Know Your Duties,The Firm to Avoid New-Job Surprises
When recent college graduate Katharine Certain accepted a job at an ad agency last year, she hoped the small company would give her a wide range of responsibilities. She didn't expect them to include walking the owner's dogs.
Sometimes, jobs turn out differently than anticipated. A new boss may saddle you with unexpected duties, or not give you promised responsibilities. You may report to someone you didn't expect, or be asked to work longer hours than you planned.
Career coaches say candidates can minimize the chances for such new-job surprises by doing lots of research about the company and about the specific job. They recommend that candidates not rely solely on the interviewers at a prospective employer.
Instead, they suggest you talk to as many people as possible about the position and firm. If you know people inside the company, ask them about working conditions and the prospective job. The answers may differ from the official line. If you don't know anyone in the company, try to find employees, or former employees, through acquaintances or through Internet search engines, job-research sites like Vault.com or networking sites such as LinkedIn.com. These contacts will help you discover whether your would-be employer has given you a misleading job description.
The interview process itself can offer clues. Does the interviewer clearly and specifically describe your duties? The more specific, the better. Vagueness could be a sign that your higher-ups haven't thought enough about the job, or that the duties may be in flux, making an unpleasant surprise more likely. Sometimes, a job can change for reasons that are harder to anticipate, such as a merger, the departure of a boss, or the loss or gain of a key contract.
"The one thing to think about is: Is this your fault because of a lack of really good due diligence before you took the job, or is it their fault, or is it nobody's fault?" says Nella Barkley, president of Crystal-Barkley Corp., a coaching firm.
Regardless of the reason, career coach Barbara LaRock recommends that new employees not bail out immediately, unless the company is doing something unethical or illegal. Try to give it at least six months, she says. Talk with your bosses to see if they can bring the job more in line with your original expectations.
If you decide there is no remedy, look for another job. But make sure you don't repeat the same mistakes that you made in your prior search. "Ask yourself, 'Is this a pattern?' " says Ms. LaRock, of Reston, Va. "Are there signals I'm missing? Am I not asking the right questions?"
Ms. Certain, now 23 years old, realizes she should have asked more questions before she started, or tried to contact former employees. Using an Internet job board, she had located the résumés of a couple other people who had held the same position. She noticed that each held the job for about a year. But she didn't think much of it, because job-hopping is so common in advertising, and didn't bother to contact them.
Her interviewers gave only a vague job description, and tried to sell her on the notion that she would have more responsibility than at a larger agency. At one point during an interview, a dog jumped on Ms. Certain's lap. At the time, she thought it was cute. "Little did I know he and I would have such a close relationship," she says.
The job went downhill quickly. Soon after she started, her new boss outlined her responsibilities, including calling potential clients and evaluating marketing plans. Then she added: "Water the plants once a week and our dogs need to go out by noon."
Worried that she would be fired if she questioned the assignment, Ms. Certain did as she was told. Ms. LaRock, the career coach, says Ms. Certain should have spoken up to see if the boss would reconsider this as a long-term duty. If the boss wouldn't even talk about it, Ms. Certain should have taken that as a sign that it wasn't a good place to work.
The menial tasks left Ms. Certain feeling degraded and confused. Her friends ribbed her. "At least you're not walking dogs," she says they would tell her. "Oh wait, you are."
After nine months, she quit. When looking for her next job, she paid careful attention to how specifically her interviewers described the job duties. She wanted a clear description. She found a job at another agency and hasn't experienced any unpleasant surprises.
Other times, the surprise isn't the duties, it is the schedule. Dorri O'Brien Morin, 37 years old, was bored with her software-marketing job in Northern Virginia two years ago when a headhunter called about a job at a smaller technology firm. When interviewing, she noticed that most of the employees were young men without kids, so she told them she had kids and couldn't clock marathon office hours. They said that was fine.
But she soon realized that her schedule was incompatible with most other employees' schedules. She liked to come in about 7 a.m. and was ready to leave by 3:30 p.m. or 4 p.m. "That was not well received," she says. Co-workers would schedule meetings at 4:30, then want to hash out ideas over dinner or drinks, when Ms. Morin needed to be with her children. Moreover, the office was an hour and 15 minutes away from her home, more than doubling her commute.
She stayed only about 12 weeks. "I never thought to consider when looking for a job the fact that it would be important that nobody else had kids," she says. She found a new job doing economic development for her local government. It's only a mile from her home; her employer accommodates telecommuting and flexible work schedules. She has many co-workers with families who understand her need for reasonable hours. "That quality of life factor is huge," she says.
别等上班再后悔
2004年大学毕业的凯萨琳?斯尔顿(Katharine Certain)在一家广告公司找了份工作，当时她希望在小公司上班可以有更多施展手脚的地方，却没想到其中竟然还包括帮老板溜狗的活儿。
有时候，一份工作的实际与预期不符。新老板会让你干些没想到的事情，或不能兑现当初给你的职权允诺，直接上司会发生变化，加班时间也超乎你的想像。
一些职业生涯顾问说，通过对新公司和新职位的细致调查，求职者可以避免这类出其不意的情况发生。他们建议求职者不要把招聘企业的面试官作为获取资讯的唯一渠道。
他们建议求职者多找人了解公司和职位的情况。如果你认识公司内部的人，问问他们对工作环境和那个职位的看法，得到的答案可能与官方途径的不一样。如果不认识那里的人，就试著通过熟人、互联网搜索引擎、Vault.com这类招聘网站或LinkedIn.com等社交网站联系到公司现职员工或前雇员。这些人能帮你确认未来雇主在介绍岗位职责时没有提供误导你的资讯。
面试过程本身也能提供不少线索。面试官有没有清楚明了地向你描述岗位职责？说得越详细，对你就越有利。含糊不清的职责描述可能表明你的未来老板对此还没想透，或职责会发生变化，两者都会给你今后的工作带来不愉快的变数。有时，工作会因一些不可预料的因素发生变化，如公司兼并、老板离职或一笔关键业务的得失等。
求职者要反思的是：如果工作出现意想不到的变化，那是因为你找工作时没有好好调查，还是公司的责任，或是因不可控因素造成的？职业生涯顾问公司Crystal-Barkley的总裁奈拉?巴克里(Nella Barkley)说道。
不管原因如何，职业生涯顾问巴芭拉?拉洛克(Barbara LaRock)建议你在出现这种情况后不要急于离开，除非公司在从事非法或不道德的事情。不妨给自己至少6个月的观察期，和老板谈谈，看能否让工作职责符合原先的预想，弗吉尼亚州的拉洛克女士说道。
如果没有别的办法，那就换个工作，但一定不要再犯同样的错误。“多问自己几个问题，比如'有迹象可循吗？'、'我有没有忽略一些信号？'、'我的问题是否问到点子上？'等。”拉洛克说。
现年23岁的斯尔顿意识到，她找工作前就该多问几句，或者找前雇员了解一下情况。通过互联网求职论坛，她找到几个以前干过那份工作的人的简历，并注意到每人都只干了差不多一年时间。当时她没有多想，因为广告业人员流动很快，也没去联系他们问个究竟。
面试官在向她描述岗位职责时语焉不详，并想说服她那个工作能让她承担比在大广告公司工作更多的职责。面试期间，有条狗跳上斯尔顿女士的膝盖。当时她觉得小狗很可爱。“根本没想到后来会跟它有那么密切的关系，”斯尔顿说道。
她的新工作很快走上下坡路。刚上班不久，新老板告诉她要做的事情包括给潜在客户打电话，评估营销计划，还有“每星期给植物浇次水，每天中午溜次狗。”
斯尔顿担心自己有反对意见的话，公司会开除她，于是只好照做不误。职业生涯顾问拉洛克女士说，斯尔顿当时就该问老板，这些活儿是不是长期任务。如果老板不予理睬，至少她可以感觉到那里不是久留之地。
这些琐碎工作让斯尔顿觉得自己在公司不受尊重，因此感到非常困惑。她的朋友打趣她说：“至少你只是溜狗，没当走狗，哦，好像也差不多。”
上班9个月后，斯尔顿辞职不干了。寻找下一份工作时，她非常注意面试官对岗位职责的介绍。她找了另一家广告公司，再没有遇到出乎意料的事情。
有些时候，令人烦恼的不是岗位职责，而是工作节奏。37岁的多莉?莫琳(Dorri O'Brien Morin)两年前厌倦了在维吉尼亚北部一家软件营销公司的工作，正好有个猎头公司打来电话，说有家小型IT公司在招人。面试的时候，她注意到大多数员工都是没生儿女的年轻人，因此告诉他们自己有孩子，不能长时间加班。当时他们说这没有问题。
然而，莫琳女士很快意识到自己的工作节奏和那里的大多数人不符。她喜欢早上7点到，下午3点半或4点下班；可同事们喜欢下午4点半开会，然后出去一边吃饭喝酒一边交流意见，而这段时间莫琳需要在家陪孩子。此外，办公室离她家有1小时15分钟的车程，来回奔波非常辛苦。
莫琳在那家公司只干了12周。“当时换工作时，我根本没想过大多数员工没有孩子会是那么重要的一件事，”她说。后来莫琳在当地政府找到一份经济开发方面的工作，离家只有一英里，而且允许远程办公和弹性工作制。她的很多同事都结婚生子，因此认同她的工作节奏。“这给我的生活质量带来极大好处，”莫琳说道。
