I had a situation happen to me recently in relation to my career which has constituted a significant setback and has really upset me and I'm still stewing over it.
I'm trying to get a new job and have been trying after nearly a year -- obviously its tough out there. The industry I currently work in is in the toilet and isn't going to get better fast and there aren't many satisfying senior roles. I'm the breadwinner in my family and I need to think about increasing my earnings before my dd starts school and just to protect my future. So I'm trying to move into a similar but related (and hopefully better paid) field, meaning I hopefully won't have to retrain at great cost. Or I was.
A couple of months ago I took a former colleague who has successfully moved into this industry out for a coffee to ask for help and a bit of mentoring. This person and I had a good working relationship (I thought) and have remained in touch since and and were friendly and I thought she would give me good and frank advice. We had a nice chat and this person gave me some supposedly sound advice and a few contacts and wished me good luck and then followed up with an email asking how it was going. I contacted a few of these contacts, one of whom was a headhunter, and met this person and had a series of discussions with her. All was going reasonably well, didn't get offered any jobs but I thought I was making progress...
Until a job came up at the company this "mentor" (the former colleague) works for. I applied. Heard nothing for several weeks. When I chased it the headhunter told me, (not in so many words but it was pretty clear) that the "mentor" essentially had said I wasn't going to be appropriate for any job in that industry. So this person has basically put the kibosh on my working with the headhunter in the future.
Now, I understand that the mentor needs to be true to her instincts and do the best by her company and shouldn't feel compelled to recommend me for a job she thinks I'm not suited for. But AIBU in thinking that s/he should have told me to my face first if s/he thought I hadn't a hope in hell of getting into this industry and that she should have had the guts to contact me to let me know she was effectively giving me a bad reference which would have significant implications for my ability to find another job?
I'm really trying not to be precious about this, I realize she was in a difficult position etc, but I feel quite let down by her behaviour and that it was handled in a way that was two-faced and a bit spineless. And I know I need to be thick-skinned but my self-esteem is really in the toilet now. Should I get in touch with her and ask her why she did it, or just ignore, write her off and move on?