Month: February 2025

When thinking back on jobs where I increased or decreased performance based on compensation, one job in particular stands out. At my most recent position, in between finishing my associate’s degree and returning to college to finish my bachelor’s degree, I was motivated to work hard based on initial pay, regular bonuses, and the promise of increased pay during regular performance reviews. However, after working for the company for almost a year, I realized that my role and duties were not clear, and despite working hard and performing at what I was being told was an excellent level, I was still receiving less than excellent reviews because the job description knowingly incorporated more duties than it was expected could be handled by one person.

Seeing that my hard work would not directly relate to increased compensation, and despite being paid fairly for the position I was working at, I chose to decrease my performance to meet standards, essentially putting in the amount of work I felt I was being compensated for. Unfortunately, because I started out as such a great employee, my manager and the owner noticed this. They spoke to me and tried several ways to motivate me to work harder, with my manager becoming more overbearing and micromanaging my breaks and work pace and the owner offering to move me to a different position. I accepted moving to a different position but found the new position to be less fulfilling as I didn’t feel as valuable, and there was not really room for moving up in the company. Despite being paid the same and removing the barriers to being paid more, I didn’t feel as challenged and valuable, and I ended up leaving the company.

While my decision to move forward was based on several factors, a large part of my decrease in performance and my perception of my value to the company was based on compensation. Both current compensation and whether or not future increases in compensation felt within my control. While I will always be grateful for this opportunity and team, and even am thankful that leaving that position motivated me to go back to school, I learned a lot from what was unsatisfying at that position and what led me to leave.

I’ve had many different types of jobs and gone through several different types of trainings. The best trainings I received were very hands on. They usually included a period of job shadowing with a clear checklist for us both to go through and a person who I could clearly go to to ask questions after the job shadowing period was over. The worst trainings I’ve had were focused on learning job knowledge through a printed manual or computer program by simply reading and completing required training. This information was important for the job, but difficult to absorb at such a fast pace and with such little context of the hands on job experience.

When I read the suggestion in “Your New Hires Won’t Succeed Unless You Onboard Them Properly” for onboarding to last up to a year, I was initially surprised. This is much longer than any onboarding I have ever received. However, I realized that my best onboarding experiences lasted several months, with clear, scheduled check-ins and learning spaced out between job shadowing and hands-on experience. If I were to be in charge of designing an onboarding program, I think this structure would be much more efficient, especially for more complex positions that require lots of technical knowledge or the use of multiple skills.

One of the benefits of this structure that isn’t really discussed in the article is that having training spread out is also more inclusive for employees with different learning styles and paces. This gives a lot more room to adapt teaching and learning styles to be more efficient and effective for the people involved in training. However, I agree that the basic structure of good onboarding should absolutely include checklists, check ins, and an accessible peer to keep training focused and productive.

For this exercise, I took an Implicit Attitude Test focusing on race. Similar to what I had expected, or at least hoped, my results were little to no association between race and association between perpetrator and victim. However, I could see at the set up of this test what it was trying to test, and I am in a unique position as a Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies major, who studies race and positionality, and therefore, indirectly, bias, to already be constantly checking my assumptions regarding to all forms of identity.

Part of why I chose my major is because I believe that implicit bias does have a strong impact on decision-making and that many people are not aware of the beliefs they hold that reinforce dominant and oppressive systems. Biases that people hold are shaped by where they grew up, what media they are exposed to, and who they meet. People may be aware of some biases, but unaware of others, and may even be defensive of these faults, especially in the age of cancel culture which does not encourage reflection and growth.

I’ve been asked several times as a WGSS major what my thoughts are on EEO, and I think it surprises people that I don’t necessarily think it is the answer. As noted in “Lecture 4” from Week 3, managers often feel these decisions are forced upon them and take away their discretion, and they don’t get to the root of the problem, systemic inequality, and implicit biases reinforced by culture. Instead, I think exercises like this, which allow people to privately address and receive education about implicit bias are helpful, and create change from the bottom up. Ultimately, I think education and focus on individual change will radiate out to create cultural change that will reshape communities and undermine and eliminate implicit bias, rather than simply enforcing EEO procedures that can cause automatic defensiveness and do not encourage personal growth.

I have had a lot of interviews over the years and a few stand out as good and bad measures of whether or not I was a good fit for the job. Starting with the bad experience, I once had a job interview where, after reviewing my resume and basic qualifications I was sat down for an unstructured interview. I got the sense very quickly that the interviewer liked me and at the time, wanting the position, I made a point to make personal connections with the interviewer rather than focusing on job questions, as they were very open-ended. I ended up getting the position, and as it was a lower level position, it’s not that I wasn’t a great fit or couldn’t perform the job duties, but I quickly realized how important job growth within the position was to me and did not feel this was something that would be available to me. I left that job in less than 6 months for another position which promised me more growth.

I had a much different experience at my most recent position. I actually felt really great about the interview experience, as the owner of the practice sat me down and discussed ideal principles and values, and then gave me a math test followed by a short job shadowing experience. At the time, I had never had this done a test at an interview and was surprised. However, it actually made me feel confident that I could prove my intelligence and linear reasoning which was necessary for the position. This test showed strong reliability and utility for the position, although I am not sure how valid it was, and ultimately I stayed at that position for over a year, only leaving due to understaffing and job rotation, which became overwhelming at a small practice.

If I could go back to both of these interviews, I would say that the first interviewer should have been a lot more focused, using structured interviews that focused more on the specifics of the position. To the second interviewer, I would say that this interview was actually a great way to test if I would be a good fit for the position. It was one of the most beneficial and structured interviews I have experienced and ultimately I might have stayed at this position for a long time, had it not been for understaffing.