Has an employer ever handled your application so badly you decided not to work for them?

[ThatArtfulCoralFinch]

I’ve been applying for jobs recently, and some of these employers don’t half mess things up. I take this to say a lot about what they might be like to work for. Have you ever had an employer mess you about so much during the application process - being disorganised, uncommunicative, or even disrespectful - that it completely turned you off the idea of working for them?

Did you write them off as a potential employer, or did you give them a chance anyway?

I get a lot of speculative emails from recruitment agents and there was one a few years ago whose emails started:

"I have recently been speaking with Mohammed, a lovely man, well spoken, originally from India, but moved here in 2000. Very very slight accent, but clear and completely understandable."

or

"I have personally interviewed Stanislav, originally from Bulgaria. He has excellent communication skills, speaking in a clear accent."

interestingly, when faced with a British name I got:

"I have personally interviewed Matthew this morning. He comes across as extremely knowledgeable and professional."

Matthew could very well have been from Northern Ireland or Liverpool with the strongest accent you could imagine, yet it was not mentioned.

I called her out on it and told her I wasn't comfortable with the first description of every candidate being their accent and place of schooling, but only if their name was "foreign" sounding and they were schooled in the UK. I pointed out that most companies send neutral CVs without names, age or sex being apparent so employers could decide, based on experience and qualifications.

I also went so far as to say that as an equal opportunities employer we recruit based on the person that is best suited to their job based on their abilities and not their country of origin, ethnicity or accent and suggested that their leading descriptions about candidates accents could be perceived as discrimination under the Equality Act. Then asked to be removed from their distribution list.

She came back to me with "Thank you for your opinion. I have removed you from our distribution list."

Places that I’ve been deeply unimpressed by have always failed to offer me the job. Thus depriving me of the opportunity to huffily refuse it. This does lead me to wonder if either (a) I’m actually the one who was a bit rubbish, or (b) we simply weren’t a good match. Obviously I stick with option (c) which says it’s them not me

My DH was once shouted at, and told he was actually unemployable, when he rejected a job. Which seemed slightly mixed up to him…

I’m currently job hunting and the amount of ghosting happening is shameful.

I applied to a large household name company, did 4 rounds of interviews, including a presenting a plan. was told it was going to be a quick decision because the role had been empty for so long.
The day I was due to hear back, I saw someone in Linked In announce they were moving into the role, it was an internal hire. I heard nothing from them. 3 months later another announcement to say they had passed the probation period. On the same day I got a standard ‘thanks but no thanks’ rejection email.

im not really in a position to turn down job offers, but I wouldn’t apply to them again.

I was applying for a role through a disability employment scheme. However it became quickly apparently that I was the wrong type of disabled (bipolar as opposed to a physical disability, although I'm now physically disabled too). The role was a switchboard role and they were going to great pains to emphasise the negative aspects of the role, working alone, shifts, stress... really dissuading me from the role and asking very personal questions about my health (far beyond need to know information). I withdrew my application during the interview.

Interestingly though I ended up meeting the person who did get the role (a physically disabled person) and their experience at the interview was a completely different one to mine which just confirmed my suspicions that they didn't want my type of disability. This person once in the role had a terrible experience however and they weren't accommodating or helpful of their disability and ended up having to leave. I'm glad I withdrew because the way they treated me betrayed their prejudices and their attitude so I'd have never had a good experience with them.

This is the problem with this type of scheme, organisations sign up to it at a high level because it looks good etc but then at the actual line management level they don't want the "hassle" of someone with slightly different needs.

Yes Amazon in Europe. Appalling HR

They are demonstrating what they'd be like to work for so, if you can afford to, I'd turn a job down if they were rude.

I had a job interview once which started off well, when it was just me and two women from HR, but then the actual manager came in and deliberately sat with his back to me throughout the entire interview. (He literally turned his chair around so that he faced the wall rather than me!) They offered me the job the next day and I turned them down because of his weird/rude behaviour.

@ElaborateCushion it's awful, isn't it!
Really felt for her, it was many yonks ago though, shockingly, in London!

Years ago I went for an interview for a good role in finance, a bit further than I wanted to travel though.
As I waited in reception to be called I listened to Sarah give Catherine an absolute bollixing.
She spoke to her like absolute dirt and I heard it all.
So unnecessarily belittling, and just awful to witness.
Catherine was ashen when Sarah left her.
It was some fxxk up about sandwich delivery, totally out of proportion and vicious.

I knew there and then that it was not somewhere that I would like.
I was interviewing several other jobs at the time.
Typically I aced the interview and they said they were very interested.

Two days later I got a nice offer but had another place I was more interested in, closer to where I was living.

I took the opportunity to reply that while I had initially been very interested in the position, having witnessed the vicious dressing down that Catherine received in public by Sarah and that this clearly was a indicitive of a toxic work environment, I would be declining their offer and would let the agency and others know of their culture.

Critically I cc the MD and the key directors, HR and Financial.

I was called by the HR director and given an apology, very nice HR director, who was also appalled by what I repeated, and told that they took my letter to them very seriously.

Apparently the MD was appalled by what I had written, and shocked that I had cc'd him, he told the HR director "to fix this", as was the Financial director who had been told I would have been a good fit.

I didn't want the job ultimately so was quite happy to mess with Sarah's day.

I contracted in Finance for a few years as I wanted my summers off and it was a very interesting way to see how organisations really are.
I found I was told stuff that I might not otherwise hear, about the culture as I was only there for a short time.
It made turning down long term contracts easy when places were not particularly happy environments for those working there.

No, and it's taught me a lesson. The whole recruitment process was a prime example of the left and right hands losing connection with paperwork getting "lost" and emails written so badly that they needed phone calls to clarify.

The interview was weird and the walk around the offices should have made me run for the hills, but the job sounded amazing with a hefty pay increase so I ignored my instincts and accepted the role. I lasted 6 months, and looking at LinkedIn, my replacement didn't even make it that far.

I once interviewed for a Citizens Advice type organisation, for a part time role.

During the interview it became apparent that they hadn't decided on what days or hours the role needed to fulfill. I explained that I would need to know in case I needed to arrange wrap around care for my school aged child and they seemed to think that this question ruled me out of being flexible enough for them.

The role was to help their clients overcome barriers to work.

@Pompeyssy 👏 👏

Love it.

Stomping on bullying.

I don’t see the problem here?

they offered you an opportunity you had applied for previously.

HR won’t be researching your commute, know you’re getting public transport, and anyway, it’s not up to them to make the decision whether you’re interested, that’s up to you.

they offered, you said no, big deal. They were correct to contact anyone previously expressing an interest in the role.

think about it, if they hadn’t offered, and you found out you were excluded because HR assumed you wouldn’t want to do the commute, then that would be a problem.

Truthfully, it was pre children, I had time on my hands😁, and Sarah reminded me of a Class A bitch I had worked with a couple of years earlier.

I took the opportunity to fxxk with her day.
I laid it on very thickly with HR that I had NEVER witnessed the like of it, in the long list of international companies I had worked with.

It's a most pleasant memory messing with her. I sincerely hope it got back to Catherine some way 😁

I'm freelance so not a job application but a brief or tender process. And yes, some have been so awful I've pulled out because I could tell that I couldn't bear to work with them.

I followed through with a chaotic hiring process and found the organisation I had been hired by so bad my stint in the role was over within six weeks. I resigned technically during my probation but the writing was on the wall by the end of week five. The job mirrored my experience in the hiring process with a degree of precision and I was up for the challenge but the role turned out to be intractable.

I do not regret the journey as I learned a bunch but I would be wary of repeating the exercise.

Yes , I printed out a slip at the job Center many years ago for what looked like a perfect job, and even better it was two streets from my house.

applied and heard nothing, so assumed that I wasn’t successful. Five months later I had a phone call inviting me in to their offices in the city for interview.

pleasantly surprised off I went to the interview, and during it I had mentioned how handy it was so close to home . The interviewers looked at each other and said no it’s for a job in the city .

we carried on the interview but I was a bit confused as I knew that it was at the bottom of my street, I would never have applied for something so far away.

at the end I had a good old route in my bag and found the ticket from the job centre with the details on. Proudly held it up and went aha ! I knew I was right !

I realised at that moment I hadn’t got the job , but at least I wasn’t the people that invited me in to interview for the wrong post 🤣

Back in the early 2000's I had a telephone interview and was asked for a group induction for an admin roll, got there to be met with a bait n switch, no admin job, was infact being employed to sell credit cards in shopping centres, they wanted to take 4 of us out to see how we would get on, I declined and walked away.

You didn't miss out. Worst, most unfriendly, backstabbing, all round crappy place I've ever worked - wish I'd realised at interview rather than wasting three months there!

Yes, for two different IT companies. With the first, the whole interview process was a shambles, with all the interviews running late. Mine was an hour late and the interviewers hadn't read my CV at all and basically asked me to explain what I'd done for the last 5 years in detail. But they weren't technical themselves so didn't understand what I did nor what the requirements for the job were. The second was better, but the job turned out to be 'in charge of the entire IT' for the company and they'd advertised for a software developer. They asked me to come back for a second interview and I declined.

Yes.

I applied for a job that you would really need a good and supportive manager for.

The manager who called me to arrange an interview was so downright rude and awkward that I said actually, thanks but no thanks.

I came to the conclusion that if she was that bloody awful when arranging an interview, she’d be equally awful to work for.

It proves the point that we are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing us.
Ed to say yes, Ive been spoken to very rudely during an interview, and then offered the job. I turned it down.

I had a similar experience as @Pompeyssy, attended a second interview with the company director. While I was waiting in the reception area someone came round and absolutely bollocked the receptionist for no good reason that I could gather. Where I was sitting I couldn’t be seen from where he was standing and he really went for her.

5 minutes later I was taken into the interview room to find the bullying arsehole was the Director I’d be reporting to. I sat down, explained I wouldn’t be completing the interview because the ethos of the organisation clearly didn’t fit with my own values and then walked out. HR phoned me to ask why I didn’t stay for interview and weren’t particularly interested when I explained. I definitely dodged a bullet there.

I have a friend who worked in a place where the head office was just up an open flight of stairs from the shop floor. She ( and the customers) could regularly hear the manager bawling out the upstairs staff. He was rude, loud, and evidently didn't care who overheard him. She didn't last long there as it was so embarrassing.

I had an interview where they showed me around the office. They pointed out one desk and instead of saying something like 'this is our resident expert on XYZ' they said 'he does things you wouldn't be capable of'. Pissed me right off. It was a related subject which I have a decent amount of knowledge on and could easily learn more, but the capable bit annoyed me. They offered me the job but I declined.

No wonder that some companies can't get or retain staff, is it?
There's so much insanity in workplaces!