Let Camryn Spina’s (@camrynspina) viral TikTok be a warning to job seekers everywhere: You don’t officially have the position until HR says you do.
She found that out the hard way after uprooting her life, moving from Florida to Virginia, for a job that she was never actually hired for. She says that’s thanks to an apparent series of blunders and lack of key communicative messages on the hiring manager’s part.
Spina delineates her story in a 9-minute TikTok, explaining how she found herself in what sounds like a comedy of errors—although we’re pretty sure this entire ordeal wasn’t funny to her at the time.
@camrynspina #GRWM while I explain how moved 1,000 miles for a job that wasnt ever mine!!!!!!!!!!! This ones a long one so bare with me #relocate #job #trending #jobless ♬ original sound – Camryn Spina
“I relocated from Florida to Virginia for a job that I never actually got hired for,” she says ebulliently into the lens. As she preps her face for cosmetics and applies makeup to her face, Spina says that it all started when she cold-applied to a job she saw online out of the blue and received a response from someone at the company who would be her direct boss in this new position should she be hired for the position.
They then set up an interview on Microsoft Teams that Spina said went “amazing.” Her and the interviewer ended up getting into an hour and a half long discussion, and when it was done she verbally patted herself on the back for a job well done because everything went so swimmingly. The TikToker’s perception of the situation was on point as her potential new boss followed up with her after their discussion, inviting her to the work site to check out their operation in an additional interview, which she was on board with.
Because she was coming from Florida, her arrival to the facility took some planning and the company rented her a car to drive up to Virginia, which she did. “The interview lasted for five hours on location so same thing as the first interview we just couldn’t shut up, we really enjoyed talking about the job it was really exciting I was excited and the kicker to this whole thing is at the end of the in-person interview, he looks at me after five hours I’ve been there, and he goes, so, I think it’s no question that I would really like to hire you for this role.”
Spina took this as an offer, but asked her interviewer to give her a bit of time to think about it because she needed to figure out the logistics of moving up from Florida to Virginia. Her potential boss said that it wasn’t a problem whatsoever, and after she returned back to Florida and managed to get her ducks in a row for the move. She then. responded to the company, telling them she would be taking the gig.
She started discussing her start date with her new boss, and he got her a company email address, while also putting her in touch with Human Resources to start the onboarding process. While all of this was going on and Spina was communicating with the hiring manager on company correspondence systems, she purchased her moving truck, the company bought a hotel for her for a week while she looked for an apartment in Virginia while she was starting the new position, and she learned that her start date was Aug. 1, while her first day of pay would be Aug. 11.
She even got her boyfriend involved in the process. He drove her moving truck 13 hours to Virginia while she followed in a vehicle. They placed all of her belongings in a storage unit in the new state, and he turned around the next day to return the moving truck back to its location in Florida. It was a grueling ordeal, but for Spina, it was all worth it because she managed to nab a new position in a company she was excited to work for.
Spina says she began working on Aug. 1 and was “fully immersed” in the experience, taking on some of the job responsibilities of her boss, making purchases for the company, and generally diving head first into the new gig.
However, after a couple of days of working, her boss asked if she could talk with HR to ensure that she was fully onboarded with the company. When she did, Human Resources said it was still reviewing applications for the position, which Spina thought was ridiculous because she was convinced that she had already gotten hired.
But then the following day, her boss pulls her into the office and tells her, “Hey something’s wrong with your background check.” Spina says is impossible because she’s never even gotten “detention” or a “speeding ticket let alone have any type of criminal record that would pop up on a background check,” and called her boss’s claim “ridiculous.”
The following day Spina is told by Human Resources that they’re moving forward on further applicants and that they’ll let her know if another position opens up in the near future. The TikToker, again, tells them that they’ve got it all wrong, and they assure her that they haven’t.
After the phone call, she immediately phones up her boss who assures her that this is the way he’s onboarded tons of people in the past, adding that she shouldn’t come back to work until it’s all sussed out just in case there’s any problems with her being “on site.”
Another call from Human Resources comes in the next day after Spina just sat in her hotel room, waiting for news, hoping that it was all just a giant misunderstanding. It wasn’t. The company let her know that she would not be working for them. At that point, Spina sat, sobbing on the phone, as she just had just uprooted her life for the opportunity to work for this company.
What’s even worse is that Spina gets ghosted by her boss. Undeterred, she decided she wasn’t going to sit by and not receive some form of compensation for the money she spent to move herself out to Virginia all the way from Florida. That includes the cost of a moving truck, storage unit, gas, and other costs associated with moving. And not to mention the seven or so days she spent working at the company for the position she was told she received.
She added in the letter to HR that if she wasn’t going to be compensated, she’d be pursuing “legal action” against the business, and noted that she had a bevy of correspondence with her boss to support her claims.
“There was 100% an offer, an intent to work, an intent to hire,” she noted, adding that they could be in “trouble” for for the entire situation was handled.
Spina says that the company agreed with her and sent her a “check in the mail…for a lot of money,” which she says with a smile, adding that the business probably knew she could’ve dragged it out in court in the hopes of getting even more cash.
Even though the ordeal sounded like a nightmare, Spina still managed to keep her old job in the process and is currently living with her parents.
TikTokers who saw her video were shocked by the whole situation, calling out Spina’s boss for his incompetence in the whole process. “That is actually so crazy! That dude should be fired honestly if he didn’t actually cross reference with HR,” one user wrote.
“I work in HR. This is absolutely insane,” another person wrote, seemingly baffled how anything like this could’ve happened in the first place.
Someone who said they work as a recruiter in the comments section offered up a simple piece of advice for job seekers: “Recruiter here- no offer letter, no job. I’m so sorry this happened to you!!”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Spina via TikTok comment for further information.