Candidate gets berated for not showing up to “their” new job, even though they never even accepted or received a formal offer for that job: ‘We still hadn’t discussed my salary’ – FAIL Blog

It’s pretty normal to receive some flak or negative feedback from a job that you failed to show up for. But you’ll probably never expect to get that from a job that you don’t actually have. There are a whole lot of things that can go sideways in the hiring process and red flags you might ignore in your blind pursuit of a new job, but it’s important to stop and pause so that you don’t get caught out by situations like this.

The worst hiring scenario I’ve ever personally dealt with was when I applied to a local branch of the supplier of the company I was working for. Before the third and final round of interviews the hiring manager asked me to tell the CEO/owner of the company I worked for that I was applying for the role, which didn’t actually make sense given the fact that I didn’t have the job yet since it was still myself and another candidate in the running.

I foolishly obliged and told the CEO of the company, jeopardizing my current job, and then once the final round of interviews had finished, I didn’t get the job anyway, and they didn’t even bother to notify me that I hadn’t gotten it. The penny didn’t drop till long after that; this had been a ruse to get me to withdraw my application so that he could hire his preferred candidate. A lesson learned the hard way. 

Anyways, the point is that this is a massive red flag that I ignored that told me I probably didn’t want to work for this chap anyway, just like it was in this situation where this hiring manager was surely trying to force the candidate into a disadvantageous position so that they could take advantage of them.