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‘This job tried to trick me into working weekends’: Job hunter gets nasty surprise toward end of interview process

'They tell you last minute because they know it's a deal breaker.'

 

Phil West

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Posted on Apr 2, 2024   Updated on Apr 2, 2024, 8:19 am CDT

A job candidate found out very late in the process that weekend work is part of the expectations for the position—information that he would have found useful much earlier in the process.

The video comes from TikTok creator Sean (@seanie2blondie), getting more than 996,000 views in the three days since posting it on Saturday.

He begins by asking, “Why do jobs always wait until the final round of interviews to reveal extremely important relevant information?”

He then explains, “I had a final round yesterday, and at the end, she was like, ‘Oh, and by the way, this job requires you to work every third weekend.’ I was like, ‘Oh, OK. Is it like a full workday? Is it just like logging in and checking a few things?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, it’ll probably be like four to five hours on both Saturday and Sunday, every third weekend.'”

That led him to wonder, he recalls, “Like, girl, how did this not come up until now? This was the eighth conversation I’d have for this job.”

He talks about another recent job he was up for, when, in the final round, “I was told that I would have to be on call every now, and then he was like, ‘Oh, you know, it won’t be too often, maybe once every few months.’ And so then I go on to Glassdoor and I’m looking up reviews that have ‘on-call’ in them. And everyone is like, ‘Beware! In the interviews, they’re going to tell you that it’s not often that you’re on call, and then it’s going to be like every other week.’ There were at least a solid 10 reviews that said that.”

He observes, “It’s just like those are very relevant deciding factors when you’re interviewing for a job that’s supposed to be Monday through Friday, nine to five. It’s good to know if you’re going to be working every third f*cking weekend. So then, for them to just like slip it in kind of near the end, it’s like, what do you expect? The candidate is going to find out eventually if they get the job and then what? Do you just hope to trick them into working on the weekends by forcing them to accept before telling them and there was no mention of either time in the job description?”

He concludes, “Like it just seems so sneaky.”

@seanie2blondie I feel like certain details like that should be disclosed in the very first conversation because it changes a lot about the job #interview #corporatejob ♬ original sound – Sean

Commenters thought they knew why.

“They tell you last minute because they know it’s a deal breaker,” one said.

“Ah, yes, save the deal breaker for the end so you can waste the maximum amount of time,” another chimed in. “Makes perfect sense.”

Someone else contributed to that thread, “They hoping you will just take the L… cos well ‘you have come this far.'”

“Companies forget that Glassdoor exists lmao,” someone else shared. “I call them out on their bs.”

Sean agreed, adding, “I never used to leave reviews but this time around I feel like I have to.”

According to a 2023 Resume Builder survey, nearly half of hiring managers said they lie in job interviews, with one of the most common lies being about the job role itself. One of their reasons for lying is to attract good candidates, the study found. The managers’ success rate of lying to candidates is high, as nearly all of the hiring managers surveyed who admitted to lying also say they have hired candidates they lied to.

The Daily Dot has reached out to Sean via email.

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*First Published: Apr 2, 2024, 10:00 am CDT