How to fix it

Looking for your next executive job? Today, so many are and oftentimes it just doesn’t seem to be working. It may be time to evaluate and see if perhaps you are not effective in your search because of something that you are doing or not doing. You might discover that your pandemic fatigue is leading to a negative attitude and that is having an adverse consequence on your search. You might not even recognize that it is, so here are six signs of trouble to consider and the solutions to fix them.

You hesitate to reach out to people you know to network and connect. You have solid experience at reputable companies that have strong corporate alumni. Additionally, you graduated from top-tier universities that give you access to incredible college alumni. Yet you don’t call these people you have paid for the opportunity to know and worked so hard to be connected to directly and indirectly. Why? Maybe you worry you won’t measure up to whom you are reaching out. It’s possible you imagine that you are afraid they won’t want to help you because you aren’t worthy of the help. Many times this hesitation is fear and it hinders moving a job search forward.

Solution: Realize no one is immune from a career setback or a career hiccup —particularly in a pandemic. Your network — people you know and people you don’t know — are there to connect you to opportunity. But you must do the work for those connections to happen. And it’s important to also know too that you are worthy of it. So get out there and start reaching out more.

You don’t ask for help. Many of us are competitive people. We believe we have the ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and plow through whatever obstacles are in our way all by ourselves. That is until we can’t. And during the pandemic with even more challenges, it can be especially trying. Sometimes we get to a point where we do actually need help, but our upbringing and conditioning subliminally tells us it is weak to ask. We think people will think we are not good at what we do if we ask — and that fear is compounded by the vulnerability of being in a position of looking for a new job.

Solution: Acknowledge that it’s human to not know all of the answers. Look back at your career at all of your wins — you most likely did not accomplish all of those all by yourself and you invoked the help of others in some capacity. We are often better when we pool the brain power of others collaboratively with our own knowledge and abilities. 

You resist formal and informal instruction that you know will help you. Have you signed up for training or executive-coaching programs, either on your own or through your employer, and not followed the guidance of the coach or consultant brought on for your professional development? This is often a big sign of self-sabotage done by those who don’t believe they are worthy of what they’re receiving or will receive as a benefit of the training. During this crisis, there seems to also be more training required because of the different nature of working remotely and the changes happening in the marketplace. This obviously can cause even more stress.

Solution: Check your ego at the door. Listen to the guidance and advice you are receiving from the person you hired to help you or that your company is funding to assist you. Attempt to put it into practice and try it more than once if it doesn’t go smoothly the first time. Pushing yourself outside your comfort zone will expand the boundaries of your comfort zone, which equals growth.

You look for problems instead of focusing on solutions. Do you feel heavy by everything that is going wrong at work? Are you someone who pokes holes in everything that comes across your laptop? Have you lost the ability to see how something can work because you seem to zero in only on how something can’t work? If these questions resonate with you, you may be resisting success by only pointing out what the problem is, instead of seeking the solution. In a job search, this mental albatross can look like thinking no one wants to hire you since you were rejected by one opportunity. Or another example is assuming that no one will help you since you sent out a few emails that no one replied to (and you won’t acknowledge that you could have written those emails more effectively).

Solution: When faced with a problem, pause and think: “How can I make this work?” This may sound like an oversimplified response, but shifting your mindset regarding how you can make things work versus only focusing on how it can’t work is a small shift that can have massive results in how you tackle setbacks and obstacles. When done consistently, you can even develop a reputation and track record as the person in your network who figures out the solution — and this is a coveted place to be. Be the solution during this pandemic, which allows you to stand out among your peers.

You make small problems into bigger obstacles. Mistakes happen and problems occur. Vendors, clients, employees, and managers all have situations not go smoothly. There are people who make problems go away and then there are those who make problems bigger.

Which person are you? Looking back on some recent obstacles you have experienced — do you make them bigger than what they need to be? Examples of this, which can adversely affect your job search include being extremely hard on yourself for replying in a not-so-perfect way in a job email or making a misstep on an interview.

Solution: Keep your problems right-sized so you can assess them objectively to determine the right course of action for the quickest solution. Frankly, mistakes that happen in the interview process can give you an opportunity to show how you handle problems and think on your feet, which can be a chance to impress a hiring manager. In fact, how you handle the mistake can often speak volumes more to a hiring manager than the perfect answer to a predictable interview question. It allows the interviewer to see what you are made of in your instinctive core.

You don’t have results from your job search and you believe it’s what you deserve. When people have low self-esteem, and they don’t have results they want from their job search, the end result can be a compound of them feeling it’s what they deserve. And then it can spiral from there. This is especially happening more today with the isolation people experience during the virus crisis.

Solution: When this happens, and it can happen to anyone, imagine the dearest people in your life coming to you with this comment about themselves — you would reassure them they are wrong in their assumption of their self-worth and give them examples that counter this self-defeating notion. Speak to yourself the way you would speak to others. And I suggest taking an extra step and setting up a support circle of a few choice people you trust that can give you the concrete examples of your worthiness when you need it most. When you see how you contribute to the lives around you, you will gain your motivation to resurge your job-search effort and get traction.

Now is the time to start taking aggressive action to overcome your pandemic fatigue and negative attitude. These tips and solutions should help.        

Lisa Rangel is founder and managing director of Chameleon Resumes LLC (https://chameleonresumes.com/), an executive résumé writing and job-landing consulting firm. A Cornell University graduate, she is a certified professional résumé writer, job landing consultant, and recruiter. Rangel was also a paid moderator for LinkedIn’s premium groups for eight years. 

On Oct. 20, the New York State Department of Labor released its long-awaited Guidance on Paid Sick Leave (PSL). Although the guidance provides some clarity for employers, it also leaves many questions unanswered. The following is a summary of some the information provided by the guidance. 

Employee/employer: For purposes of PSL, the guidance defines employee as “any person employed for hire by an employer in any employment.” Per the guidance, this includes employees who work less than full-time, and encompasses seasonal and likely temporary and per-diem employees as well. The guidance also clarifies that all employers, including nonprofit entities and employees of domestic workers, must comply with PSL. The only types of employers not required to comply with PSL are federal, state, and local government employers.

Frontloading PSL for part-time employees: The guidance provides that employers may frontload PSL for a part-time employee based on the hours the employee is anticipated to work in the upcoming year at an amount that equals at least the amount the worker would have received if the employee was granted one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked. Importantly, unless an employer frontloads all 40 or 56 hours for a part-time employee, the employer continues to be obligated to track the part-time employee’s hours of work after the leave is frontloaded. Per the guidance, employers must continue to track an employee’s hours so that the employer can allow the worker to accrue leave if the employee works more hours than initially anticipated by the employer. In this scenario, an employee would be able to accrue leave until reaching 40 or 56 total hours.

Accrual: The guidance establishes that employers need only grant their employees up to 40 or 56 hours of sick leave (dependent upon employer size), even if the employee would accrue more than that amount during the course of a year using the one hour granted for every 30 hours worked accrual method set up by the statute. 

Carryover: Unfortunately, the guidance does not allow employers to cap the number of unused PSL hours that an employee may carry over between calendar years. Rather, the guidance states that employees may carry over any available, unused PSL between years. However, regardless of the amount of leave carried over, employers may restrict employees from using more than 40 or 56 hours of leave per calendar year. The guidance recognizes that this may result in the employee maintaining a sick-leave balance in excess of the amount the employee is permitted to use in a given calendar year. The guidance does not address whether employers who frontload leave are exempt from the carryover requirement, as is the case under the New York City Earned Sick and Safe Time Act.

Use: The guidance states that employees may use PSL for routine medical, dental, or vision appointments, whether or not a medical condition has been diagnosed. Employers, per the guidance, do not have to allow employees to use PSL for bereavement purposes.

Rate of pay: Per the statute, an employee must be paid at the employee’s “regular rate” for PSL. The guidance does not define this term, but does provide that lost tips/gratuities do not have to be included in the regular-rate calculation as long as employees are paid their normal rate of pay or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is greater.

Other leave laws: The guidance provides that if an employer allows employees to use PSL while using paid family leave (PFL), employees may elect to do so. Electing this option may allow employees to receive full wages during this period, but employees cannot receive more than their full wages while receiving PFL benefits. Moreover, PSL and Westchester County leave for domestic workers will accrue both PSL and the county leave. 

Miscellaneous: The guidance also sets forth the following:

• Employers may not impose a waiting period for accrual or use of PSL.

• Seasonal employees who “maintain an ongoing relationship with their employer maintain their leave accruals through such breaks in employment.”

• Employees who telecommute only accrue sick leave for the hours that they physically work in New York state. 

• Employers who are physically located outside the state must provide sick leave to employees who telecommute for the hours those employees work in New York. 

• Employers may have a policy that allows employees to donate leave to other employees, as long as making the donations is voluntary.

The guidance leaves many questions unanswered. Among them, the guidance does not precisely address how employers are to count their employees for purposes of determining whether they must provide 40 or 56 hours of leave, although it does state that employees at multiple facilities located within New York are to be counted as part of one company. The guidance also does not address whether employers can require documentation from an employee sufficient to justify the employee’s need for the leave. Furthermore, while the guidance does allow employers to require notice prior to the use of PSL, it does not set forth parameters for the notice-time period. The guidance also leaves unanswered questions regarding incorporation of paid sick leave into existing collective-bargaining agreements and existing paid-leave policies.      

Theresa E. Rusnak is an associate attorney in the Rochester office of Syracuse–based Bond, Schoeneck & King PLLC and Kerry W. Langan is a member (partner) in Bond’s Syracuse office. This viewpoint article is drawn from an Oct. 21 post on the firm’s New York Labor and Employment Law Report blog. Contact Rusnak at trusnak@bsk.com and contact Langan at klangan@bsk.com