So a recruiting agency contacted me for a role in a listed company. People of this agency were far more desperate than the company staff themselves. People in company were good, supportive and professional in behavior, but they were trying to lowball so hard.

I’m a fresher finance professional. JD had almost everything you can think of in finance department (some 35 points long JD) but salary was equal to any average analyst who works in any 2-3 of those points. I raised that with that agency itself, to which they said “you can ask that during call with company management”. Fine. I agree, they can tell better. Finally when I met them, I asked for scope of work and realized they want a multiutility person to fill in the gaps, that’s why “everything was in scope”. Shady. I asked if I can meet anyone in that position right there, in front of them. They said “we are going through lot of restructuring, so there’s nobody in that role right now”, shadier. Then I asked about career trajectory I can expect, since experience such “generalist” role may be harder to sell later on if there’s no substantial experience of any critical area, it may be perceived kinda ‘jack of all trades’. To which they responded with generic “we have internal mobility” and all. So, I politely rejected the job.

Real fun begins now. That HR agency called me and blamed me for ‘moving this forward despite knowing JD and now rejecting’, to which I reminded them how vague that JD was and offered to send them file of that call’s recording. They shut up. But the company still tried to pursuade me with “don’t lose this great opportunity”, “we are really impressed by your profile”, “we can offer role in some other vertical” etc things. But I stood my ground.

Still standing in this recruiting hell, but won’t cede ground to those trying to lowball the profile I’ve built over past 7-8 years.