can we pass on an applicant who might bring drama, distancing myself from the college I graduated from, and more

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

1. Can we pass on a job applicant who might add to office drama?

Is not wanting to amp up drama in an office a valid reason not to hire someone?

I work in a department that, unfortunately, is currently riddled with personal conflicts. Two colleagues went from being BFFs literally doing shots off of each others’ bosoms during non-work hours to now referring to each other as “ex-friends.” Some other coworkers aren’t on speaking terms. There is so much gossip. And the tension in our building some afternoons can be cut with a knife.

One of the least drama llama-like staffers recently jettisoned out of our company and into a new job. Their position is now open, and we have a number of promising candidates. One of these, from another department, is very good friends with an officemate I think many would call a mean girl — definitely a gossiper, half of the “friend divorce” duo, and someone who can make some downright degrading remarks in meetings. These two staffers socialize outside of work and message on and off throughout the day. The applicant does good work, but I think it’s clear to everyone that if they got this job, the level of tension in our department … I’m not sure if it would increase, but it definitely wouldn’t drop.

Is it reasonable to take that into consideration when making a hiring decision? Again, we have multiple strong candidates for this position, so it’s not like we’d be nixing our only good choice. But is it fair to hold an applicant’s potential impact on departmental dynamics against them? Also: if you were the head of our division (I am not), how would you even begin to tame the emotional friction ballooning out of our office?

Yes, it’s absolutely fair game — and often necessary — to consider an applicant’s potential impact on team dynamics when you’re hiring. Hiring isn’t just “does this person have the skills to do the job?” It’s also “how will this person get along with the existing team / will they make the working environment better or worse / is there tension between them and someone already working here that’s likely to affect the work or the work environment / do we know this person is difficult (or aligned with difficult people that make us worry about their judgment)?” and on and on. It’s why, for example, it would be fair to decide not to hire a current employee’s ex, or their estranged family member. And when you already have a drama-ridden, conflict-filled team, you should be actively working to fix that rather than adding to it.

As for how your boss should be dealing with the broader situation, it sounds like she’s been way too hands-off. She should be proactive in laying out clear expectations for how people conduct themselves and what kind of atmosphere they’re creating, and then holding them to that. People can feel however they want about each other, but they need to treat everyone with respect and civility; if other people can tell there’s tension, they’re failing at that. There’s more on how to manage this kind of situation here:

how do I manage petty behavior between two employees who dislike each other?

how to get rid of drama on your team

2. Recruiter told me to expect a job offer but I haven’t heard anything

A couple months ago, a recruiter invited me to apply for a role they were opening; it hadn’t posted publicly yet, and I did not seek it out. I decided to pursue it because the it was a good fit and it’s been almost two years since I interviewed anywhere so a little practice couldn’t hurt, but I didn’t expect to land an offer and leave my current job because I wasn’t actively looking.

Fast forward to now, and I’ve made it through all the interviews and the recruiter told me that the hiring manager wants to offer me the role! We agreed on some logistics and negotiated comp, and the only step left was to submit my candidacy to the company’s hiring committee. This is where things started to fall apart and now I’m left feeling like somehow I screwed things up, even though I’m pretty sure this is actually just poor communication (and rudeness) on the hiring team’s behalf.

When the recruiter and I talked about the offer (final comp decisions, start date, etc.), she said she had submitted my packet to the hiring committee and she was excited to call me the next day after they met to make things formal. I felt a little anxious that there was still this bureaucratic step, but she was so positive and so confident that the next time we talked I’d have the formal offer in hand, so I got really excited too. It turns out I was right to be anxious because the hiring committee had questions for the hiring manager, he was out of office, and so things couldn’t be resolved super quickly.

Instead of calling me the next day like she had said she would, I had to email the recruiter two days later asking for an update, and that’s when she told me that there were questions. We had a quick call, I sent over a few bullets to help answer the committee’s questions, and she responded to the committee. I got an email a week later saying she had submitted everything and would update me ASAP. It’s now been over a week, and I’m basically being ghosted. I sent one follow-up email and left one voicemail when we got to the one-week mark with no communication.

I assume that they’re interviewing other candidates but don’t want to release me from the process in case they don’t like anyone quite as much, but for whatever reason the hiring committee is not digging my candidacy. This whole process is making me feel anxious and terrible, and I know I should probably just be zen because I wasn’t looking for this job anyway, but they got me excited and told me they were offering me a job and now I feel like I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me.

Am I expecting too much from the recruiter and hiring manager? I get that the company is optimizing for finding a good candidate for the role, but it feels like I’m getting treated really poorly here over these final weeks. Should I consider this a pretty big red flag if, by some miracle, this actually ends up with an offer in hand?

I don’t think it’s a big red flag. The recruiter is the one who messed up; she shouldn’t have been so excitedly optimistic when she knew that the hiring committee hadn’t approved the offer yet. But that’s on her, not the company, and especially if she’s an external recruiter. It’s not unreasonable that the company might have questions, and since the hiring manager has been out of the office, it makes sense that they haven’t been able to move forward.

I wouldn’t assume that the delay is because they’re interviewing other candidates. It’s possible, but if the hiring manager told the recruiter he wanted to offer you the job, there’s at least as good a chance (if not more of one) that they’ve just run into delays. Maybe the hiring manager is still out, maybe a key person is unavailable, maybe they’ve had some higher priority come up that they need to deal with, who knows.

At this point, the best thing you can do is to put it out of your head and assume they’ll get back to you when and if there’s something to come back to you about. You could follow up with the recruiter once more in a couple of weeks if you want to — but an offer does materialize, don’t let the recruiter’s clumsy handling put you off.

3. How to distance myself from the college I graduated from

I graduated from a small liberal arts college in 1995. Since that time, the college I graduated from has become staunchly political, and completely opposite of my personal politics and values. My alma mater is well-known to people who care about the political leanings of small liberal arts colleges, and they have a growing influence in some circles. I work in a city that I fit in politically, meaning, my city and I lean, with every election, in the complete opposite direction of my alma mater.

I’m afraid that having this college listed on my resume and on my LinkedIn profile will be a detriment to a future job search or other professional opportunities. In fact, my sister-in-law in another state was interviewing candidates this year, and when a graduate of my alma mater submitted their application, she had to convince her committee to interview him, and used me as an example that not everyone from this college shares the college’s values.

Can I remove my college from my resume and LinkedIn profile, while still somehow communicating in the resume and on LinkedIn that I have a college degree? Is there any other way to distance myself from this school at first glance? For context, I have a bachelor’s degree, so no graduate school to lean on, unfortunately.

You can’t remove the name of your college while still leaving your degree on; it will look odd and like you’re trying to hide something (which you are). But you can communicate distance from the school’s current leanings in other ways: for example, if they’re now associated with bigotry, you could note membership in or volunteer work for organizations that are clearly counter to those views.

For what it’s worth, while your sister-in-law’s story is alarming, most people are not that up on the current political leanings of any given school, other than ones that have always existed to be political, like Liberty University or Bob Jones, so I’d bet this will come up less than you fear.

4. Who owns the spreadsheet I created at a job that fired me?

I have a question on personal work/intellectual property after you are terminated. I created a spreadsheet for my job (out of whole cloth; not preexisting) on market research and business sponsorships based on my own research. I was let go from the job without any advance notice. I then moved that document to my personal Google Drive folder, and now a new staff member is trying to gain access.

I know this is probably technically their property, but I just want to better understand my own rights when it comes to intellectual property.

Because you created it at your job, it’s their intellectual property, not yours. As an employee, you’re engaged in what the law calls “work for hire,” and the law says that your employer is the author and owner of any work you do that’s within the scope of your job.

If you were, say, a financial analyst but you knit a blanket at work, they wouldn’t own the blanket because that’s not part of the scope of your employment … but a spreadsheet on market research and business sponsorships that you created to assist in your work is legally theirs.

Related:
I could delete my former employer’s website — should I?