I think I'm going to be fired in September. How to prepare?

I am a managing director at a professional services firm. I believe I'm going to be fired in September during year end performance reviews because I have not hit my revenue targets. My job is partly generating new business and partly executing client and internal projects. I was put on a 90 day "resource plan" in April that had no specific goals except to hit my revenue targets, it was kind of unachievable considering how my year was going. It was extended in June. I've been working my tail off to improve my numbers and it shows everywhere except revenue. My market is currently depressed but leadership, who are all in other markets, seem to have lost patience. How to prepare for what seems like the inevitable?

Jobadvisor

I'm sorry you're in this spot — a "resource plan" that gets extended with vague goals is often exactly what it looks like, and it's smart to prepare now rather than wait. Here's how to use the next few weeks well.

Start job hunting immediately, quietly Don't wait for the official news. Update your resume and LinkedIn (subtly — don't flip to "open to work" publicly if you want to avoid tipping off your firm). Reach out to your network, recruiters in your practice area, and former colleagues who've moved elsewhere. A search takes months at the MD level; starting now while employed puts you in a much stronger position than starting the day you're let go.

Document everything Keep records of the goals you were given (or not given), the plan's timeline, your revenue numbers vs. market conditions, and any wins that don't show up in revenue — client satisfaction, project delivery, team contributions, pipeline you built that hasn't closed yet. If leadership can't point to specific, measurable, achievable goals, that's relevant if you end up negotiating severance or if there's ever a dispute about the reason for termination.

Understand your firm's exit mechanics before you're in the room

• Check your employment agreement, partner/MD agreement if applicable, and any equity, deferred comp, or carried interest — vesting schedules and forfeiture clauses matter a lot at the MD level.
• Look at the firm's severance policy or past precedent for MDs let go in similar situations.
• Check whether you're in a state with mandatory severance disclosure or WARN Act implications (unlikely for a single departure, but worth knowing).

Plan for a negotiation, not just an announcement Firms often have more flexibility than the initial offer suggests, especially for a senior person leaving voluntarily-adjacent ("mutual separation," "resignation in lieu of termination," extended notice period, outplacement services, extended COBRA subsidy, a neutral reference). Before any conversation, decide what you'd ask for: severance multiple, bonus proration, equity treatment, timing of the exit (does it help to leave before or after certain vesting or bonus dates?), and reference language.

Get a lawyer, at least for a consult An employment attorney who handles executive exits (even one hour of paid consultation) can review your agreement, tell you what's negotiable, and sometimes contact the firm on your behalf. This is standard practice at the MD level and firms generally expect it.

Sort out finances and benefits

• Build/confirm your emergency fund assuming a search of 3-6+ months.
• Understand COBRA costs and timing, or alternative health coverage.
• Check unemployment eligibility in your state.
• Review any non-compete or non-solicit clauses now, since they'll shape where you can go next.

Manage the internal narrative if you can If there's any chance to influence the outcome before September — a candid conversation with your manager about the unrealistic targets given market conditions, or a request to have the goals clarified in writing — it's worth trying, partly for the paper trail and partly because sometimes plans do get reconsidered. But go in with eyes open: extensions with vague goals are frequently a sign the decision is largely made.

Would it help to work through any of these in more depth — like what to actually ask for in a severance negotiation, or how to talk about this departure with recruiters and your network?

 Is it normal for companies to withhold health insurance costs during the interview and negotiation stages?

I received a job offer recently. It will be a 20% pay cut and, being unemployed, I realize that I'm not in a position to be extremely picky. However, I do need to have an understanding of the benefits package to understand the full financial picture to know if this is even remotely feasible long term. The company is being a little shifty about the healthcare costs and I don't know if this is normal or not.

In the offer letter, they provided a brief summary of the plan details. It's a very high deductible plan with 50% coinsurance. They contribute $4,000/year into a HSA, which certainly takes the edge off, but it's not a stellar plan by any means. Most importantly, I don't know what the monthly premium is and I've already asked them twice. Now they're kinda getting prickly because I haven't accepted the offer yet.

I feel like, healthcare costs being what they are, this is important information! Is the premium $150 a month or $1,500 a month? The difference could be thousands of dollars of year.

Is this normal?

Jobadvisor

Short answer: no, this isn't normal — and your instinct to push on it is right.

Why this is unusual Premium amounts for existing benefit plans aren't confidential in any meaningful sense. They're not proprietary business information, they're not something that changes per-candidate, and HR or benefits admin can pull them up in seconds — most companies have this info in a benefits guide or SBC (Summary of Benefits and Coverage) document that already exists and gets handed to every new hire during enrollment anyway. There's no legitimate reason to gatekeep it during an offer negotiation.

What's probably going on A few possibilities, roughly in order of likelihood:

• The recruiter or hiring manager genuinely doesn't know the number and isn't looping in benefits/HR quickly — sometimes it's disorganization, not evasion.
• They know the number is unappealing (high-deductible plans often come with steep premiums too, which would make the total package look worse) and are hoping you'll accept before you see it.
• They're trying to close you before you can use the number to negotiate further (e.g., "the health costs make this a bigger pay cut than I thought, can we talk base salary or a signing bonus").

Their "getting prickly" is a signal, not a reason to back off Pushback on a reasonable, standard question is itself useful information about how this company operates. A well-run company treats "what's the premium" as a two-minute email to their benefits team, not a point of friction.

What to do

• Ask once more, explicitly framed as a condition: "I want to move forward, but I need the monthly premium for employee and employee+dependent coverage before I can accept — I'm sure your benefits team has this readily available." That framing makes clear you're not stalling, you're blocked.
• If they still won't produce it, ask directly for the SBC document or the benefits guide — those are standard documents every enrolled employee receives, so there's no confidentiality argument against sharing them pre-hire.
• If they still stonewall, that tells you something about transparency at this company going forward, and you can decide how much weight to give that alongside the pay cut itself.

Given the math you're already doing — HSA contribution, high deductible, 50% coinsurance — the premium is the last major variable you need to actually model your real annual cost. It's completely reasonable to hold off accepting until you have it.

Didn’t tip this morning and am unsure if I’m the AH

I sometimes sit down at this Mexican restaurant nearby. I always tip when I sit in but today I got really nerved!

I ordered a plate which is usually 14.99 + coffee and water.

She brings the plate but missing rice, only beans and the quesadilla. No apology, just told “rice Isn’t ready… here you go”. I was about to say “i dont want this!” but decided to chill and just eat it.

She delivers check and took off .50c. A 7.5% deduction which made it pretax 14.29. I calculated it a third of the meal isn’t there that’s 33% which is about 4 something.

I usually tip $3-4 but since she never came and alerted me that they didn’t have the ingredients for that plate, brought it anyway with a measly .50c deduction, no tip!

she’s been there awhile and felt like that was bad service and didn’t apologize one bit.

Jobadvisor

Not the AH here — that's a reasonable read of the situation.

A few things stand out:

• The core issue isn't the missing rice — kitchens run out of things. It's that she served it without a heads-up or apology, and you only found out via a token 50-cent deduction on the bill. That's a service failure, not a food failure.
• The math she did (and the math you did) tells the story. She knocked off 7.5%; you calculated the actual shortfall at around 33%. That's a big enough gap that it reads less like "oops, minor adjustment" and more like she hoped you wouldn't do the math.
• No acknowledgment, no apology, no "let me get you something else or adjust this properly." That's the part that would bother most people — it's not really about the coffee and quesadilla, it's about being treated like the discrepancy doesn't matter.

Withholding a tip is one of the few points of leverage a customer actually has when service falls short, and this seems like a fair case to use it — you tipped generously in the past when service was normal, and this wasn't normal.

If you want a middle path for situations like this in the future: some people leave $1-2 with a quick comment to the manager or on a receipt like "missing item, wasn't told, no adjustment made" — it gives feedback without a total blank, and sometimes gets back to the server in a way that changes behavior. But going to $0 given no apology and a shortchanged deduction is well within reasonable here, not stingy.

Have I already lost the job before even going into the interview 😭

first of all this is my first ever job and interview I'm so nervous and anxious and also confused...

Anyways so I got a mail from the recruiter asking for my availability for an interview and when I told them what time and day i would be available they told me "usually we would tell you what times we have available first, but okay" I'm confused, if they were meant to tell me already why did they ask for what day i would be available. I replied with "Okay sorry about that thank you very much" Should I be worried about getting rejected or would they actually forget about it during the interview.

Jobadvisor

No, you haven't lost anything over this — genuinely. This is such a normal, small mix-up.

Here's what probably happened: some recruiters phrase things like "what's your availability?" when they actually mean "which of these specific time slots work for you?" It's a common but slightly confusing way to ask, and you answered it the most natural way possible — by saying when you're free. That's not a mistake on your part, it's just a slightly unclear question. Your reply of "okay sorry about that, thank you" was polite and completely appropriate.

Recruiters go through this back-and-forth dozens of times a week with different candidates. A tiny scheduling clarification like this isn't something they'll even remember by the time your interview happens, let alone hold against you. It has nothing to do with your skills, your fit for the role, or how the interview will go.

It's also really normal to feel this anxious before a first-ever interview — the nerves make small moments like this feel bigger than they are. But this one really is just a logistics blip, not a sign of anything going wrong.

If it'd help, I'm happy to help you prepare for the actual interview — common questions, how to talk about yourself with no prior work experience, anything like that.

Does job role and CV matching necessary?

26F, recently passed out of m.com, acca (7/13). I gave only 2 interviews till now and the roles were of tax but my cv includes an experience of audit and assurance from a CA firm.

It was basically 3 months of internship 3 yrs back.

But these interviewers grill me very hard on this internship experience asking questions which I cannot ans because of. 3 months is nothing for core audit questions.

What shall I do please suggest me guys. Shall I remove this experience, if so then my cv becomes blank.

Jobadvisor

Short answer: your CV doesn't need to be a perfect mirror of the job role, but everything on it should be something you can talk about comfortably. Right now the problem isn't that the internship exists — it's that it's inviting deep technical questions you can't yet answer well after only 3 months, 3 years ago.

A few options, from most to least disruptive:

1. Keep it, but reframe it (usually the best option) Don't remove it — a blank CV is worse than an imperfect one, and audit + tax experience together is actually a reasonable, related combination (many firms value both). Instead:

• Shrink the bullet points to just 1–2 lines that describe what you actually did — things like vouching, ticking, basic documentation, assisting seniors — nothing that oversells you as having deep technical exposure.
• Avoid buzzwords like "conducted statutory audits" or "handled compliance" if you didn't really do that independently. Interviewers grill hardest on the words that sound like more than they were.
• Say plainly in the interview if asked: "It was a 3-month internship where I mainly assisted with [specific basic tasks] — I wasn't yet exposed to the more technical/independent audit work." This is a completely normal, honest answer and most interviewers will respect it more than fumbling on a question you can't answer.

2. Add more current, relevant content around it Since you're applying for tax roles, make sure your CV also highlights:

• Any tax-related coursework, projects, or ACCA papers relevant to tax
• Software/tools you know (Excel, Tally, tax filing tools, etc.)
• Any tax-specific internship or coursework, even short-term

This shifts interviewer attention away from the audit internship and toward tax-relevant material.

3. Anticipate the audit questions and prep light answers Since it keeps coming up, prep 2-3 honest, humble answers for the most likely questions ("what did you learn," "what was your role," "any challenges") so you're not caught off guard — without pretending to have expertise you don't have.

One thing I wouldn't do: don't leave your CV blank by removing your only experience. A short, honestly-framed internship is still more valuable to a recruiter than no experience at all — it shows you've been in a professional environment, even briefly.

Would you like help rewriting that internship section so it sounds accurate but strong?