[o10449366]

Yeah, I just went through two onsites with Kensho (for two different teams). After the first onsite, I asked them if their compensation range would be competitive with another offer I already received and the recruiter told me "they are very similar." I spent another 6 hours doing the second onsite only to be told that their best offer is 35% lower due to "budget cuts." Needless to say I'll never be interviewing with them again because they've shown they don't respect my (or their interviewer's) time.

[nerdponx]

That's the thing: they don't care. Someone else will interview, unaware of this, and someone after them, etc. until someone takes the job.

[malermeister]

I don't understand the motivation behind lying to you in cases like this. Did they honestly expect you to accept their low-ball offer? They most know they're wasting everyone's time.

[cj]

In the current market, there are a lot of people starting out their search looking to make X, and 1-2 months into the search they realize the only immediately available opportunities are "X - 25%".

In those situations, it's not always a waste of everyone's time. Some candidates (not all, to be clear) start out the job search process with salary expectations that are very unlikely to be easily met compared to 2-3 years ago.

The recruiter in the scenario above was probably hoping the candidate's salary expectations would settle down toward the lower end of the spectrum (which clearly didn't work out for anyone in the specific example above, but it works often enough for it to be a not uncommon practice)

Edit: To be clear, I think it's pretty lame to mislead candidates and I don't advocate for this strategy. But it happens. When I personally interview someone who has salary expectations higher than we're willing to pay, I tell them upfront on the first 30 minute screen call and simply tell them to reach out again if their circumstances change. (They often end up reaching out a month later)

[H8crilA]

It may look good in recruiter's papers. I.e. it looks like he did his job just right, but the candidate was dissatisfied with the package at the end. What can he do about it?

[StressedDev]

I am sorry this happened to you. There is not much to say other than I am glad you found out they could not keep their word (and may have been unethical) before you accepted an offer.