So i live in the Balkans (southern east Europe), which is being used s Europe's India… as an outsourcing area for cheap work. (no offense to India or its people, its just a sad fact… and we are being used/exploited the same way)
I work as an engineer in aviation (in a sector that is kind of small and it is something ou specialize) and i am in the under 5 years of experience group (that doesnt mean 2 months and 4 days 😉 )
So i have a profile in linked in and it is set as looking for work in Europe pretty much. I got the following once and i was shocked but didnt paymuch attnetion, but it keeps happening so it is definitely a thing
I got approached by some recruitment agency looking for 1 person for a position with specific experience criteria (from which i fulfilled about 70-8% given that i am in a different part of the sector, but i have almost the 'time' experience).
They wanted a CV and i sent one. they pretented (at least i think it was pretending) that they were very interested.
They asked for a remote interview and we set it up. They asked for my experience, what i do at work, the usual etc, and it came to the topic of compensation:
THey asked what i am being paid to and what i would want as payment and i said back “Why dont you let me know what you offer and we can go form there”
They said that its not how they operate and i made a slight comment that asking somebody how much is earning at a job interview is illegal in many places, but i am willing to comment to move things along
So i say “I earn about 16k euro a year and if i was moving to a different country i would expect a raise of at least 30%, so at least 5k more” to which they cut me off (spoiler we dont even make that in our basic salary… we need to do extra work to reach that amount which isnt great at all…).
At that point they tell me that even what I make is above their budget so they are sorry but they ahve to cut the interview short a there is no reason to continue!!!
that was the first time it happened and i was shocked so i didnt come back, but i made some calculations: 16000 a year is 1333 a month. there was no comment made about it being net or full salary but lets accept they knew i wa talking net.
The position was in Spain, where google says minimum salary is 1050 a month… htey wanted a close to 5 year experienced aeronautical engineer for 25% above minimum wage…
all the above has happened 4 more times since and i make a question about how little do they expect to pay somebody for a position like that…
Oh, and keep in mind apparently they dont plan to cover moving epxenses, accommodation expencses or transportation expenses at the new place they want you to move. So you have to cover all that from that “barely above minimum wage”…