Little background, worked as an investment rep for a major canadian bank for a few years, which is just code for sales and investing. Working conditions got unbearable during the pandemic and decided to quit and look for something else not related in any way to customer service. I applied for an Admin back office job at something completely unrelated to banking but related to employee retirement programs.
Had an interview earlier this week over teams. We were going over my resume and whatever I had written wasn't right, “oh you went to this university, we prefer our employees to be from this other university”, “You have 5 years experience, we are looking for someone with 10 years” sort of situation. At one point the HR recruiter said “You have this certification and license but we would rather you have a CFA” and I replied “I dont see how having a CFA works for this admin position, can you elaborate how?” to which they didnt know they just said the manager for this job likes seeing CFA. Regardless I carried on. We discussed salary and I provided a range and they said my range was too high and they were looking for about 70-80% my range, I replied that the salary range I provided was the same one on indeed. The HR interviewer replied it was to attract talent but the real range was lower.
At that point I told him I was cutting the interview short. He was a little taken aback and asked why. I told him I don't think we are on the same page, your company is looking for something I am not. I wasn't looking to play games and stated “You're looking for someone with a CFA with 10 years experience that you're looking to pay 70% of my salary range”. The HR recruiter then told me everything was negotiatable and I would be seeing salary increases every year but that they were trying to judge my reactions to criticism. (I personnally dont believe in these end of year salary increase shenanigans because of inflation or some other “we are reviewing pay scale stuff”). I told him I had the impression they were playing games. I wished them the best of luck finding this ideal candidate, wished them a good day and hung up the teams interview.
I am a professional, you want to have a professional work for you and you want a professional conversation about tasks and responsibilities dont waste my time with trying to judge reactions and trying to cut me down.
TLDR: HR rep thought it would be a good idea to play games to judge my reactions, I cut the interview short.