Dear Liz, I've had my job for three and a half years. Last Friday my boss "Dylan" came out of a management meeting and walked straight over to my desk. He asked me to follow him into his office. We got in there, he shut the door and he said "Carmen, you do a great job. I always tell you I couldn't do my job without you and it's true. However,...

Dear Liz, I am an IT Network Specialist for a financial services firm. I'm on salary. I usually work from about 8:15 a.m. to 6:00 or 6:30 p.m. Last week we had a system upgrade and my boss asked me to oversee it. I didn't mind. I rearranged my schedule. I worked a full day in the office, went home to have dinner and came back to the office at ten p.m. I worked until 2:30 a.m., took a cab home and slept. I came into work at noon the next day. My manager was thrilled because the upgrade went perfectly. However,...

Dear Liz, I started a new job in August, and it's been a lot more challenging than I expected it to be. I have worked as a Quality Control Manager for over ten years. My new job is similar to jobs I've had in the past. I manage a team of ten people. The team is solid, but I have not found the same willingness to pitch in and do whatever is needed with this group that I experienced with my last team. Here's an example...

Dear Liz, What should I do about my teammate "Parker" who chews gum loudly all day? It's not that he chews his gum -- but he pops it. He makes bubbles with his gum and pops them all day. It makes a loud snapping noise, plus it's gross to look at. I think it's so rude for Parker to pop his gum two feet away from me all day, but...

As widely reported, the credit reporting bureau Equifax was recently hacked. If you have a credit report, you're likely one of the 143 million Americans whose data may have been exposed, according to the Federal Trade Commission. According to Equifax, the breach lasted more than a month, from mid-May until July of this year. The hackers gained access to people's names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and even some driver's license numbers. They also got credit card numbers for 209,000 people and dispute documents with personal information for 182,000 consumers. Unfortunately,...

Dear Liz, I took a new job reluctantly seven months ago. I had a feeling it was not a good place to work but I was desperate. Things didn't start out that well. I had no desk for the first week. I sat in the conference room and when there was a meeting scheduled, I had to wander the halls until the meeting was over. I sat in the break room and tried to work, using my own laptop. Eventually I got a desk and a computer but things have not gotten better. My boss "Jane" alternates between...

Dear Liz, I work in a startup. The company is growing so fast that new people start every week, but people leave almost every week, too. It's not the worst job I've ever had but there are a lot of inexperienced, obnoxious supervisors around and they tend to promote immature people to supervisory jobs. I made the mistake of...

Dear Liz, I am about as meek and mild a person as you could find, but I still left two job interviews recently. If the interview questions are so obnoxious that I can see I would never want to work for the company, then I leave. In one case the interviewer asked me "What are your greatest faults?" Usually they ask "What's your greatest weakness?" which I feel is a really dumb and inappropriate question, but at least it is posed as a question about weaknesses - areas a person might be working on improving, like financial reporting skills or something like that. The interviewer who asked me...

LinkedIn is considered the mecca for professionals to recruit and connect with one another. And yet, even with the abundance of options, it's still hard for recruiters to find the right candidate, as a lot of profiles just aren't up to standard. Albeit, some folks start a profile because they think it's necessary, but...