Basically the title. It really pissed me off. A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn and as usual, I always start out by asking for the job description and the salary range. She would not give me a salary range so I said I need X amount in order to move to a new job. She said yes that would be possible, we even would be able to make this a senior title! I went along with the process and didn’t find out until the second to last step that the salary budgeted for the role was not only $30k under what I had said I needed, but would be a pay cut from what I make now to do WAY more work. And, surprise – it would not be a senior title despite it being very clearly senior level work.
I last minute cancelled the last interview. (She set it up weird so my “final” interview with the head of the department/my would-be boss actually came a day before another interview with a would-be peer).
They said “oh but we would have given you an offer today if this last guy and you had a good convo.” I didn’t care – I no longer wanted to work at a company who wanted to pay their employees essentially an entry level salary for a very senior level job.
I am no longer providing what I want for salary first. If they push back on me saying “oh it’s flexible for the right person.” I’m just going to say straight up that I’ve been lied to and have had my time wasted by going through the whole process only to find out that they can’t pay me what I need. So either they tell me the range or there is nothing to talk about. Thanks but no thanks. If they can’t be upfront with me about the range for whatever reason, I don’t want to work there.