I thought that I would share this with you all.
So this was at the end of 2020 and I was looking for work. I had two companies that I was interviewing with. One company was wonderful, I will call them company A: Straight to the point, direct, and clear about expectations, role, etc. The other company, Company B was not the same. Here is my experience.
At this time I was unemployed (I will mention why this is important in a bit).
When Company B were supposed to call me for my initial screening interview, the time came and went with no phone call. I emailed them after waiting for 10 minutes to ask if I had the right time for the interview (aka “I am waiting, where are you?”), and after an 30 minutes, I sent another message to say “I am sorry that I missed you, please can you schedule a new time so that we can connect at a later date?”.
About an hour goes by and I get a call form the HR person apologizing for the delay and ask if I am able to speak right then. Being unemployed I was able to. It should have been a quick 15 minute interview to screen whether I would be a good fit… 45 minutes later we end the call and she will be calling me for the first official interview (again with her).
The second call goes well (despite the fact that she was late in calling again – this time by 10 minutes) and it should have been 30 minute phone call. It ended after an hour and 15 minutes. At this point I am not happy, but I am also still unemployed and wanting a job so we move to the next interview which would be with the owner of the company plus the manager that I would report to.
When that call comes (again 10 minutes late), it was supposed to last for an hour tops, but like before, it went over by another 45 minutes – I don't know why it was always 45 minutes extra each time. During the meeting, the manager that I would have directly worked for hardly spoke, and the owner did all the talking, which raised more red flags for me. After the call, I was feeling mightily annoyed with how ridiculously long these interviews were.
During this time I was also interviewing Company A, and as I mentioned above, they were awesome, and I had completed all interviews and was just waiting for them to say yes or no, but at this point I was still in limbo.
Finally I get a call from the owner of Company B, and he wants to talk a little more and ask a few more questions. 40 minutes later he states that he was offering me a job, but not the job I was interviewing. He wanted me to start in a lower position than what I had applied for, however he would put me at $500 over the top of that lower pay bracket – which was nearly $10k under what I was asking for. After a year, I would then be moved into the role I was applying for and I would already be in that upper pay bracket. I asked for some time to think about the offer (I already was going to say no, but I really needed time to remain professional and not tear into this guy for low balling me, and swapping the role I was gunning for, and wasting my time).
Thankfully I get a call from Company A and they give me an offer. Their offer was actually $5k under what I saw asking, but they had misheard me and thought they were coming in with an offer $5k more than that… they were able to match my salary request, along with outstanding benefits and a generous bonus. With this wind in my sails I was so happy to send an email to the owner of Company B and politely explain why I was turning down their offer:
1 – Every call I had either was missed, later or went over by a ridiculous duration
2 – The salary I had stated that I was asking for was ignored and low balled by nearly $10k
3 – The position I was applying for was swapped out for a lower one
4 – The benefits were not great.
5 – I got another job offer that not only matched what I was asking for, but blew me out of the water with additional perks and incentives… plus they were much more respectful of my time.
The owner of Company B tried to call me again and asked to ask some more questions and try to get me to reconsider their offer… I have never been happier to say no to someone in all my life.
The reason why it was important to note that I was unemployed earlier is because if I WAS employed while trying to find a new job, and Company B had messed me about with respecting my time while I was working, I wouldn't have been so polite with them because their unprofessional time keeping would have negatively impacted my current work.
Thank you for letting me share this story. The moral of my experience is that you are worth what you are fighting for so don't let companies try to short change you of what you are asking for, and more importantly, what you deserve. Happy Easter.