About that customer experience...

I haven’t given you any tales from beyond the job hunt horrorfest lately, have I? No? Oh, alright, then. Here’s one.

A while ago a friend reached out to let me know that there was an opening in their marketing department that might be a good fit. And indeed it was—product marketing in a very interesting vertical (using data analytics to improve enterprise customer experience). There were a couple of stretch areas, but it was truly within my capabilities, and I’d have totally knocked it out of the park for them.

My friend very generously gave me some inside scoop on the organization and passed on my CV and cover letter to the hiring manager with his recommendation. Shortly after that a recruiter contacted me to set up a phone interview. (There was a bit of a glitch there—after I replied to her email she called me as though introducing herself and claimed not to have received my response. But…stuff does happen.)

I had a 30-minute call with the hiring manager, who is personable and professional, someone I’d be very happy to work with. I sent my follow-up email and basically let it go, because I’ve learned that it doesn’t pay to get too emotionally invested in these things. And sure enough—there was nothing but crickets for two weeks.

So I was somewhat surprised to subsequently receive another call from the recruiter, in which she informed me that she’d “had feedback from the team”, and that they were going to concentrate on candidates in Georgia and Virginia (where they have offices), with specific skills.

And anyway, my expected salary was beyond what they’re looking to pay.

Well—fair enough. Any of those criteria is legit. The job posting did say that it was a remote position, but employers are entitled to change their minds about…well, pretty much whatever crackbrained thing they want. Also—skills is skills, and they want what they want, even if what they want isn’t what they said they want.

However, I rather mildly observed that it wasn’t clear to me how I could be outside their pay range when we hadn’t had a discussion about salary at all.

Silence.

“Didn’t we have a phone call about this?”

No—the only conversations we had were about setting up the call with the hiring manager. (The original one and the rather frantic one she made 26 minutes before the scheduled call to ask me if I knew I was scheduled to talk with him, because she’d never actually confirmed with me.)

Silence.

“Well, this is just what the team is telling me.” (Keep in mind that I’d spoken with only the hiring manager, who did not in any respect strike me as possessing multiple personalities, and it’s not at all clear to me in what world a team consists of a single individual.)

Now—please see above about this company being in the “customer experience” field and just consider the irony of having this chick fronting for them. Yeah, yeah, I know—customers are one thing, prospective and current employees are another altogether.

At first I gave her a pass because she sounded young and out of her depth, but according to her LinkedIn profile she’s been a recruiter for 14 years, so I have no explanation other than incompetence. In which case I wonder how she stays employed.

But hey-ho. Here’s some advice, chickie, which I know will be beyond your understanding: I appreciate being notified of the status of my candidacy; that isn’t a given these days. But don’t try to embellish your story with facts that can be easily disproved.