Monthly archive for September 2025

Question

The VP made me a same-day offer contingent on a background check, a physical and a drug test. He gave me a tour of the business, showed me where I’d be sitting, and then took me into his office to discuss pay. I signed permission for the background check and I did the drug test and physical within an hour of the offer. HR assigned me a hire date that was five days later.

On my first day, HR began my orientation online and pressed me to complete it within two days. I got it done in one and called HR to inform her. She told me there was a discrepancy with the pay that I was offered. The VP offered me an hourly wage plus overtime as needed. HR said the position was salary, no overtime included, and I would often be required to work 10 to 12 hour shifts.

When I asked what the salary was in comparison to the hourly offer, she said that she’d have to get back to me. Then she said that my request to compare the hourly rate to the salary raised a concern with her: if a better offer was made to me by another employer, would I take it?

I replied that I didn’t think it was a fair question because pay isn’t the only factor when considering an offer. I asked her, if she were offered an increase of $20,000 a year from an alternate employer, would she consider it? Her response was that she understood where I was coming from and thanked me for my transparency. The next day I received an e-mail stating that they decided to give the job to an alternate candidate.

I can’t help but feel violated by what transpired. Do you have any advice?

Nick’s Reply

HR people play some dangerous games that hurt job applicants (and new hires). I’m sorry you’re a victim, while the VP and HR person walked away unscathed.

When I followed up with you, you explained that this employer did not give you the job offer in writing signed by a manager, and that this happened in California, where employment is “at will.”

The “job offer” HR people play like a carrot on a stick

We’ve discussed this before: Never accept a job offer or quit your old job without a written job offer from the new employer. Without it, you have little to go on legally, while you reach for an offer that’s only a carrot on a stick. A verbal offer can be legally binding, but that’s up to a lawyer to argue – and I’m not a lawyer. (For more about how to avoid trouble when changing jobs, please see Parting Company: How to leave your job.)

The point about “employment at will” (which is the law in CA) is that if you don’t have an employment contract in place to protect you, they can fire you any time for any reason or no reason, including day #1. So you see where this is going. It truly is stacked against the new hire because you never know whether you’ve really got that carrot.

Explore the law

However, it’s not so cut and dry, even in “at will” states and even without a promise in writing. Please check employment attorney Larry Barty’s advice in Job offer rescinded after I quit my old job. It’s worth exploring the law. Here’s part of what Larry said:

“A person who reasonably acts in reliance upon a promise and then suffers detrimentally because the promise is broken has a cause of action called Promissory Estoppel. The Promiser is ‘estopped’ from rescinding the promise if the Promiser knew or had reason to know that the Promisee would rely upon the promise to the Promisee’s detriment… The Promisee in such a case, once the proof has been accepted, is entitled to be made whole. For example, if A quits his job and then is left without work for a period until he finds comparable employment, A is entitled to Reliance Damages in an amount equal to the lost wages and benefits.”

This article by another attorney is wishful thinking because employers won’t do contracts for anything but exec jobs, but it reveals the underlying problem: the law favors employers. (Nothing here is intended as legal advice nor should you rely on it for your specific situation. Consult a qualified employment lawyer.)

It’s not just about HR people

I’m really sorry to hear about your problem – the employer was wrong on many levels, including ethics. The VP made the offer and HR changed it unilaterally. When you asked reasonable questions apparently after you started the job, HR played a nasty game and essentially fired you because you dared to discuss pay.

It’s not just the HR people. I’d say this company stinks from top to bottom.

You could report them to your state’s labor and employment office. You’d be surprised how complaints add up, and sometimes they trigger investigations or new legislation. You might even contact your state legislator’s office: “Employers complain about the talent shortage – yet look what this one just did.”

They keep getting away with it

I’m not encouraging you to go legal, but it may be worth investing a few bucks in an initial consultation with a good employment lawyer so you can find out whether you have a case. Sometimes all it takes to get a settlement is a nasty-gram from the lawyer.

It drives me nuts when employers walk away unscathed after their HR people and other managers do things like this. It’s become disturbingly common — and dangerous. A woman wrote me that her husband accepted a job across the country. He moved out there to attend orientation — much the same way you started your new employment. She cancelled their lease, loaded the car, put her two young kids in it, and started the drive cross-country. Half-way, she gets a call – the offer was rescinded. She said said the stress was so great she had to see a doctor.

When will seemingly “administrative” or “legal” but clearly unethical actions by HR people that prove dangerous to employees be recognized for what they are: cavalier abuses of job applicants?

What’s the worst abuse HR people (and their bosses) have leveled at you and what was the outcome? What could this job seeker (or, actually, new employee) have done? Are there enough legal protections for job seekers? What would you propose?

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Question

A news article reports that in just one year the number of job applicants that say employers ghosted them jumped from 30% to 40%. The tariffs and economic uncertainty suggest that employers are very nervous about hiring, but then why do they post jobs and then ghost us when we apply? If one in every two or three jobs I apply for are going to ghost me, what’s the best way to avoid this? It wastes a lot of time! I’ve gone on two or three interviews for jobs that are a perfect fit. The interviews go very well and they tell me I’ll hear back in a week or two. But I hear nothing back ever. I wind up waiting sometimes weeks for a resolution so I can move on with my job search. What should I do?

Nick’s Reply

I really get fed up with “career experts,” personnel jockeys and news pundits that try to pin the failures of employers on job seekers — or that suggest job seekers need to improve their behavior. Ghosting is on employers.

We’ve discussed ghosting before more than once (Ghosting: Hard lessons about recruiters & employers). When the economy shows weakness, it seems to lead to more ghosting. In this column, I’d like to discuss why job seekers seem to make ghosting their problem and why news pundits suggest job seekers need to change their behavior to deal with ghosting.

This may sound harsh, but the best thing you can do when an employer that interviewed you ghosts you is to disappear! Move on immediately and don’t look back!

Let’s start at the baseline

The fact is — and has always been — that most interviews go south, no matter how well anyone thinks they went. That’s the baseline — what we expect from any randomly selected interview. (I think you know that, but wishful thinking tends to cloud a job seeker’s judgment. How often does a job seeker get a job after an interview?) When that happens it’s incumbent on the employer to notify the applicant what the outcome is. Ghosting, or ignoring the applicant and not following up, is unforgivable. It’s rude and irresponsible.

Ghosted and wasting time

Being ghosted means you’ve wasted your time interviewing and preparing for that interview. If you’re an Ask The Headhunter regular, you know how much preparation I recommend, and this means you have wasted a lot of time.

But here’s my bigger concern, which you already alluded to: “I wind up waiting sometimes weeks for a resolution so I can move on with my job search.”

I find that most ghosted job seekers are incorrigible optimists whether they admit it or not. They make excuses for the errant employer: “The interviews really went well and I think I’m getting an offer!” and “The employer’s delay is understandable! I just have to wait it out!”

BUT… “Waiting…for a resolution” keeps you from the crucial step of immediately moving on to the next opportunity and working immediately on that instead!

Ghosted? Don’t wait to be un-ghosted

When I confront employers about ghosting, their explanation is that the selection process takes longer than expected so they have nothing to tell the applicant “yet.” This unforgivable excuse infects the entire employment system with false hope and anticipation. Job applicants understandably hope for the best and expect an answer — so they wait.

Don’t wait to be un-ghosted.

If you believe you’re being ghosted, the most prudent next step is to… disappear. Get it out of your head that a “decision” is forthcoming from the employer. You saw what I said about most interviews: they go south. The baseline odds of getting an offer are already low! If we add the low probability that you’ll ever get an offer to the fact that they have chosen to ignore you, it’s easy to understand my advice: disappear. Don’t waste your valuable time.

Ghosted: What’s the protocol?

I read the article you referred to by Michelle Singletary in the Washington Post. She offers five tips if you’ve been ghosted:

1. Don’t stop communicating
2. Keep it professional
3. Ask for a timeline
4. Don’t take it personally
5. Move on

I think she’s got it backwards.

• Move on immediately! As soon as the employer breaks its promise to get back to you “in a week” (or whatever), move on immediately. Don’t “wait weeks for a resolution.”
• Don’t make a bad bet worse. When the employer started ghosting you, any further bet you made on their professionalism was a bad bet.
• If they failed to communicate when they said they would, stop signaling back, or you’re wasting time, energy, and emotion — which means you’re taking your eyes off the ball. The ball is your job search, not the employer that’s dissing you.
• All business is personal. If the specific people that interviewed you expressed an interest and gave you a timeline, but then ghosted you, take it personally. All business is personal. That’s why we follow certain rules of conduct when we do business. It’s why we show customers “a personal touch.” It’s why employers test you for “cultural fit.” It’s why they administer personality tests.

To quote my mentor, Gene Webb, this means “Never work with jerks.” Any employer that fails to take a personal interest in you and to treat you professionally is a jerk. Don’t rationalize jerks because, if you take a job with one, you’ll be looking for another job soon.

Move on quickly

I do agree with Singletary’s advice to move on. I just think you need to move as soon as the employer fails at (1.) and (2.). If they ghost you, disappear. And don’t worry — if they realize they blew it, they will come chasing you with apologies. That gives you an unexpected negotiating edge!

Worse case, you’ll be weeks ahead on an opportunity with another employer.

Are job seekers being ghosted more today? Why? How do you avoid getting ghosted? What should you do if you are ghosted? What advice do you want to give to employers?

[NOTE: The original version of this column misspelled Michelle Singletary’s name.]

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Question

Every day I read about frustrations of people looking for work. It’s usually some version of this: “I sent out X number of resumes (usually in the low 100s) and got nothing (or two interviews but no offers.)” That kind of effort might be worth it if it yielded even a 5% return — say, 20 interviews on 400 applications. Such results might make it worthwhile but nobody gets 5% on hundreds of resumes! Your short article “They’re not headhunters” got me to thinking. If it were possible — I know you think it’s not, but what if it were — to pay somebody to get you, for example, a $120,000 job, how much would that be worth?

Nick’s Reply

Ok, I’ll take the bait. I’m glad you agree that a huge blast of resumes is not likely to return anything but intense frustration! So let’s do that exercise. What should someone pay to get a $120,000 job?

People want “the secret” to job hunting. The secret is that you must work as hard as the good headhunter I refer to in that article you cited – and that’s a lot of hard work.

What’s a job worth?

The online jobs sites have convinced people to “sit back and let our intelligent agents” do the work!” But as you note, only a tiny fraction of job hunters actually find jobs through these databases. If they worked as well as claimed, why would companies spend huge fees on headhunters, but only $100 (a generous estimate!) for an online job posting?

The kind of placement you’re talking about (for a $120,000 job) will earn a headhunter around a $30,000 fee, and the headhunter will work for every nickel of it. So here’s the reality check I’ll suggest: Have you put $30,000 worth of effort into your job search? If you take the easy path and read job postings, mail out resumes, and wait for an employer to respond, you’re being lazy. At best, you will wind up with the wrong job working for the wrong people. More likely you’ll wind up with nothing but frustration.

How much work to get work?

$30,000 worth of work to land a job? Most people will see that as an incredibly daunting challenge, if not a silly idea. But, consider this. A company that can’t find good hires on its own will gladly spend that thirty grand on a headhunter. (That’s your competition!) You, on the other hand, will not find anyone to do that for you – headhunters don’t work for job hunters.

There’s only one thing left to do: $30,000 worth of work to land a good job yourself.

It doesn’t cost $30,000 to send out 400 resumes or applications, nor does waiting  for the rejections. But do you get the idea? Productive job hunting requires a lot of smart work not a lot of resumes and applications!

Do the job to win the job

Ask The Headhunter is here to teach you how to “do it like a headhunter.” The suggestions readers will find in this website require a lot of work. Still think it’s crazy to do even half the things we discuss here? Still think it’s an unnecessary and inordinate amount of work to do to land your next job?

Then, I’ll leave you with a final thought. To an employer, the right job candidate is worth about $30,000, or around a 25% free based on the new hire’s salary. Of course, if you’re the candidate, that new job is worth $120,000 – your salary. So, maybe that means you ought to be willing to work four times as hard as the headhunter. Right?

To understand what “do the job to win the job” means, please read Kevin Kane’s synopsis of how this can work for you. But please don’t walk away thinking you’re going to pay someone to get you a job, or even to help you get a job. The market is full of career scammers.

I’ll ask you again: Is that job you want worth thirty grand worth of effort? Or, how much are you willing to invest to get the right job?

Am I nuts? Do headhunters really do $30,000 worth of work to fill a job? Should you? What’s really my point here?

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Question

I read your books after I saw you do a presentation at Cornell University’s Executive MBA program. Some of your methods for career success have worked really well for me. (I’m thinking about “do the job in the interview to stand out.”) Now I’ve been in the corporate world a while. In my company every manager has to mentor a young employee, and I really enjoy this! My current “mentee” is very worried about the current economy and job market. She asked me a good question: If I could give her just one “big idea” that would get her through today’s rocky world and optimize her career prospects the rest of her life, what would it be? I told her I’d have to think about it. How would you answer that?

Nick’s Reply

I think I’d start by suggesting she learn how headhunters operate, simply because if our methods don’t work, we don’t eat. Most headhunters work on contingency: we get paid a fee only when we actually fill a job, and we get repeat assignments only if we make good placements – new hires that succeed.

My bailiwick is teaching people how to use a headhunter’s approach to find themselves a job. It’s incorrect to assume that the headhunter’s approach is complicated or mysterious. Good headhunters are actually very simple business people, and our practices are even simpler. But, learning to “do it like a headhunter” can be a significant challenge because it requires some fundamental changes in the way most people conduct business (that is, in how they search for a job or recruit top talent).

Career Success: What’s the big idea?

The easiest way to explain it is to tell you how I learned the “big idea.” I learned it from my mentor, Harry Hamlin, who first brought me into the business in Silicon Valley’s early days. Our specialty was electronics. We recruited design and development engineers up to the VP level. Since I was green, fresh out of graduate school, and hopeful that there was a trick to this business, I asked him what “the secret” was. In his inimitable style, Harry perched both hands on the arms of his swivel chair, pressed down hard, and leaned forward right into my face.

“Go be nice to people. Do favors for everyone you meet. For free.”

Savvy recent student of cognitive psychology that I was, I asked him to be more specific. “Give me an example.”

Career Success: Be the hub

“Spend every nickel you earn this month taking engineers to lunch. Then, without divulging anything you learn that’s personal or confidential, find ways to introduce these people to one another. That’s the best way you can help them out. After a while, you’ll find yourself at the hub of the movers and shakers in the Valley.”

No one had ever given me permission to spend all my money. I had nice lunches almost every day; dinners, too. Within four months I learned more about the electronics industry than I believed possible. Engineers were calling me and introducing themselves; referring other good engineers to me; bringing me in to meet their managers, who became my clients; and inviting me to company parties where I met venture capitalists, bankers, real estate moguls, lawyers, accountants – all the people who made Silicon Valley work. Oh, and my billings soon resulted in more commissions than I could possibly spend. (Well, I was pretty naïve about what I wanted to buy – but the money was great!)

Most jobs come from this

The headhunter’s approach to matching people with jobs is very straightforward because it’s about helping ensure career success. It requires knowing lots of the right people in your professional community, and being privy to opportunities in good companies. This headhunter’s “big idea” is a life-long plan and it can readily be applied by earnest job seekers to optimize their career prospects. The more high quality relationships you have in and around your professional community, the better your career will be.

Here’s proof that it works: Most jobs are found and filled through personal contacts. That was true in pre-Internet days and it’s still true today.

And here’s why it works: Meeting new people leads to meeting more new people as all involved are drawn into a growing circle of friends.

Anyone can do it, but you must start by spending time with lots of people in your industry. You don’t need to always take them out for lunch or dinner, but it helps! Just don’t be transactional about it. Enjoy yourself! Then learn to introduce these folks to one another. You will become a respected hub of professional people in the real world.

That’s where jobs come from. And that’s where my best job candidates have usually come from.

Career Success: Go be nice to people

To say this is difficult to do because you have a full-time job is no excuse. If you don’t make time to do this, you will not have time to do it when you need to change jobs.

I was 24 and clueless about business. Wisely, Harry didn’t try to teach me anything about business too soon. He taught me about human nature. So, when perplexed job hunters and hiring managers ask me to reduce “the headhunter’s approach” to a simple statement, that’s what I say: “Go be nice to people. Do favors. For free.” It’s simple, and it works — if you do it instead of applying for jobs via automated systems that send you rejection mails five minutes after you apply.

Oh. There’s one other important thing Harry told me that you need to know. “Don’t expect anything in return.” (That will take care of itself, because after a while, the good you do for others comes around to you.)

I didn’t place more than about 10% of the engineers I met this way. In fact, sometimes they got jobs via my introductions without me always earning a fee. What I did always earn was their respect and trust — and loads of excellent referrals to engineers and hiring managers. Go be nice to people is the best strategy for career success I know. (For more about this, see How Can I Change Careers?)

What’s the best advice you ever got about career success?

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