Interview I'd prepared for cancelled at 8.30 am on the day of the interview! Can I claim compensation for my wasted time?

[curiouserand]

Was invited to interview last week. Required to do a big presentation as well as the interview. Spent about 2 days preparing it, not on a topic I was familiar with or would need to know for any other purpose. In contact with the company about details of what was required on the Friday afternoon.

Rung up at 8.30am on Monday morning to be told they'd given the job to an internal candidate, so my interview was cancelled.

Couldn't believe it - had wasted so much time preparing for the interview (the presentation mainly but also on getting ready in other ways). And I'm a freelancer so I had missed 2 days of work to do this. And all for a job they must have known when I spoke to them on Friday they'd already offered to someone else and were just waiting for him/her to get back to them.

This is so unprofessional - they've suggested a couple of other jobs with them I could interview for but not posts I'm interested in and would require a whole new presentation as different roles and frankly they come across as a company I definitely don't want to work for anyway.

But can I ask for compensation for my lost earnings, do you think?

PalePinkSwan - I couldn't care less if I 'burnt my bridges'. After having seen how this company treats its potential staff, nothing would make me want to work for them anyway!

@curiouserand -that’s fair enough, but don’t just think about that company. People move jobs! I know personally I was at one firm where we offered a role to somebody who was then quite rude about rejecting it. I then interviewed them when I was at another firm, and honestly I remembered their rudeness from before and didn’t want to work with them.

I think you’ve had a lot of advice on here that asking for compensation would be seen badly.

But palepinkswan does that not work both ways you have poor recruitment policies and you left your current job i would not like to work with you pulling stunts like that as it would bring your professionalism into question so if you messed me around like the poor OP i would make note and remember and would decline to even bother to interview / recommend not to work with your company and have done so (cost said company a large contract when i skunk their proposal as i highlight bad working practices and how it would make our reputation look working with such unprofessional company in the first place.

@worridmum - sorry, are you accusing me of having poor recruitment policies? Or do you mean that if somebody has poor recruitment policies and then moves jobs, people might still be reluctant to work with them? Your post seems to be accusing me of being unprofessional, not sure what you could be basing that on.

@PalePinkSwan - there seems to be a misconception that recruitment is there to serve the candidates, in the way I often read here that HR are there to support the employee- people seem unaware that recruiter s and HR are no different to the rest of us - there to serve the business and take instructions from them. You're not unprofessional, people have unrealistic expectations

I find it so bizarre to be accused of being unprofessional because I’m reluctant to work with somebody who was very rude to me and colleagues in a previous role. Being polite is important in any job, IMO it’s totally reasonable to take into account past behaviour when deciding whether somebody is suitable.

I wasn't planning on 'being rude' to anyone. I was wondering about pointing out that they had behaved in an unprofessional manner and this caused me financial loss and so I would not be interested in working for them in future. (They did suggest other roles I could interview for - so far I have not replied.) That is all factual not 'rude' - I wasn't planning on calling them names!

My industry is huge so I'm not really worried about them telling 'everyone'. If they can be bothered to tell anyone, the chance that it would make me look bad rather than them look bad is extremely small.