Standard recruiting practice?
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@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
Absolutely not. You caught them running a scam. You know so much about what they are like as a company now. Unless you are convinced that with another interview you'll actually get the L2, I'd just stop wasting the time on them now.
Scott - You seem to be really jaded against technical recruiters. I know 3 of them at two different companies. I don't think you see their side of things.
I'm jaded against scams. I love good recruiters. Not all recruiters run scams. Nothing that I wrote should lead you to feel that I'm jaded against recruiters unless you feel that all recruiters run scams.
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@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
It's kind of like a rental car place. They rent out their smallest cars first. Then if someone shows up with a reservation for a compact and you don't have any left, you know you can "upgrade them for free" in to a mid sized car. Juggling the resources you have isn't always "bait and switch".
Advertising a higher position in order to fill lower ones is a standard bait and switch practice that is done constantly. It's nothing like an upgrade, it's a downgrade. Accept an interview for one thing, then after it is done, offer another. It's a lure. It's highly effective to get peoples' hopes up, then offer them something when they felt like maybe things were going well.
If the higher position was already filled, and you felt that they were just being nice, they'd have been honest up front that that was the condition before ever accepting the interview. That they did it afterwards is how you know it was the intention to bait and switch from the start. There is no way that the position was filled during the interview.
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@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
If you advertise a position and get 3 good candidates, do you take 1 and tell the others they didn't make the cut, or do you take 1 and look around at other openings you have and try to place one of them there. If you had a L2 and L1 opening, if you filled the L1 opening with only L1 applications, you would risk someone that might not be able to do the job. If you offer it to a L2, you know they can do it. If they refuse, then you go to the L1 applicants.
You state this as if it is related to what happened, but we know that it isn't. If they interviewed all reasonable options, then offered the best one the top position and then offered the others a lower position, that would be acceptable. But very clearly not what happened here. So this doesn't apply.
Also, most companies in this position would simply upgrade the L1 to an L2 in order to get good people as that is generally way better than losing your top picks just to fill a slightly lower slot. So unless this is a tiny company with no resources, none of this applies realistically anyway.
I've been to job interviews where they immediately told me that the slot I was interviewing for was filled. Then when the interview was over, offered to create a new spot for me.
There are lots of ways to handle these kinds of things in an honest way, and there is a way to bait and switch. This is bait and switch.
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There is also the "open offer" option. Amazon does this. If you interview for one position but it is no longer open, they don't offer you a lower position as a concession. They give you an offer contingent on finding a suitable position. You have "passed the interview" and just need to find a team that makes sense for you to join at your appropriate level.
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@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
There is no way that the position was filled during the interview.
It's not possible that they had multiple interviews scheduled that day and wanted to wait until they figured out which one they really wanted for the job would accept the offer?
Suppose they offered someone a job, and that person accepted, and then the next day, declined it. If on day one they told the number two candidate the position was filled. Then the next day called back the #2 and offered him the position, does that make them liars? are they running a scam? bait and switch? no, things happen. We don't know all the details to make assumptions like that.
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@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
There is no way that the position was filled during the interview.
It's not possible that they had multiple interviews scheduled that day and wanted to wait until they figured out which one they really wanted for the job would accept the offer?
Suppose they offered someone a job, and that person accepted, and then the next day, declined it. If on day one they told the number two candidate the position was filled. Then the next day called back the #2 and offered him the position, does that make them liars? are they running a scam? bait and switch? no, things happen. We don't know all the details to make assumptions like that.
You are saying that they accepted someone's offer WHILE running the interview for that position? I call BS. This is simply so unreasonable that it's unthinkable to use it as a scenario. This is clearly bait and switch, you are grasping at straws to try to find a plausible one in a million scenario for how it could be an accident. It's totally illogical. Bait and switch is a standard practice, it is very effective, and it happened here. Why would you want to defend them for being unethical?
None of the examples that you gave in any way relate to his situation of bait and switch. Things happen, but this thing does not.
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@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
It's not possible that they had multiple interviews scheduled that day and wanted to wait until they figured out which one they really wanted for the job would accept the offer?
This is what they should have done, but didn't. That's the problem.
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I must have missed something in the details. Looking at what the OP wrote nothing tells me it was a blatant scam.
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@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
I must have missed something in the details. Looking at what the OP wrote nothing tells me it was a blatant scam.
They called him for an interview for one position. Didn't tell him that the position was not available up front. Then after the interview only offered a different, lower position. <- This is the blatant scam.
There are loads of conditions where the position he had wanted might have been filled, but none of them in an honest scenario would have resulted in the situation that arose here. And the crazy outlandish scenarios that could be contrived to try to explain it would have resulted, reasonably, in the recruiter mentioning it as it happened, not ignoring that it happened.
I don't see any reasonable grey area here. It's as clear a scam as it gets.
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What we have no reason to believe:
- That the L2 position ever existed.
- That the L2 position was filled already.
Are those things possible? Of course. But even if there was one, and it was filled, that should not result in the situation that arose here.
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@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
What we have no reason to believe:
- That the L2 position ever existed.
- That the L2 position was filled already.
Are those things possible? Of course. But even if there was one, and it was filled, that should not result in the situation that arose here.
Nothing in that post makes me assume the position does not exist, you are making assumptions yourself.
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@jaredbusch said in Standard recruiting practice?:
@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
What we have no reason to believe:
- That the L2 position ever existed.
- That the L2 position was filled already.
Are those things possible? Of course. But even if there was one, and it was filled, that should not result in the situation that arose here.
Nothing in that post makes me assume the position does not exist, you are making assumptions yourself.
I never said that it didn't. Never insinuated anything of the sort. I made no assumption. The assumption here is one you made of something you think I said but did not.
I only said that the situation was a bait and switch, I've never suggested that the position never existed or even doesn't exist currently.
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@scottalanmiller yes you did.
@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
I must have missed something in the details. Looking at what the OP wrote nothing tells me it was a blatant scam.
They called him for an interview for one position. Didn't tell him that the position was not available up front. Then after the interview only offered a different, lower position. <- This is the blatant scam.
Right there. Emphasis mine.
You have no idea that his is the fact that you are stating it is.
It is a fact that they did not offer the position he thought he was applying for.
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@jaredbusch said in Standard recruiting practice?:
@scottalanmiller yes you did.
@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
I must have missed something in the details. Looking at what the OP wrote nothing tells me it was a blatant scam.
They called him for an interview for one position. Didn't tell him that the position was not available up front. Then after the interview only offered a different, lower position. <- This is the blatant scam.
Right there. Emphasis mine.
You have no idea that his is the fact that you are stating it is.
It is a fact that they did not offer the position he thought he was applying for.
That was based on Mike's assumption that it was no longer available as an excuse for giving him the interview anyway.
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@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
It's kind of like a rental car place. They rent out their smallest cars first. Then if someone shows up with a reservation for a compact and you don't have any left, you know you can "upgrade them for free" in to a mid sized car.
He was trying to suggest that maybe the position was gone, and that they could give him an interview anyway. My point was that if that were true, they should have told him up front, not done the interview and act like he was getting considered for a different position.
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@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
That was based on Mike's assumption that it was no longer available as an excuse for giving him the interview anyway.
I don't see where I made that assumption. I think I did the opposite of making assumptions. I tried to come up with different scenarios in which the events could have played out where it wasn't a bait and switch.
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@mike-davis said in Standard recruiting practice?:
@scottalanmiller said in Standard recruiting practice?:
That was based on Mike's assumption that it was no longer available as an excuse for giving him the interview anyway.
I don't see where I made that assumption. I think I did the opposite of making assumptions. I tried to come up with different scenarios in which the events could have played out where it wasn't a bait and switch.
Maybe assumption was the wrong word. Suggestion?
The problem is, every scenario comes down to bait and switch - there are several pathways to get there, but they all lead to the same thing. They all have one position advertised, and another offered to be considered after the fact. None of them were up front at the start of the interview that the position was filled, or didn't exist, or wasn't what they had brought him in for. All scenarios involve him being lured in and applying for one position, interviewing for that position, then being told he'd be considered for another with no excuses or mention of the position that they had just interviewed for until they were called on it.
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There are several options as to how this happened that are plausible, which is what I was saying with me "what we don't know."
- The L2 job never existed and was entirely fake to lure people to the L1.
- The L2 job did exist at some point, but got filled after being advertised and they went along with it until after the interview.
- The L2 job did exist and still exists, but they were not considering him for it but let him think that they were to get him to do the interview.
Three reasonable options that are all totally plausible. But all result in some degree of bait and switch.
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The non-B&S scenarios seem unreasonable...
- The position was open at the start of the interview, but closed during the interview and they felt bad so considered him for a lower position: but didn't mention that this happened and were going to ignore such a huge thing having happened. Physically possible, but completely unreasonable to assume.
- They did the interview for the L2, but the non-technical person decided to change the tech level without talking to a tech person. Also not reasonable, and possibly still B&S even if this is what happened.
Is there a scenario where someone applies for too senior of a position and could legitimately get offered something more junior? Yes, but it would be discussed, it would be open and honest, and it would happen at a technical level not a recruiter screening. It's insanely unlikely in the real world, but could happen. But it would never happen like this, where it was done by an unqualified person, silently with no one discussing it until called on for it.
