The best kind of job advice is always advice from the inside. If you want to find out how to get hired, what better place to learn from than people who actually do the hiring for companies? The Ask a Manager blog does just that.
Ask A Manager is done by Alison Green, a manager at a medium-sized, professional organization. She said that her aim is to help people get into the heads of their bosses – "If you're not sure what the hell your manager is thinking, or how to ask for a raise, or whether you might be in danger of getting fired, or how to act in a second interview … ask away." Her advice also appears on U.S. News and World Report's blog, so you know she's all-pro.
Readers of the blog can submit questions to askamanager@gmail.com (Green notes that the queue of questions waiting to be answered is a bit long at the moment). Not surprisingly, a large chunk of the questions that have been answered fall under the "advice about your boss" category, and they run the gamut from "Can a boss require employees to attend an after-hours event?" (Green notes if they do, they should pay people) to "Should I tell on a coworker who may have lied about her qualifications?" (She says to do nothing, you can't know for sure that the person is lying).
The second most popular category on the blog is "Interviewing," which covers topics such as how to answer tricky questions (like "Have you ever been fired?"), signs that your interview went well, the concept of "illegal interview questions" and "How to Tell if Your Prospective Manager Sucks or Not."
Other topics covered include resume writing, performance evaluations, salaries, work habits and dealing with co-workers – with a separate category called "Jerks" for a very particular sort of co-worker. (Most of the entries under that category are about rude bosses, actually).
Green, it may be noted, doesn't mince words – she gives the advice to you straightforward, and in colloquial terms. She also isn't afraid to shy away from controversy when it comes to subjects directly or indirectly related to careers – in a column about Sarah Palin, she calls the vice presidential candidate's winking and flirting "in the equivalent of a job interview for a position of life-and-death importance," and the whole idea that a female candidate should be treated differently than a male one, to be "humiliating to professional women, especially those of us who thought we could move beyond gender in the workplace."
Ask a Manager is an entertaining and insightful blog to read, and while your boss may not think quite like Green, at least it'll give you a general idea of where he or she is coming from!
– Bonnie