Allow your uber-fame to do something for me by way of book sales as opposed to one day of monster traffic and then maybe I’ll help you get to the Amazon bestseller list or New York Bestseller list or whatever your lofty goal is that makes you cold call a gazillion bloggers in an effort to create a firestorm that will catapult you to even higher heights. Sometimes when you cold call, you get cold-called right back. Monster traffic doesn’t pay my bills. What else can you offer? Know your audience.
    {END RANT}
    Angela Connor | @communitygirl

  11. Dale
    Dale says:

    Hi Penny,
    Salary gaps aren’t the problem any more, it’s accommodation of gender roles (or the lack thereof) that’s the problem. E.g. If women don’t have babies who will? Yet in the US, women are constantly penalized for being female. Now one could argue that choices have to be made and having a baby isn’t a necessity…
    The battle lines have changed, but very few people recognise that they have. As you’ve pointed out many times over, it’s no longer just about money.
    My2centsworth

  12. Mary
    Mary says:

    I love the bit about the salary gap, and will attempt to quote you as a reference the next time I get my brain together to do a blog post!

  13. Ann
    Ann says:

    Thanks for the info an salary gap. I didn’t know that women in their 20’s don’t have a salary gap. As a baby-boomer grandma, from now on I’m taking the high road and proclaiming proudly that my earnings ‘gap’ was the price for my granddaughters (now elementry school)achieving parity. Love your blog!

  14. GenerationXpert
    GenerationXpert says:

    Re: the salary gap. I, too, am sick of hearing about this. Seriously, if this was true, then no guy would be able to get a job, because companies would just hire the cheaper labor.

    The thing is, a lot of jobs that pay “more” do so for a reason. It sucks to be on the road 50 weeks a year – but it’s lucrative. An men are more likely to make that sacrifice.

    • KateNonymous
      KateNonymous says:

      A lot of jobs pay more for a reason. However, that’s only one kind of salary gap. I’ve been paid less than a man with the same job, and he wasn’t better at it than I was.

  15. Dan
    Dan says:

    I agree, my wife loves staying off for six months to spend with our daughter and she doesn’t really care if this delays her career at all.

    She chose something different, and considering her company didn’t give out merit increases during this tough Obama economy, it’s not like we are losing out on incredible amounts of gains, either.

    I am still working, as most men would hate being stay at home dad’s, and since my company is still giving out merit increases, I won’t miss a beat for our family. Her staying at home also has the added side benefit of fewer expenses as far as commuting, etc and more meals at home as well and her weekly trips to Aldi, an absolute necessity for any mother with children.

    You have Aldi in Madison, go to one, or Woodman’s, and stop shopping at Copp’s, that place is a TOTAL RIP OFF.

    • jenniferlynn
      jenniferlynn says:

      @Dan- Interesting comment. I know this is a bit late, but I’m calling BS on your “Obama economy” characterization. Just for the record.

  16. Moneymonk
    Moneymonk says:

    You already have the traffic, now you need the money

    It’s fun a newly blogger to do free projects but for a seasonal veteran like yourself it’s not exciting.

    I think it’s OK to do freebies, to start the ball rolling and to get credibility however you’re not a little girl no more, you have proven yourself.

  17. Jim C.
    Jim C. says:

    Re salary gaps (imagined or real): I have noticed over the years that, even in science, women seem to gravitate to “pink collar ghetto” specialties. For example, there are many more women — maybe a majority — in biochemistry and molecular biology than in, say, organic synthesis or physical chemistry. Women gravitate to zoology rather than physics and they flee from geology and engineering. Why?
    Women seem to want to work in fields where there are a lot of other women.
    I have known some darn fine female physicists and geologists, not to mention organic and physical chemists, but they are the ones who had the intestinal fortitude to resist the herd impulse.

    • Joselle
      Joselle says:

      So, do men just want to work in fields where there are a lot of other men, too? If so, why is that only the women you speak of are gutless? Men are brave for entering male-dominated fields?

      I think you probably have no real idea why they chose what they chose. Maybe they just love those subjects more. And, hey, maybe they do want to work with other women. So what?

      • Jim C.
        Jim C. says:

        The reason it’s unfortunate is that, soon after women take over a field, the salaries start to lag.

        Look back to the Sixties and Seventies, when women started moving into the male-dominated work force. They didn’t move into all fields equally, though. In science, they favored various fields of biology. In business, they went into marketing and human resources. (And sales, if they happen to be ex-cheerleaders.) And accounting departments are overwhelmingly feminine. There are probably some subdisciplines of law and medicine favored by women.

        By 1980 the term “pink-collar ghetto” came into use. MS. Magazine may have used it first.

        No, it doesn’t take guts for a man to go into a male-dominated field, but a guy has to have some guts to move into a field where most of his peers are women. That’s because some of the women in the organization will resent him and organize their friends to undercut him. (Don’t invade their domain!)

  18. Randy
    Randy says:

    “Seriously. Open your eyes in the interview, guys.”

    PLEASE WRITE SOME ARTICLES ABOUT THE INABILITY OF BOSSES (corporate America) TO ACCURATELY, OR EVEN FAIRLY, APPRISE THE PERFORMANCE OF EMPLOYEES/hires.

    One aspect would be degree vs. non-degree…folks with superior real-world experience, but not a degree, earn far less than those with degrees. (One good example…one of my Penn State classmates was a 44 YO Electrical Engineering Project Manager from China. 25 yrs. experience this guy had…couldn’t even get an interview without the degree…sitting there re-learning simple circuit stuff he’d mastered over 25 years ago.)

  19. Mark W.
    Mark W. says:

    I have two links for the Cornell study mentioned here –
    “Third: The gap is a result of women making decisions that men don't make. I have written about this so many times because the research pops up constantly. Here's another piece. From Cornell University (via Self magazine) A woman whose spouse works 60 hours a week is 52 percent more likely to quit her job than a man whose wife does the same.”
    http://www.physorg.com/news137082837.html
    http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20015098&BRD=1395&PAG=461&dept_id=546876&rfi=6
    Another interesting finding in this study as written in the latter link – “Professional women with children whose husbands work long hours were 90% more likely to quit their jobs than childless women whose husbands did not work long hours.”

  20. KateNonymous
    KateNonymous says:

    “First: Women who are in their 20s earn more than men in major cities. So this means that any data you show me about salary gap is focusing on older women. They had less opportunities, they are gonna retire, and the world has already revolved around the baby boomers. I'm done talking about salary gap like baby boomers are the only demographic that matters.”

    Yet those of us who are not in our 20s and not Baby Boomers–what are we called again? Oh, right. Gen X–do face salary inequality. I know I faced it in my 20s, and may again. I’m delighted if current 20-somethings aren’t experiencing this, but that doesn’t mean the issue has vanished entirely.

  21. KateNonymous
    KateNonymous says:

    Re: references

    Yes, we should all be paying attention during the interview. But that’s what, an hour? Plenty of people can hold up a facade for an hour. Checking references is verifying what the person said. The reference is providing information that supports or refutes the assertion that the applicant is making, and they can provide their impressions over time.

    So the reference is not a substitute for a good interview. I’m not sure why you think it is.

  22. Sara
    Sara says:

    Hey Dan,

    Sorry I couldn’t nest my comment under yours but your ridiculous post about your wife, was just that. Because YOUR wife couldn’t work as many hours as her non pregnant co-workers you’ve determined that the wage gap for mothers is justified. WTF!? If you’d bothered, to ask, I had easy pregnancies and continued working my 100+ hours a week and traveling through my 8th month. The FACT is that many corporations see a mother and discriminate – and I have the settlement check and the corroborating evidence to prove it. And by the way, don’t tell me what is good for my baby or more important than a job.

  23. Sara
    Sara says:

    Thanks for the article Pirate Jo – I did find the irony of this little quote in the article about how great mothers are for employers:
    “Of course, we need not be silly about it.
    Nobody wishes to see… a high-flier working 20-hour days while still breast-feeding.”

    So as long as you’re working 9-5 and not traveling it’s okay to work and employers should embrace you. That pretty much fits exactly with what I’ve seen as a “high-flyer” most employers actively discourage women from continuing on the high-flyer” track once they’re mothers. Look at the stats and TALK to any woman in investment banking, law, etc.

    Somehow hearing that leaving my infant with her father and going back to work is “silly” doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement to me. And FYI, FedEx does a phenomenal job of making sure that breast milk arrives on time.

    • Jim C.
      Jim C. says:

      It has been my experience that nine to five jobs are the career track to mediocrity. People that can’t put in the extra hours and at times work weekends are not as valuable as the ones who “give their all.” (That is irrespective of whether the job involves travel or not.)

    • Pirate Jo
      Pirate Jo says:

      Eh, depends on what you want to be good at.

      Finding a “fulfilling career” is a giant myth for most people, and no one should feel bad if they don’t care that much about their job. The vast, vast, vast majority of people are lucky just to find something they don’t hate, and it’s going to be a way to pay the bills and not much else. If work was so great, we wouldn’t have to get paid to do it.

      My job right now isn’t very 9 to 5, but I wish it was. I just want to forget about it when I leave at night.

  24. Susan
    Susan says:

    I was interviewed as a reference for my friend/colleague just this week. They grilled me for nearly 30 minutes about her, as if I had to defend her honor. They asked dumb questions and gave little feedback about what they wanted.

    She got hired, and they said I was a great reference, but it really sucked.

    Also, I must be the only woman in NYC who earned less than my male counterparts, based on your post and insistence there is no gender gap. All the men in my company made at least 10% more than me, even though I was constantly told I was the best employee in my department. My boss more or less admitted it was b/c they were men. So I quit.

    But it’s nice to know there’s no salary gap! Thanks for clearing that up.

  25. Joanne Cox
    Joanne Cox says:

    Thanks for sharing this; your input is appreciated and has made me change my opinion slightly. About the 3rd paragraph though, could you expand on that a little? I’m a bit confused about what you mean (so maybe others are too).

  26. Leslie
    Leslie says:

    The problem is that no one knows what their co-workers are making. How can women or men know if they are being paid fairly if they don’t know what others in their department at their same level or title are making? Most companies set their own pay scale system so their isn’t a ball park average for similar jobs across an industry.

  27. Marilynn
    Marilynn says:

    True story- A very prominent owner of a company in Chicago told me that he would only hire women because they were cheaper than men and worked much, much harder. :)

  28. Leanne
    Leanne says:

    Pres Obama commented about the gender pay gap in an interview published in the April 28, 2009 NY Times — we wouldn’t need the Ledbetter bill if there wasn’t a gender pay gap

    I mean, nursing, teaching are all areas where we need more men. I've always said if we can get more men in the classroom, particularly in inner cities where a lot of young people don't have fathers, that could be of enormous benefit.

    Now, as you and I both know, in a lot of those fields they have been underpaid because they were predominantly women's fields. And so part of what we have to do is to recognize that women are just as likely to be the primary bread earner, if not more likely, than men are today. As a consequence, eliminating the pay gap between men and women, and the pay gap between fields, becomes critically important. And we've already taken action, for example, with the Lilly Ledbetter bill to try to move in that direction.

    I think that if you start seeing nursing pay better and teaching pay better, and some of these other professions, you're going to see more men in those fields, although there's a little bit of a chicken and an egg – if you start getting more men in those fields, then the stereotypes about this being a woman's field and all the gender stereotypes that arise out of thinking that somehow they're not the primary breadwinner, those stereotypes start being whittled away.

  29. Sarah
    Sarah says:

    Ditto ditto ditto and more ditto! I love your writing style. You have expressed the frustrations so many of us have, and for me one of the biggest irits is the work reference. Seriously stupid! You could be lying your arse off, but then so could the prospective employee at the interview, the main thing is ultimately it is the applicants job to lie their arses off if thats what it takes to get the job, they have to sell themselves. And it’s the employers job to see right through them. What about when the person who wants your reference is a dear friend but ultimately completely useless as an employee, arghhhh, now that I really hate.
    Can’t comment based on experience about the salary gap, but it certainly is a very debatable topic and I enjoyed reading the other comments on that one.
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  30. Arlene Myers
    Arlene Myers says:

    There are some company that trying to fool people by sending you an email and asking for a certain favor but in return, they will not pay you once you already finished you job.

  31. Blade
    Blade says:

    Regarding e-mail number one: I agree with you comment, “Open your eyes in the interview, guys.” but must ask you the question, “Where have you been living?”. Most companies can’t hire worth crap these days and use every crutch in the book to assist them in the hiring process including position assessments that amount to suitability or personality tests in reality. If you want to learn about the individual, ask opened ended questions, listen and assess but don’t turn the process over to some assessment douchebag. Further, take the candidate to lunch or better yet dinner and observe how he/she interacts in that social setting, what is ordered, what manners are employed or violated, etc. However, in order for the interviewer or manager to pull that off, he/she has to have a personality, the ability to communicate [with emphasis on listening and observing] and the ability to reason. Not many have those skills today.

  32. Jade
    Jade says:

    I don’t think it’s okay for women to earn less than men if they have the same work and responsibilities. But then again, salary has a lot of factors involved.

  33. William Mitchell, CPRW
    William Mitchell, CPRW says:

    Interesting take on the “salary gap whiners” segment. it does make it a little difficult to make blanket statements about the gender gap without taking all the various aspects of one’s decisions into consideration.

  34. Everything Famous
    Everything Famous says:

    Hi Penelope,

    Gotta love it when you speak about you hate the things that people do and not exactly them. I like how you simply write about them and pour out some of your emotions in your blog. I just find you simply intriguing and getting more intriguing in each post.

    Jonha

  35. Everything Famous
    Everything Famous says:

    Gotta love it when you speak about you hate the things that people do and not exactly them. I like how you simply write about them and pour out some of your emotions in your blog. I just find you simply intriguing and getting more intriguing in each post.

    Jonha

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