A recruiter story, Part II

When I left you last week, we were discussing a recruiter horror story, passed along from a friend in a past job. She had a really awful phone screen with HR, but the hiring manager still wanted to speak with her. The story continues…

The hiring manager schedules a phone screen with me, and we have a really nice conversation, discussing the technologies they are utilizing and how my skill set could fit in there. The company sounded interesting, my skills fit really nicely into their gaps and we decide to take the process further along. A moderate annoyance that happened in between, was the recruiter wanting to do a call with me to discuss interview strategy. That would have been fine, if he had given me any actual intelligence about the interview or people I was interviewing. Instead, he gave me standard boilerplate about how to answer interview questions, and wasted 30 minutes of my time.

A couple of days later, I did another phone screen, this time with another DBA there. That went well, and they decided to bring me in for an actual interview.

This is where the already odd process, got really weird. The company scheduled an interview with me, through the recruiter, and when I asked to see an agenda for the interview, the recruiter said the company doesn’t usually give us that information?? What the hell? How long am I going to be there? The recruiter said just plan to take the afternoon off.

This should have been a giant red flag, but I decided to follow through with it. The other question I had was about the benefits package at the new company–I currently work for a solid company, with an outstanding benefits package, so the benefits package is something I really need to account for when negotiating a final salary.

The recruiter said this company doesn’t give us that information, but you should ask HR when you interview. That was extremely odd, as every time I’ve interviewed with a firm their benefits package is either on their website, or is provided before an interview. Nonetheless, I persevered onward.

At the interview, I met the HR person, whom I asked about benefits—her response was basically that “we have some benefits”. I received no documentation, or anything official—this was starting to get scary. Even after meeting with her, I had no official agenda, she mentioned a couple of people I would be interviewing with, but I didn’t have their names on paper, so I had to try to remember them which was confusing.

Once again, the actual technical part of the interview was interesting, and the managers were nice, and technical. If the company halfway had their stuff together, I’d be all about this job. HR wise this was a total train wreck. At this point, I’m thinking they would have to offer me X+30, a G6, and a Porsche 911, and then I’d consider it.

I talk to the recruiter, express my concerns, and go on have a cocktail with a friend who lived nearby. About three days later, I get an email from recruiter saying he thinks they’re going to make an offer. This was immediately followed by an email from the company’s HR rep, with the top secret benefits document.

Well frankly, their benefits package sucked—I would have been paying like $100/month more than I was currently paying, for inferior benefits. The 401k match was lower, in general it sucked. Another email came shortly thereafter, with the actual offer, which was 10k lower than expected. I called the recruiter and said “no way in hell”.  I suggested for 15k more I’d think about it.

The recruiter made a huge deal about this, but I was still within my expected salary range and they wanted me to work for them. Finally, after talking to his manager (am I buying a car, or trying to get a job??) said he wanted me to sleep on it, and think about if I was still ok with that. These recruiter guys saw a nice commission for themselves slowly disappearing.

I called back the next morning and gave them the same number. At this point, I was having real concerns about the company’s general lack of professionalism—if they are treating me as a prospective employee this way, how are they treating their customers? Since the company wasn’t publically traded, there is limited financial information available about them. However, there is a firm called Dun and Bradstreet who for the small price of $100 will supply you with as much information they have on a firm.

Well, 30 seconds later, I got an email that looked like this:

The company appeared to have some pretty major debt issues. Not quite the growing firm they had described. At this point, I forwarded the Dun and Bradstreet report to the recruiter, and resigned myself from consideration for the job. I said I’d gladly do some contract design and tuning work for them, but there was no way I’d work full time.

This is where the recruiters get really sleazy—they knew they were really close to a payday. They start calling my cell phone repeatedly—then I get an email, saying “we (the recruiting firm) talked to their HR, and that D&B report isn’t really accurate, and the company is very stable”. I didn’t even bother to write back at this point, but if I had, my response would have been—

“Do you honestly expect me to trust their HR department, who couldn’t even get me an agenda for an interview, to promise the financial viability of the firm? If you can get me three years of independently audited financial statements, and get them to raise the salary another 10k, then we might be able to talk. Until then, stop calling me”

The end. Be careful out there folks!!