I am an in-house physician recruiter with 5 years of experience. I was offered a position early this year with one of the largest healthcare organizations in my area. The day after I accepted the position, a news article came out that they were bought out by a healthcare monopoly. They didn't mention anything about the acquisition during the interview process or offer, and I was hired by the VP of HR, who 100% would have known about it ahead of time. I was extremely upset when I read this, as I would have never taken the job had I known they had been bought out. They also brought me in below the 10th percentile of the area's salary range for my role. But, they told me I would have a bonus plan, and that it would be discussed once I was on board. This is when I learned to always get everything in writing BEFORE you accept a job offer. I really needed a job and this was a reputable company, so I decided to just see what was going to happen, figuring the low salary would be balanced out by productivity bonuses.
I know that acquisitions typically come with layoffs, so I was naturally super worried. A month into my new job, which I did not get any training for and barely had supervision for, my “supervisor” (if you could call her that, she literally ignored me the whole time I was there) left the company. She told us on a Wednesday and was gone by that Friday. The company made it really sketchy; she didn't tell anyone she was laid off or fired, she just cried hysterically and said she was “taking some time off” along with a few other senior folks who were leaving (on the exact same day.) This scared the shit out of me, so I expressed my fears to another senior level employee who was helping us navigate the transition. He told me and my coworker (we were a department of 2) that we were essential to the company's success and gassed us up. Told us we particularly had nothing to worry about, which I naively believed. My coworker and I were supposed to join the “national team” of recruiters in December, so we would be looked after well. Around the same time, I asked again about productivity bonuses, and they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about. They agreed on a very minimal bonus structure (better than nothing) and said it would be paid out quarterly.
I worked for months without direct supervision after that all happened. They had me reporting to the Chief Medical Officer, who is also the boss of 400+ doctors/clinicians and had way too much on his plate to give me the time of day. I was also having financial problems, and like I said, they brought me in at a low rate. I requested a market adjustment to my salary (now that we were part of a $500B company) and was told no. I expressed concern about my lack of supervision to HR and they assured me things would be different when the final stages of the transition were complete in December. Fast forward another month, they suddenly don't have room on their national team and laid off both me and my coworker, who had been there 11 years. Not only did I get roped into working for a fortune 5 company, but all of my fears about it also came true. Oh, and I never saw a bonus. Funny how it happened a few weeks after I brought up a salary increase.
Corporate America is trash, and I'm never working in healthcare again. Sorry for the long rant, just needed to put this story into the world because it REALLY irks me.