Been looking for new job since fired from previous job last January. Work in IT support field so pickings have been fairly rough these days. Mostly contract positions with bunch of requirements and very little pay offered.
In February, contacted by job recruiter / contractor company about contract position, which fair fit for my IT skills, and setup for interview.
The job interview happened 2/24. One and half hours, talked to multiple people, went pretty fair overall.
On 3/11 received job offer. $26 an hour. Nine month contract. Working through contractor. No PTO.
I had another job offer: $30 an hour, but only for three month contract (though signed contract only said five weeks, which I felt a bit weird about). A start date had been set, but the background check hadn't yet completed. After some debate, I dropped out of that job offer. Despite no PTO, the new job offer was for longer contract, possibly better opportunities, and more chance of being hired on after contract period completed.
I took presented job offer and started going through the onboarding / background check process for this job. I received emails both from contractor and company I'd be working for on 3/14. I followed links and filled out all necessary information. They did seem to be some emails that didn't arrive from company. My contractor contact reached out and we tried to resolve, but never reached solid conclusion on whether received all necessary emails or forms.
Eventually I received information about start details and was told my start date would be 4/6 at 8 AM.
I arrived at workplace at required time, met up with my manager, and generally had normal first day, being shown off the workplace and what I would be doing on daily basis. Generally normal first day, however they didn't have my login credentials and didn't know why my onboarding process hadn't seemed to have completed.
I came in the next day (4/7) and after first hour was told there was still issue with my account creation that “wasn't my fault”. They told me to go home and they'd hopefully resolve the issue by end of the week.
They did not.
I called my contractor contract every week day for the next two weeks for updates, which he had none that entire period. He kept calling the company, and they continued to have no definitive ETA. They paid me for hours worked on 4/6 and 4/7, but when asked about compensation or being paid while they worked on resolving issue, they gave a “hard no”. I asked my contractor contact for multiple times on whether there was a chance they wouldn't hire me, to which he responded “no” every time.
On 4/22 there was finally some progress. Received further emails from company which led to additional onboarding steps. I filled those out forms. Included in those forms was a question on whether I'd been involuntarily terminated from any previous position in last few years, to which I answered “yes” and gave details I had about termination.
I reached out to my contractor contact the following Monday (4/25) and let him know the news.
That same day received call from company asking for further details on my termination. Told her the truth: that I had been terminated for “performance” and had been given no further details about why I'd been fired.
I kept contacting my contractor contact every week day past that. He continued to have no ETA from company for when the process would complete or when new start date would be.
By the time I made it to May, I was quite frustrated. I'd now been waiting for almost TWO MONTHS since job first offered to properly start this job.
On May 9th, finally received the following email:
Good Morning [name],
Unfortunately you did not pass the background check due to the involuntary termination you had and the business decided not to move forward with your application. Your vendor should be reaching out to you shortly.
Attached is your withdrawal letter.
I reached out to my contractor contact. He had no additional details and was just as confused as I was.
To say I was angry is understatement. I had waited TWO MONTHS for this position to finally start. I'd even had a first day over a month ago. I'd stopped looking for further employment during that time (though admittedly had started looking again over previous few weeks due to how long the process had been taking). I'd bypassed taking another job due to this job offer. This is two months I could have been submitting for other job and looking into further opportunities, but I'd been giving this job the benefit of the doubt that, even after waiting for two months, that it would still start.
I have friends that say this all sounds dubious or illegal and I'd have to agree. However I'm in an “at will employment” state, which I feel means that I don't have any legal leg to stand on. I wish they'd mentioned that being fired previously would have disqualified me because would have saved me over TWO MONTHS wasted.
TL;DR
2/24 – Attended interview.
3/11 – Job offered.
4/6 – Attended first day of work.
4/7 – After first hour, told to go home because of “account creation issue”. Told not my fault.
4/22 – After two weeks of no ETA, received and filled out additional onboarding documents. Seemed process moving forward.
5/9 – After another two weeks of ETA, offer rescinded due to being involuntarily terminated from previous job.
Job dragged me along for TWO MONTHS before rescinding job offer. Anything illegal happening here? Any legal avenues I can explore?