That Unicorn Wanted article hits way too close to home right now...
I was a stay at home dad when Covid hit. Due to the desperation of my wife's job being heavily impacted by Covid we decided I had to go back to work and we would work kind of opposite schedules to take care of the kiddo and manage part time daycare costs.
I recently (within the last 2 years) had a series of interviews for a position with a local bike company that I was way more than qualified for, had an internal recommendation and multiple external recommendations for. All was going great, super smooth interview, great rapport with both the immediate supervisor and hiring manager, they seemed to have zero issues with my qualifications or personality, we started talking about start date in the context of when I would start, not if I would start, what to show up with, directions to get there, local food options, bike storage, on and on... somehow we didn't talk about wage and the interview conversations were going so well that it completely slipped my mind.
During what ended up being the very last conversation with them I brought up wage and they asked what I wanted so I asked what the wage range was for the position and they declined to answer directly and told me it was based on experience (which I have plenty of). They then asked again what I wanted so I added a few grand to what I was making at my last job that was nearly identical. They basically said "Ok thanks for your time" and ended the interview. From the time the dollar amount came out of my mouth to the time they cut off the Zoom interview was probably about 1 - 1.5 minutes.
List. The. FUCKING. Wage.
Don't ask for 10 years of experience and then try to pay ~40k a year. A 40k a year job does not deserve 3 interviews, 3 references and 10+ years of experience. 40k a year does not deserve dancing around the wage topic in an interview. No job does, it is a waste of time. I hope this company hired a shit employee that does a shit job and makes their company look like shit and costs their company a boat load of money in mistakes / inefficient work.
Wage is now the first topic of conversation for any job interview I ever have going forward.
Fortunately I landed at another company that seems to be going well so hopefully I don't have to have that conversation until several (hopefully many) years from now, but money is tight at home and the pay is laughably low in the bike industry so I'm not even sure if I can stay afloat in the bike industry boat.
I dunno man.
Edit - I should also add that this was not a highly desirable exclusive industry job or some great opportunity, it was a run of the mill back end industry job that anyone could be trained to do with almost zero knowledge of bicycles or the industry.
Last edited by: thaaad on April 23, 2022, 11:43 a.m., edited 5 times in total.
Reason: lol man I suck at this