So a couple of months ago I did interviews with a company that is world-renowned. Let’s call it ‘R’. It’s not as well-known as Apple or Google, but 90% of you will have heard of it.
They tested me during the interviews and the tests were really easy. I was quite proud of myself until they finally made me an offer and the salary was embarrassingly low. That’s when I realised why the test was so easy. I didn’t even try to negotiate since there was such a stretch between it and my bare minimum that there was no chance I would get even that.
A couple of months on and I finally resigned from my current workplace. During a conversation with my boss, he told me that he knew I was interviewing for a while since ‘R’ called him for a reference.
First of all, companies usually ask me to give them the phone numbers of my references, so that was already weird that they called a reference without informing me first, but to actually call the manager of a company I haven’t even resigned from yet? And then to actually make me an embarrassingly low salary offer after that? How could a renowned company f*ck up so badly? Where’s the professionalism and respect? They ruined my chances of getting a promotion or salary increase at my current job while interviewing and then proceeded to offer me a salary that is around 30% lower than the market average.
I still can’t believe this happened. I don’t know if it was some kind of mistake or they really meant to do it (maybe they meant to call a previous boss), but negligence at this level is still quite serious in my book.
It’s been a few weeks since my boss told me and I still think about it and get frustrated sometimes.