I applied online for a Quality Assurance Engineer position at Markit On Demand/Wall Street On Demand in late July, making it clear in resume and cover letter that I am a Senior QA professional. Their internal HR person called me the next morning at 8am and asked me to come in for on-site interviews. She scheduled the interviews for Wednesday, August 6, 2012. The email itinerary showed that I was scheduled to meet with two people:
1- The QA Director
2-Herself, the HR Recruiter
I read salary reviews on Glassdoor.com and became concerned. For example:
“The Pay - is on the lowest end of the spectrum.”
“The company has adopted a philosophy of under-cutting salaries as a means for under-bidding competition which leaves employees there being paid more than 20% below fair market value.”
“Low salary package and benefits.”
So I emailed the HR Recruiter on August 2:
“[Her name],
I hope this isn't crass, but I would like to insure that the pay range for this position matches my needs. I don't want to waste anyone's time if the salary is not in my range.
Thank you,
[My name]”
She replied:
“Hi [My name]
We generally don’t discuss comp until after the first interview. This is not to frustrate you but simply because we have more than one option for the level of the position and the manager needs to evaluate that. Are you still comfortable coming in today?
[Her name]”
Since my interview was not “today” I emailed to clarify the date. She corrected her mistake, then she apparently made another scheduling mistake because she quickly re-rescheduled the interview for a couple of hours later.
I went to Markit On Demant for the on-site interview as scheduled Wednesday, August 6, 2012. The QA Director showed up and interviewed me. The HR Recruiter did not show up to talk to me as she was scheduled to do.
I would have asked her about salary range if she had showed up.
The HR Recruiter then contacted me to set up second and third on-site interviews with two QA Leads for Wednesday, August 15th, 2012. I again went to Markit On Demand as scheduled for those two interviews. Afterward one of the QA Leads asked if I'd ever met with HR; I told her no. She expressed surprise and explained that I should have had that opportunity, but there had be “a lot of churn” in HR.
Again, I would have asked HR about salary range if she had met with me as she was apparently supposed to.
The next morning the same HR representative called me and said all interviews had gone very well, she congratulated me, and said she would like to move on to the “next step” of discussing the salary for the job offer. She then asked me what my target salary was, I told her my target salary, and she said she'd call me back the next morning after the “salary committee” had met.
She didn't call back the next morning.
So I called her and left a voice mail message.
She didn't call back.
So I called back a second time at which point she answered the phone. I asked if she had a status on the job offer and she explained very icily that after she heard my target salary they had decided to move forward with another candidate. In other words job offer rescinded.
I of course asked her why she'd refused to discuss salary when I'd asked her the range weeks earlier so we wouldn't waste everyone's time. She denied everything, claimed she misspoke when she said she'd like to “move on to the “next step” of discussing the salary for the offer, hadn't really meant that “next step” of discussing salary for an offer had anything to do with an offer, and said that they were doing so much interviewing and that things were so hectic that she couldn't remember what she'd said or who she said it to or how how she'd said it anyway.
Not a pleasant experience. Not a positive impression of Market On Demand.
I can only imagine how badly they treat employees given how badly they treat candidates they're in the process of making a job offer to. Then again I don't need to imagine their horrible treatment of people; I see it described in employee reviews.