Brain Masala: you got the job

The phrase you got the job should always be good news – but in today’s insane corporate world you might want to hold off the bunting and parade.

It’s always tomorrow

That’s something Kate discovered. She was one of those rarities today, someone with very specialist knowledge (in Financial Systems) that meant she was actually approached by a head hunter.

It was all very flattering stuff but even more so when her potential new employer asked her to fly three times to their big-city corporate HQ, with promises to reimburse her for her travel costs whether or not she was eventually offered the job.

She was eventually told she had the job and was understandably pleased. When accepting though, she pointed out that she’d tried several times over 7 weeks to get their HR department to pay her big accumulation of travel expenses for the interviews and in spite of promises that the “check would be sent tomorrow” she still hadn’t received it.

Three weeks later and shortly before she formally joined them, she had to threaten legal action to get recovery of her money. Not exactly the best start to a new career!

Things got worse though.

On day-1 of her new job, she was introduced to her development teams and they were asked to brief her on the work program. Over the next hour, she was struck dumb with shock to realize that she was heading up an area working on things like payroll, HR, property systems, corporate communications and legal.

Assuming there was a fundamental mistake, Kate asked for an immediate meeting with her new boss.

He just said that there’d been a change in plans and the Finance job had been filled by someone else. She irately pointed out she was being asked to do an entirely different job to the one she’d been recruited for and furthermore, what she knew about the areas she was being now deployed as an ‘expert’ in, could actually be written on the head of a pin.

She was just told to be flexible. So, that put her mind at rest then!

Last we heard, Kate was thinking about consulting a lawyer.

Now you see it, now you don’t

Luis was also ecstatic when he was told in writing that he had a great new job.

He resigned from his existing position and took his family out for a celebratory meal the same night.

He sure felt less happy the following morning though. No, not a hangover, just that the mail brought him a letter from his new employer saying he’d been fired “due to reductions in our basic business volumes”.

Looks like another lawyer’s going to be getting a call………………

Double trouble

Pat is an executive manager. After an extended and very careful recruitment process, he’d made his selection of a ‘high-flyer’ and instructed HR to go ahead with a written offer.

The offer went out fine – Pat checked that because he wasn’t a great believer in HR’s efficiency and their track record left much to be desired.

However, what he negligently failed to check was that they’d only sent out one offer to one candidate. What an idiot!

As he subsequently discovered, some days later when HR sent him copies of two acceptance letters, was that they’d offered his job to two people – one he’d approved and another candidate he’d rejected.

Not sure of the outcome there other than presumably panic letters and phone calls were made. Hey, thinking about it, maybe that explains Luis’ letter!
Why are you here?

Here’s one from the UK.

Mark had been through several interviews for a big job in London. He’d clawed his way to the top of the list and got a great offer.

He’d accepted and started in the company’s prestige premises in the heart of ‘The City’.

At around 10.30, his boss called him in to say he was being permanently relocated to their office in Scotland – about 400 miles away. Now Mark liked Scotland but was struck dumb with shock – given he’d only been in his job for about 2 hours.

He asked incredulously how this hadn’t been discussed in all the interviews and just what he was supposed to say to his London-based family. The response was that there was a relocation clause in his contract that meant he could be sent wherever the company wished.

Mark walked – also in the direction of his lawyer.

Conclusion
So, what lessons can be drawn from these events and many like them?

Maybe:

• don’t count your chickens – that “you got the job” message might not be the good news it seems;
• lawyers must just LOVE all those job offers!
• next time you hear you got the job, be catious