the mystery of “remote” job listings that aren’t actually remote

by Alison Green on June 20, 2022

Amid the boom in remote working spurred by pandemic closures two years ago, job seekers are encountering a frustrating phenomenon: jobs advertised as “remote” when they really aren’t.

To the extreme and understandable frustration of job seekers, it’s become quite common for candidates to see a job posting for a role that claims to be remote, apply, confirm in the first contact that they’re looking for 100% remote work, and go through several rounds of interviews, only to find out late in the process that the employer actually wants them to come in one or two days a week or even more.

At Slate today, I wrote about why this is happening and why it needs to stop. You can read it here.

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{ 244 comments }

{ 244 comments… read them below }

  1. grubsinmygarden*

    When I was job searching (tech) a month ago, I reported every Glassdoor and LinkedIn I saw that was categorized as remote but described a hybrid model in the job description.

    1. Anne Wentworth*

      :thumbs-up:
      I hope there’s a big wave of reporting these deceptive ads on Glassdoor.

      1. ThatGirl*

        I’ve had a similar, but slightly different problem on Glassdoor where I keep seeing jobs – specifically Disney corporate jobs! – that have a Chicago-area location attached (like, it’ll say “Creative Copywriter, Addison, Ill.”) but when I click in to read the description they’re actually based in Celebration, Fla.

        And like… I know there are no Disney offices in the Chicago suburbs but it still annoys me greatly.

        1. Casper Lives*

          That’s annoying. What’s the point? Unless they’re paying for relocation and someone wants to uproot their life / family to FL, there’s no point.

        2. Elizabeth West*

          I’ve seen 100000000 of these. Sorry, Didney; I’d move to California, but not Florida.

    4. Mid*

      I do this too! And jobs that don’t list salary range when they’re based in the State of Colorado, which very clearly requires that all job postings have a salary range. It’s petty but it feels so good.

    5. Bongofury*

      Just an FYI, Glassdoor takes money from companies to remove flags and bad reviews, I wouldn’t trust that your flagging them is doing much if the company sends off a monthly check to Glassdoor/Indeed.

      1. EmKay*

        Can you share how you know that? I was under the impression that Glassdoor specifically could not remove bad reviews.

      2. grubsinmygarden*

        This is an invisible report on the job postings themselves, so I would hope that it’s under different content review guidelines than the public company reviews.

      3. Aitch Arr*

        I’ve had Glassdoor remove some reviews that were clearly not about our company, but instead about a company with a similar name.

        NB: we don’t pay Glassdoor… not a big fan of the ‘pay to play’ model.

    6. Liz T*

      I’ve been doing that on Idealist. Lot of EA/AA jobs that claim to be remote but then list obviously in-person duties.

    7. Dawn*

      Now fingers crossed that the job boards actually do something about it for once.

      Genuinely hope your experience is better than mine there; LinkedIn won’t even take down obvious scams so far as I’ve seen.

  2. Snarktini*

    I’m thinking of looking for another role but this is the kind of thing that discourages me. I currently am on a 100% permanently remote team and which is not THAT easy to replace despite shifts in hiring . Lots of jobs might “let” you be remote especially right now but if there’s an in-person team anywhere it’s easy to get left behind or marginalized. And with a potential recession looming, I don’t want to be the last in who’s not visible…

      1. Snarktini*

        That’s definitely what I’ll prioritize. Not as many of those as I’d like, but it’s what I would need to move so that’s the criteria!

      2. J*

        I went for ones where the bosses were remote or entire business units too, though it was a touch more getting that confirmed and it’s a bit riskier if they change things up. I’m lucky where if my team is ordered back, my current boss would likely quit and bring me with her to the next place since she’s very in demand but very dependent on her support team.

    2. Sally*

      I also worry about the lack of visibility with my team. A bunch of us were hired in 2020 and have always been remote, but we’ve gotten together for team lunches a few times, which I appreciated. Our new office will be ready in a month or two, so we will have the option of working fully in the office, fully remote, or a hybrid (which is awesome – I love working for my company). I’d really like to work a hybrid schedule because I want to interact with my colleagues in person. I just hope I can, physically. I’ve been sick (presumably with covid) for 2 months, and I literally could not go to the last get-together my team had because I felt like crap. I think I’m catastrophizing a bit because I have to get better at some point (right?), but I do feel anxious about maybe not being able to go to the office as often as I’d like to.

  3. Lisa Van Der Pump*

    Opposite side of this coin: why do people keep applying to in office jobs, then demanding remote flexibility later in the process? I will try to weed out applicants based on their location, but I want to be fair to people who are open to relocation.

    The problem on both sides seems to boil down to wishful thinking. “I’m such a fab employer/employee, they’ll change for me!”

    1. Meep*

      Probably because for the first time ever, employees actually hold the power and are doing exactly what employers continue to do to them.

      1. Just Another Starving Artist*

        Lashing out at an individual for a systemic issue continues to be dumb, rude, and counterproductive, though. The individual hiring manager whose time they’re wasting is a fellow worker, not the behemoth corporation who screwed them over.

        1. MissElizaTudor*

          Why does it read as “lashing out” for workers to try to negotiate working conditions while applying for a job.

          When a job asks for three days in the office per week (as with the job Lisa Van Der Pump is talking about), that’s a job that can be done remotely, at least in part. Asking to come in less frequently is a very reasonable thing to attempt to negotiate, especially in this situation, and it isn’t any kind of attack on the hiring manager, just like it isn’t lashing out to try to negotiate for more PTO or higher pay.

          1. Just Another Starving Artist*

            Meep’s comment didn’t sound like “negotiating” so much as it sounded like taking joy dicking a stranger around out of revenge against corporations.

          2. Elizabeth West*

            It’s also a job that can START remotely pending relocation. So the employers need to be more flexible. I mean, they always expect us to be flexible; it’s only fair.

        2. A*

          If they ask for flexibility, are denied, and get angry or whatever I completely agree with you. However asking the question in an of itself is not ‘lashing out’ or ‘wasting time’. The first primarily remote position I had (~8 years ago) was one that was hiring for on site, but they were open to negotiating on it. If they had said no I would have completely understood and respected that choice, but unless a job description says an in office requirement is non-negotiable, I’m gonna shoot my shot.

        3. Sacred Ground*

          In what way is Meeps comment “lashing out at an individual?” It’s a simple observation. And it’s obviously about employers in general, not this individual. Chill out.

    2. Lab Boss*

      +1. It’s an infuriating quirk of human nature that it’s so easy to read a set of rules and think “yes, those rules are all very important to be followed, but I’m CLEARLY an exception!”

      1. Less Bread More Taxes*

        Most people are reasonable and therefore don’t think they need to be the exception. When you see that a job that could be done remotely is in the office full time, it’s normal to question that not just for yourself, but for all employees.

        How many times has there been a letter on this site saying something like “A new employee asked us why we’re not allowed to use blue pens and then we all realized that it was a stupid, arbitrary rule set by someone who probably doesn’t even work here anymore.”

        1. Less Bread More Taxes*

          To add, I don’t think reasonable people will question rules that are very important but instead will question rules that seem obviously unimportant.

          1. After 33 years ...*

            Inevitably, rules that seem obviously unimportant to some will be seen as very important to others.
            Lab Boss has summarized the situation perfectly, IMO.

          2. RagingADHD*

            Anyone who thinks they can remotely discern which rules are “obviously unimportant” for a job they haven’t even interviewed for is already being unreasonable.

            1. RebelwithMouseyHair*

              For some roles, sure, you’d need knowledge of how the company operates to be able to tell whether the role can be remote.
              For lots of others, in particular jobs that are often outsourced, like mine, it’s obvious that the job can be performed remotely. At most I’ll need a short email or a quick phone call outlining specifications or reminding me to use a particular resource or software, then I just quietly get on with the job by myself.
              At my previous job, my colleague and I worked in a different city to the rest of the company. Our manager never contacted us except when there was a problem, which was maybe once every two years. Yet we were not allowed to work remote. Until suddenly the boss realised that the office was very expensive to rent and tried to force us to go remote, but without letting us enjoy any flexibility. My colleague was not allowed to shift her hours from 9-5 to 8.30-4.30 (to coincide with her kids’ school hours) because our manager decreed that “4.30 was too early to stop work”.
              At that point I forced the boss to make me redundant (thank you French labour laws) and I am now doing strictly the same job as a freelancer (earning twice the money in fewer hours).

        2. Avril Ludgateau*

          Unless, of course, the “stupid, arbitrary rule set by someone who probably doesn’t even work here anymore” is in regards to footwear and the “new employee” is a team of interns who all end up fired for asking why the pens (shoes) can’t be blue (sneakers). In that case, the response here is surprisingly more critical, less self-reflective.

          2. Less Bread More Taxes*

            I remember that letter. I haven’t found it, but I remember that they were questioning why the women needed to wear heels all day. So yes, I do think it’s important to question rules that seem bizarre in the current day and age.

            1. After 33 years ...*

              Asking once is fine, but what is bizarre to some is not to others.
              In my place, salaries, benefits, and job conditions are set by union contracts. There is no private negotiation. No matter how many times you ask for a personal raise, the answer will always be negative. I personally greatly prefer our system: some readers of AAM may find it bizarre.
              The conditions are clearly set out from the start, they won’t change in future or with another request, and job applicants can decide if that’s acceptable to them or not.

              1. allathian*

                Yes, and medical exceptions were granted. That’s what started the fuss in the first place, someone who had issues with their feet got an exception.

          3. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

            I always found the collective response to that letter bizarre. Even the petition part is just “asking as a group” which is often recommended; yeah they got the nuance wrong, but that’s the point of interns.

        3. A*

          Why not call out in the job description that in office requirement is non-negotiable? Sometimes it is, so it’s not a black and white situation. If it’s bothersome, make your intention clear.

      2. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        A lot of job seekers also get the advice that “everything is negotiable” and understand the sunk-cost fallacy as well as employers do.

      3. Amy Farrah Fowler*

        So much this. As someone working on the hiring side, so SOOOOO many people think they are the exception whether it’s to the requirements of the job, the schedule needed, etc. We try to be flexible in the places we can, but ultimately, we cannot accommodate someone who doesn’t meet the dealbreaker requirements.

        1. Bast*

          I am always involved in the hiring for my department, though HR creates the ads and has the final say. I think a lot of confusion could be eliminated in some jobs by outlining in the ad what is a requirement and what is just preferred. So many jobs list a laundry list of “requirements” that it is so unlikely that one person will check all of the boxes so people apply anyway.

          There’s a difference in wording too–
          “Remote 2 days a week” vs “Remote on Monday and Thursday” vs “working remotely during emergencies.” Are all different, and yet somehow advertised as “remote” in some ads, yet they are varying degrees of Remote.

          Our biggest issue is that HR lists we have a flexible schedule, and while it is to a point, what we really mean is that you have a choice of 3 start times. You cannot work partially remote and you can’t decide to do 4 10s and take a 5th day off. It’s a fair question that comes up a lot in interviews and I wish HR would change this. I don’t see it as being entitled but many companies are not clear.

          1. Bast*

            My point, really in a nutshell is that many companies are not clear on what remote means to them, or obscure the truth about what it means to them.

    3. Less Bread More Taxes*

      It depends on what you consider “demanding remote flexibility” to mean. For many jobs, people do expect some flexibility to be the default. For example, even for a job that wants me in the office 100% of the time, I will expect to be able to work from home if I’m feeling unwell, expecting a repairperson, or have a sick child or pet at home. If your company doesn’t offer that kind of flexibility, you need to be very upfront because in my experience, that is quite unusual.

      I also think that so many jobs are hybrid at most, and so candidates probably forget that there is such a thing as a 100% office job anymore. In my recent job search that wrapped up last week, I applied for over 100 jobs. Not a single one was 100% in the office to my knowledge, and wasn’t specifically avoiding those. If I applied for a job now, I would expect it to be hybrid and it would be much more surprising if it was requiring me to be in the office full time.

        1. RemoteyRemoteface*

          Is there a reason to be in the office beyond “because we said so”? Such as you need people to meet clients, you need to gather for strategy sessions, problem solving, etc? If you’re making people come in for Reasons that might be the cause of the pushback.

          1. One of Mabel's girls*

            The only reason I could ever determine for requiring me to be in the office was a combination of because “I said so” and “Because my power as a director derives from how much office space is alloted to me.” from the person who worked remotely at least half time from her home 1500 miles from HQ. My direct counterpart in a different region worked from home but, because I lived near a regional office, my butt had to be in a chair there every day. That is, unless I was on travel, in which case I worked 12 hours or more each day in the field or in my hotel room.

          2. Hannah Lee*

            At the company I work at it’s either the jobs require hands on work or, as in my case, while my core responsibilities *could* be done remotely, and have on days when weather, power issues, personal needs arise, on a typical day, there are usually a handful of things that can’t be done remotely… it’s a small company and we wear many hats, and also the owners are on site and run the company with very quick “gather info/discuss options/decide/make it happen” turn around times, so having people in one building enables that interactive discussion and decision making.

            For some jobs, remote work makes sense, but for plenty of jobs, it doesn’t.

          1. Lisa Van Der Pump*

            I’ve never seen a job listing that delves into all the reasons why the position is either remote, hybrid, or in person. Is that standard?

            1. pope suburban*

              I would think it’s a pretty normal thing for people to ask about, especially now, in the early stages. Asking about the possibility of remote work or the rationale behind company structure is a wise thing to do early in the application process. The answers to those questions will help candidates decide whether or not they wish to continue with the process, based on how the work style suits them and how the job fits into the rest of their life.

              1. Lisa Van Der Pump*

                It’s fine to ask, there’s no issue with that. But if they don’t want to relocate or are only interested in remote will the rationale really make them change their mind?

                For the record, after telling candidates that it’s a hybrid role, I’ve never been asked the reasons why.

                1. reasons*

                  Just because it’s not “standard” that companies don’t provide explanations for demanding employees go into an office during or even post a pandemic, doesn’t mean it’s right.

                2. Caramel & Cheddar*

                  The rationale will tell them a lot about the organization and its management style. Is the job hybrid because the job requires public-facing or site-specific work two days a week? Or is the job hybrid because, like a lot of workplaces, there’s still a level of surveillance theatre happening?

                  People may never have asked the specific reasons why the role is hybrid, but it’s still worth you and/or your employer reflecting on the reasons and whether or not the role actually requires being in the office three days per week beyond “we like it that way.” Despite the general state of the hiring market, a lot of workplaces still seem to be digging in their heels on this.

                3. Elizabeth West*

                  I’m with Caramel & Cheddar on this one. Plus, if you want to be fair to people who would accept relocation, you might also have to start them remotely, depending on where they are.

                  Of course, I would expect this to take place at the offer negotiation stage but it’s something to keep in mind. Moving can take a little time, and it’s easier to find housing if you have an income, assuming your company is not paying those expenses.

                4. Flash Packet*

                  My company is currently “hybrid” for the corporate office. The C-Suite said that’s 3 days a week; my VP said it’s 2 days a week; and I’ve let it be known that I’ll probably come in one day a week.

                  Because it’s dumb to force people in my role into the office. It’s wasteful and counterproductive. I work with people across my organization who are located in almost every time zone on this planet. Even the ones in my same time zone are in different physical locations except for maaaaaybe two dozen of them. When I work from home on a consistent basis, getting up at 4:00 AM for an off-camera meeting with my peers in India is way less of a burden than if I was trying to squeeze that in between getting dressed for a professional environment and then commuting 2 hours a day, eating lunch in my car, and wearing an N95 mask for 8+ hours.

                  If I were to look for a new job and the listing said “Remote Offered” but then the hiring manager said, “Hybrid, 3 days a week in the office,” I would absolutely want to know what was happening during those 3 days that was so mission-critical that it required me to spend over 3 hours of my personal time on every single in-office day just to put my physical self inside their air-conditioned box where I would log into to my same laptop and connect — virtually — to the people I need to communicate / meet with.

          2. just another bureaucrat*

            If it’s clearly laid out in the posting though why would you assume it’s arbitrary? And why would you assume there’s no reason? Or that you can fight the reason?

            The reason might be “because the CEO is hell bent on having everyone in the office personally and if you want to fight that fight you can but I’m not going to fight it because they have really good health care and I need the insurance so I’m not willing to pick this fight with the CEO for Rando McGee because they don’t like it, I’m tired and worn out because of 2 years of pandemic and getting yelled at”

            Or it might be we have a front desk and part of this job is staffing it.

            Or we are required to have 2 people to open a safe every day and this role will be 1 of those people for 3 days a week.

            Or we require that a supervisor be in the building any time there are staff and in order to ensure sufficient coverage we’ve identified that this person needs to be in 3 days a week, we really only need 2 but people take time off and get sick, so if we round up to 3 then someone can be sick and we don’t have to force another random supervisor to come in because we’ve got 2 in every day and we only have to do that if there are 2 people out on the same day.

            Why are you fighting and not just moving onto the next posting if you see it?

            1. Decidedly Me*

              All this – I get people want remote (I’m one of them!), but I don’t think it’s fair to assume that all jobs with an in office requirement are doing so arbitrarily. Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t, but if you don’t want in office, just pass on those postings.

              However, I now really want to see a job ad that says “3 days in office ‘because the CEO is hell bent on having everyone in the office personally and if …’ “

              1. reasons*

                It’s really weird to frame asking questions as “fighting” something.
                It’s weird to say that employees shouldn’t advocate for themselves or to even be shocked by it.
                Employees should advocate for themselves, and they should ask questions. And it’s not weird to ask for reasons for something that appears arbitrary.

                1. reasons*

                  An office job that demands someone attend an office 3 days per week – is not arbitrary? Are you sure? What about those 3 days per week makes it necessary but for the other 2 it’s not? I would lean towards the possibility of it being arbitrary. If I were to bet. Regardless, it is a strange reaction to asking that question, to call it “Fighting”.

                  Interesting how the company is allowed to make demands (3 days per week) but this entire conversation started because of how uncomfortable it made people that an employee might demand something.

                2. Lenora Rose*

                  We’re not framing asking questions about “why is it remote?” as “fighting”. Lisa’s first comment, which all this is in relation to, was about “why do people keep applying to in office jobs, then demanding remote flexibility later in the process?” That’s the fighting being referred to.

                3. Curious*

                  I think that there is a difference between a veteran employee asking these questions–and expecting answers–and an applicant, who is not even a newbie employee.
                  Employers owe applicants an honest description of the job, not a justification of the structure

            2. Avril Ludgateau*

              It’s presumptuous that you characterize asking for a no-cost QoL perk as “fighting”. Maybe this is the perfect job but for this one little snag, and you are really the most qualified candidate out there, so you ask instead of just moving on on the off chance they aren’t that tied to the in-office requirement. It’s really not that audacious, and certainly there are employers who would make the accommodation. Why would you ever pass up the opportunity on the assumption that you know the answer?

              1. pope suburban*

                Yeah, the way this is being looked at as deeply adversarial is strange to me. Asking questions is normal. It’s part of how both candidates and employers assess how well that particular job will work out for that particular candidate. If, for example, the in-office requirement revolves less around strict logistical needs and more around a working culture that prioritizes and thrives on face time, well, that’s useful information. Maybe someone who *can* come into the office would or wouldn’t based on that team’s work style- and that’s fine! Yeah, companies absolutely should be looking at their reasons for certain policies, and based on that, either revise the policies or be willing to explain and stand by them out of the gate. No one’s fighting here, we’re just advocating for direct communication from the start.

              2. Me ... Just Me*

                Because, I suppose, you’re wasting the hiring manager’s time and HR’s time by applying for a job that specifically says “in office” and then, after they’ve contacted you and done and interview, etc (sometimes already running background checks, etc) and then saying, “well, I really want to work remote.” It takes tremendous financial resources to recruit employees. Imagine that its not just you doing it, but several other applicants, as well. Then times it by all the open positions the company has. It’s not “just asking”. It’s time wasting and disrespectful. It would be a red flag for me as a hiring manager, honestly. I’d be wondering what other things the new employee might “just ask” for? Change in work hours? Leaving early a lot. Coming in late. Every holiday off, rather than sharing the load with other employees? — idk. It’s not a deal-breaker to be asked, but I’d be leary, as I know that this really isn’t the position the applicant is looking for, from the get go.

                1. Dawn*

                  I’m not saying that their time has no value, honestly that’s not true, but hiring departments are being paid to conduct interviews and job seekers are (generally) not.

                  It’s been the norm in years gone by for companies to put job seekers to massive inconvenience for no compensation because they held the power to do so.

                  Now that the shoe is on the other foot, suddenly it’s unfair.

                2. Never Boring*

                  Would you still think it was disrespectful if the reason was, for example, an ADA accommodation-type reason? For a job that doesn’t inherently, on the surface, require in-person work?

                3. RebelwithMouseyHair*

                  “you’re wasting the hiring manager’s time and HR’s time by applying for a job that specifically says “in office””
                  Our comments here are reactions to an article in which Alison discusses companies advertising remote roles as a bait and switching to hybrid or in-person once they’ve got some interested candidates.
                  So we’re discussing companies wasting candidate’s time, and you’ve turned it around to accuse candidates of wasting company time?
                  You seem to have a “take it or leave it” attitude – and we’re telling you that a lot of prize candidates will question it. If nobody ever questions anything no progress will ever be made. Why should employees just buckle and do corporate bidding the whole time? Why can’t people negotiate something that would work better for them? Don’t you know that happy employees put in better work and often stay longer?

                4. Unaccountably*

                  I’m a hiring manager. Our HR department conducts initial phone screens, so 0% of my time is wasted by people wanting to negotiate full-time remote work.

                  And that’s what it is: negotiating. Just like you negotiate higher salary or more vacation time. Someone who wants fully remote work will (unfortunately) get screened out just like someone whose salary requirements are outside our hiring band. Those things are not “time wasting and disrespectful” either.

                  Now, our IT department has had people drop out during the offer process because they wanted fully remote work. That’s on the IT hiring manager for not making clear early in the process that hybrid work was not negotiable, not on the candidate for asking if it is. The result is that our IT department continues to operate with about half the staff it needs.

                  By the way, I’ve also shifted an employee’s work hours by half an hour in one direction or another because I do not manage by butts in seats and their work isn’t client-facing. The world has not come to an end because of it.

            3. A*

              If it states an in office requirement is non-negotiable, I would move on. If not I’m not going to rule it out on the assumption that it’s off the table. It worked for me before, so I certainly won’t be assuming (especially nowadays) that something is set in stone if it’s not called out as such.

          3. Raboot*

            “What a completely arbitrary expectation that you have provided no reasons for?”

            ??? This is an advice blog, not a job posting. What a completely arbitrary expectation you have that every posted here must divulge 100% of the details of their real life job to you.

            1. reasons*

              The person wants advice? I was fooled. Thinking that employees strut around thinking they’re so fabulous, they must deserve remote work, is a little weird. I didn’t realize there was a genuine question buried in that insult. I took it as rhetorical.

            2. Glomarization, Esq.*

              Oh, come on, @reasons. It’s ridiculous for a job posting to explain or justify, in detail, exactly why an on-site job has to be performed on-site. A job posting is not a job description or employment contract or employee handbook. A job posting sets out a general outline of the job, its requirements, and (hopefully!) the compensation range. It’s ridiculous to require the details from someone here, too. They’re asking for general advice and it comes across to me, at least, as odd to be so invested in the conversation that you’re digging in your heels about it.

              1. Pisces*

                Yes. This was in a smaller town long before remote work, but I knew of an attorney who was open to his assistant working a flexible schedule. However, the assistant had to be in office on Fridays which was the local court’s standing date for Type X hearings.

                1. Reluctant Mezzo*

                  And that’s actually a reason which a potential employee can understand. To give a frivolous alternative ‘you have to stand 8 hours a day in high heels because Boss Man is a leg guy’. Sadly, that has really happened to some people.

        3. Avril Ludgateau*

          It’s entirely fair as a jobseeker to ask an employer who overtly advertises flexibility (by way of a hybrid schedule) if they would offer more flexibility. This is not some egregious request. You’re allowed to say no, and the candidate is allowed to consider that. But this complaint comes across like “we said the top of our salary range was $75,000 and the candidate asked for $78,000 to compensate for lost PTO. The audacity!”

          If it’s such a consistent pattern, then maybe this is a time for you to examine the “why” of your rigid flexibility (lol) policy. If there is absolutely a need for 3 days on site, that’s fine, but how can you possibly expect a person who has never worked for you to take that at face value? Employers rarely post full and comprehensive job descriptions that thoroughly examine and explain their culture and policies. And even if they did, it’s still okay to ask.

          1. Dawn*

            I think a lot of companies are going to find themselves revisiting these “inflexible” policies when they can’t figure out why nobody qualified wants to work for them.

            1. apples to oranges to bananas*

              I doubt it. People act like it’s a huge candidate market out there, but major companies will always have people eager to work for them that those demanding certain policies will just get passed over. Especially as we’ve been seeing major tech layoffs happening, workers can’t say they want 100% remote if the company has a hybrid model because they’re just going to take the next person who says yes to hybrid and doesn’t push for 100% remote.

            2. Unaccountably*

              My CEO is dead. ass. convinced that any day now people are going to start crawling back to their old butts-in-seats jobs because remote work is so terrible.

      2. Loulou*

        Of course there is such a thing as a full time office job! I’m very surprised you applied for 100 jobs and none of them required 5 days in an office, but nevertheless, I promise you that such a thing exists.

        1. After 33 years ...*

          Mine is one of those!
          I could explain why at length, including the past 2 years, but ultimately the situation is that there’s no satisfactory alternative to in-person work for what I (try to) do. Asking won’t produce a different answer. If you’re unhappy with the answer, we both need to seek an alternative.

      3. KRae*

        I left one 100% remote position for another two months ago. I was recruited on LinkedIn.

    4. Anne Wentworth*

      Nope. The problem in *this* particular situation, as described by the article, is deceptive employers who don’t treat people with respect.

    5. hamsterpants*

      All I can think of is to make it really clear in the job description that the in-office aspect is still required here in 2022. So many job descriptions are clearly copy-paste Frankensteins that have been passed on for eons and barely match the actual job opening.

    6. A Pound of Obscure*

      Exactly! I just commented with an example of this very thing happening in my organization.

    7. Nanani*

      It is not a both sides issue at all.
      Employers are flat out lying and misleading people by telling them its remote when its not.

      1. reasons*

        And considering employers advertise it as “Remote” and then later on down change the job description to “Hybrid”, it would make sense that employees agree to an in person job and later down change their desires too. Why wouldn’t it go both ways?

        1. Nanani*

          Did you not read the article or what?
          It’s specifically about employers doing the thing. There is no reason to whatabout and bothsides.

    8. CocoB*

      Exactly! I’ve posted 2 positions recently and clearly indicated onsite position. I received numerous resumes from people wanting to work remote from out of state.
      I agree absolutely deceptive to not indicate in posting that is fully or partially onsite, but this issue is playing out both directions.

    9. Maggie*

      I have someone close to me who keeps doing this and then getting frustrated that they won’t allow full remote work as a reasonable accommodation for this person’s stated disability. Instead of focusing on remote companies she is focusing on whatever sounds best and is high paying and then will tell me she is so frustrated and down about the job hunt, but really I feel like she’s setting herself up to fail. I don’t give much advice though.

    10. tamarack and fireweed*

      Well, every in-office job I’ve had in the last 15 years allowed me the flexibility, to varying degrees, to work from home occasionally (at least – some even regularly).

      I don’t think the two situations flip except if the in-office job makes it very clear that work from the office is mandatory 100% of the time (outside travel).

    11. A Wall*

      People are doing this because, frequently, employers will in fact allow more or all remote days for the right candidate.

      They’re not delusionally thinking the rules don’t apply to them, they are acting under the entirely correct premise that the balance of remote vs in person days is very frequently negotiable in the same way that pay, schedule, and PTO are. They have no way of knowing whether that’s the case for your company or not before they apply, they can only ask about it once they are in the interviewing process.

  4. calonkat*

    ARRRRGGHH! I love my job, the only thing I’d give it up for is a remote job, as I loved working at home and was much more productive. I’ve pretty much given up looking, as EVERY JOB I’ve looked at is either a clear scam or advertised as remote, but isn’t when I got into the application.

    1. Tinkerbell*

      Yep, there are SO MANY SCAMS when you look for remote-only work – and because they’re not geographically located, you get scams from everywhere in the country/world compared to hybrid or in-person jobs that are limited to where you live (or where you’re searching, anyway). The ratio of scams to real work is crazy.

      I really do wonder how many job sites are set up properly – there should be tickboxes for “this job requires in-office work,” “this job requires remote work,” “this job requires both a home work environment and attendance at the office,” and “this job offers a choice of home or in-office but it’s up to the employee to choose which they prefer and when.” Some people don’t have a good space to work from home, some are fine with it but only if they can schedule it ahead of time (to work out childcare, coordinate with a spouse, etc.), some are flexible but just don’t want to spend all their money on gas. THIS SHOULD NOT BE SO DIFFICULT!

      2. Dawn*

        There’s no laws or oversite for job sites and the people placing the ads are the ones paying them, so there’s basically zero motivation for them to set their sites up to better serve job seekers beyond making sure they get enough traffic to keep recruiters placing ads.

        Most sites don’t even remove job ads that contravene local laws. LinkedIn is absolutely full of job postings with no listed salary band in areas where the law requires salary bands to be listed on any public job posting.

    2. DCDM*

      There are definitely good, legitimate companies who allow their employees to work fully remotely or some form of hybrid. Automattic (WordPress and Tumblr), Zoom, and AirBNB are three that pop into my head offhand. Twitter too but with Elon about to take the helm I see that changing.

      Focus on job hunting within companies that value and allow remote work because it allows them to attract and retain top talent no matter their geographical location, not just as an employee perk

      1. DCDM*

        For clarity all those companies offer 100% remote positions for every employee unless the position specifically precludes it (janitorial or reception-type positions, as some examples). It’s not arbitrary

        1. RebelwithMouseyHair*

          You just gave me a vision of an empty office, fronted by a receptionist who spends all day telling visitors, “sorry, she’s working remote, so I can’t ask her to come and see you. You’re welcome to use Zoom here in the lobby if you have no other way of communicating with her”, and the cleaner coming through to wipe down desks that nobody has used since the last time she wiped them.

  5. Lab Boss*

    I also wonder how many of these listings are disconnects where in theory the job could be 100% remote and the job description reflects that, so someone creates the listing based on that info- but in reality, being 100% remote requires a more senior/experienced person and a new hire would need to be hybrid, so that’s what gets offered to the applicants. I know that happens at my company (not with remote work, but just things showing up that are POSSIBLE in a role but not a guaranteed part of it).

    1. Wintermute*

      I think this is an excellent point and a good example of how this isn’t necessarily bad faith. In my field it could very well be “this role is open to remote work if you already have such a degree of experience that you won’t need a training period of sitting physically next to someone watching them, and then them sitting next to you watching you work.

      That or they might hear things from references, or just not see on your resume evidence of the skills they want to see before they untether you from an office and close oversight. It might not be “not anyone” it might be “not for YOU” which doesn’t feel great but I understand it– almost everyone wants WFH right now, some people thrive under those conditions and some have serious trouble.

      1. Flash Packet*

        I’ll toss into this mix the fact that you can be a newbie who needs a lot of hand-holding, and you can still WFH.

        We hired a summer intern whose only work experience was a similar-but-not-exact internship last summer. She needs a *lot* of hand-holding. Somehow her on-boarding and training fell to me (I’m not a people manager) and I only met her once, by happenstance, because her First Day was my Only Day This Week I’m Coming In.

        But we work pretty much side-by-side for 2-6 hours every day through Teams. If we were in the office, I’d either have to be sitting in her cube, pointing [frustratingly] at things on her screen and itching to “drive” the mouse, or we’d each be in our respective cubes doing what we’re doing now: Sharing our screens simultaneously.

        She follows along with what I’m doing on her own screen and I can say, “Ah, nope, you’ve clicked on the orange button instead of the purple one, that’s why your output looks different than mine.” And then I can guide her back to where she should have clicked the orange button.

        So some jobs are such that even the greenest of newbies can be folded in and made productive without two human beings being tied at the waist or with someone physically standing over the shoulder of the newbie.

        “Close oversight” can take many, many forms.

        1. allathian*

          Absolutely. During the last two years, most of our summer interns were 100% remote, just like most employees were. They reported very positive experiences in their exit interviews. Of course, most of them were college students who’d been studying remotely for the past two years as well, so it was nothing new to them.

          That said, everyone’s been relieved that our current crop of interns can get some in-office experience as well, including the interns.

    2. just another bureaucrat*

      I really want to make a rule that if you can’t set up and turn on your computer at home, you can’t work at home. Somehow this is not currently required. But if you can’t get your computer (all provided) and gear set up, you are not capable of working at home if your job in anyway requires a computer.

      1. Curmudgeon in California*

        LOL. I kinda have to agree with you. I wouldn’t want to be the IT person trying to coach someone technologically inept through setting up their workstation at home.

        But people like me who have plenty of auxiliary equipment to set up all kinds of workstation arrangements are common in tech, but not other fields.

    3. Maggie*

      Yeah I think there’s probably some confusion. My current job was tagged “requires weekends and overnights”. Well…. Sure it requires a couple weekends a year and overnights for training and conferences. But it’s not an overnight or weekend job. They added the tag I guess because it does require it sometimes. Honestly I think it turned a ton of people off because there wasn’t very many applicants but their loss is my reward I guess.

      1. Lab Boss*

        Yes, we have to be very frank in our interview process. SOMETIMES you will have to work an hour or two late. This will probably happen a couple times a year, and always with advance notice that a big day is coming and will probably run long. We don’t want to say in the listing “requires willingness to work 1-2 extra hours a day” because that makes it sound like a common everyday occurrence, but we want to make sure candidates don’t get surprised the first time it comes up.

  6. Jmac*

    What I see a lot of is jobs listed as being in my city but when you actually read the details, it’s actually several hours away or more

    1. Meep*

      That is the other thing that drives me bonkers. I am not moving to Middle-Of-No-Where, Idaho when I am looking for jobs in Current City, State. Not to mention these jobs pay considerably less and are contract positions. No thank you.

      1. Jora Malli*

        I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve ranted about how Indeed should have figured out a way to let job seekers filter out contract/freelance jobs by now…

        1. pancakes*

          I wouldn’t be surprised if job seekers scrolling through content they can’t effectively filter counts for a good deal of their “engagement” (for advertisers, investors, etc.).

        2. RebelwithMouseyHair*

          and internships! and for jobs involving languages, to be able to specify which languages. I don’t know how many times I’ve clicked on a translator role only to find they need Arabic Japanese and Swedish rather than French, and it’s for an unpaid internship.

      2. Curmudgeon in California*

        I keep getting agencies pinging me for sub $20/hr clerical jobs on-site on the East Coast when I am an IT pro making almost four times that and living on the West Coast. It is actually insulting that they can’t even skim my resume well enough to qualify their leads.

    2. Audiophile*

      I recently found a posting on LinkedIn that listed a bunch of US cities for the same role and linked to the same external third-party site for all postings.

      Since I was familiar with the company, I went directly to their website and discovered the role is actually UK based.

      This isn’t the first time I’ve run into this issue.

      Imagine having to explain and clear up that confusion if you got to the interview stage.

      1. works with realtors*

        I recently applied for a job that stated full-time remote, advertising in the major US city I live in – but when I made it to the first round interview, they required to first receive a 5-minute introduction video in French, as the job was in Quebec and they wanted someone fluent. I went off on them about this requirement not being mentioned anywhere in their application.

        1. Anon for This*

          It would have been great if you could have called them out in French. The word for idiot is the same in French as in English, except the pronunciation is a bit different. Ironically, when I looked it up, it turns out that French Canadians use a phrase and not the word idiot. If someone were fluent in French as spoken in France, they might still have a communication problem in Quebec.

          1. Unaccountably*

            I speak France French and I can’t even figure out what people are saying in Quebecois. And I do not understand their swearing, like, at all.

      2. Gatomon*

        Oftentimes third party job sites simply scrape postings off of the sites of large employers. There’s also a sort of list service that does this and dumps a feed that companies can pick up. So you’ll see the same job posting come through every two weeks because it’s still open, therefore it’s “new,” or something goofy in the system decides that “remote” means “make it available in every major city.” The data quality is awful.

        For all these reasons I usually avoid third party sites now and just research prospective employers where I want to be and check their website directly.

        1. Audiophile*

          I imagine this is how that mistake occurred. The company’s LinkedIn page lists both incorrect and correct postings, so I’m guessing someone is aware of the issue. It’s a company I would love to work for, but I doubt they offer relocation assistance, and I’m not looking to move that far.

    3. Mid*

      Yes! I’m in a major-ish city. There was a job that was listed as being in my city. I go to the website, fill out the application, send in a cover letter, and get an email back thanking me for applying for the position located in [City on the other side of the mountain range, several hours away by car without weather or traffic.] I emailed them to clarify, and they let me know that they’re 100% based in [Far Away City] and want someone in the office at least twice a week, and they closed their office in [My City]. Even though it was listed as based in [My City] with the ability to be 100% remote except for quarterly in person meetings.

    4. Texan In Exile*

      Uline has been playing that game for years on LinkedIn. I search on “Milwaukee + 5 miles” and Uline jobs show up, even though Uline is almost at the Illinois border. That is, way more than five miles away. I have reported them multiple times, but I guess LinkedIn doesn’t care?

      Even if I wanted to work at a company with their reputation (their reaction to covid, their dress code, and their huge campaign donations make them highly undesirable), I wouldn’t be willing to commute 38 miles each way.

  7. WomEngineer*

    I wish hybrid posts were clear on how much you have to be in the office. I’m not searching right now, but I’d be hesitant to be the first to offer how much I’m willing to meet in-person.

    1. Tinkerbell*

      There’s also a huge difference between “sure, I can commit to being in the office at least once a week [but I get to choose when]” versus “we’ll call you in about once a week, but never tell you when, and we’ll schedule random in-person meetings that may or may not correspond with when you were planning to be here.” You’d have to pay me a lot more for the latter than the former!

    2. Dawn*

      Not that I’m applying to hybrid positions right now, but if they put it on me I’d probably offer something obviously unreasonable for “hybrid” work and see what they came back with.

      If it’s a deal-breaker for them if I won’t offer them a number up front, on anything, it’s a deal-breaker for me.

  8. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    Ultimately, this was one of the biggest reasons I decided to accept the counter-offer that was offered to me last year. I’ve been remote in my role for my company for over a decade at this point, so they’re credible when I’m assured that work-from-where-you-are will continue (there were other unwritten promises I had to judge the credibility of as well).

    Because almost all jobs in the US are at-will and employment terms are universally subject to change at any whim, I don’t see this issue going away anytime soon.

    1. just another bureaucrat*

      This is a really interesting case for counter-offers that I hadn’t considered.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        In trying to evaluate which offer to dig in my heels in declining, the conclusion that I came to is that counter-offers are universally unique creatures and global answers tended to be bad ones (e.g. always accept or always decline). The devil’s in the details and he picks different ones to call home each time.

        Ultimately, I could verify enough external factors that would make it easier than not for my current employer to honor the promises I was being made to calm my nerves, but the promises from the new job were strictly fiat and the external pressures I could predict were more likely to pressure them towards reneging. I’ll never truly know if I made the right decision or not (after all, the other offer could have turned out even better), but so far the promises made in the counter-offer have mostly been honored without requiring unusual effort on my part and I’m satisfied with outcome.

  9. River*

    If this happened to me, my next thought would be “Well gee gosh darn it. What else are they falsely promising? What else are they lying about that will affect me later down the road?”

    1. Magenta Sky*

      If they’re willing to lie to you *before* you’re committed to dealing with their crap, imagine how they’ll act afterwards.

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        If they’re willing to lie to you *before* you’re committed to dealing with their crap, imagine how they’ll act afterwards.

        That’s actually the catch-22 that concerns me. If everyone just drops out out the running when the in-person requirement comes to light, employers will just wait until after the candidate has submitted their two-week notice to reveal it.

        1. irene adler*

          Which, taken to the extreme, means employers must do more than issue written job offers to candidates. Cuz those terms might be reneged upon-at some point.
          (not disagreeing with the premise here. There’s ‘misdirection’ going on now with in-person, hybrid or remote. So what else can they squirrel around with? Salary figure now equals the total compensation?)

          1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

            Obviously, a contract would resolve the issue, but I don’t see those coming into vogue.

            I have seen the compensation discrepancy pop up before–mainly by assuming more than 2,000 or 2,080 work hours in the standard year. I’ve also seen the PTO promises get toyed with.

            That’s why I said I think this situation is around for the long haul; good employers will be forthright and bad employers will be deceptive, and caveat artifex.

  10. Lacey*

    Yes, I see this so often. And I think it’s true that employers are way underestimating how important this is to candidates.

    I’d always worked in an office until covid, but they let us stay remote indefinitely and the immense joy that it brings me means that I’ll probably never leave this job for one that’s in office.

    2. Curmudgeon in California*

      Yeah, I went remote with Covid, then they laid me off.

      But all positions I’ve applied for and accepted since are 100% remote, with maybe quarterly trips for all-hands. Remote work is good for me because 1) it renders my disability invisible, 2) It protects my housemates who are at-risk for Covid, 3) it makes it easier to compensate for my ADD.

      I hated being in an open-plan office. I never want to do that again. Regaining two hours a day from not commuting has been life-changing, and beneficial to my marriage and pocketbook.

  11. Information goddess*

    The other thing I’m seeing is that “remote” or “virtual” jobs in my field are actually interacting with people remotely, which they seem to want you to do from within the office.

    1. hamsterpants*

      This is the most sad funny thing. I drive into the office only to hold online meetings with colleagues who are 1) 2000 miles away; 2) in the same building but calling from the factory floor because it takes too long to get out of the PPE; 3) based in my office but working from home that day.

      1. NotARacoonKeeper*

        There’s nothing like commuting to work (which I do on my bike), showering, putting on the clothes and (granted, minimal) makeup, and then joining zooms where half the people are in different cities or provinces, and the other half are within a few feet of you and their actual talking interferes with your ability to hear them, delayed, on zoom.

    2. Mimmy*

      Gah don’t even get me started on the school where I just got a master’s degree! Their programs are pretty much all online; however, all staff are expected to be in the office 3-4 days a week, possibly 5 days come this fall.

      Also, at my current job, we do a lot of meetings and student groups on Zoom even though we’re in the same building. I get that it’s to maintain social distancing, but seriously?!

      1. Mallory Janis Ian*

        Same at my higher ed job. We all went back to working in person full time, but the habit of having all meetings on Teams or Zoom remained. My team was made permanently remote recently, and honestly the way we communicate hasn’t changed much. It’s all IM chats and video meetings whether we’re in the office or at home.

        1. Mimmy*

          Hey I remember you!! Good to see you!

          In a way I prefer having meetings over a virtual platform so that I can have captions or can turn the volume up (I am a little hard of hearing), but at my current job, just about everyone has their camera off. I dread having to navigate in-person meetings again, but at least we’re actually with one another.

  12. Internist*

    I suspect a lot of these employers are actually “open to remote for the right candidate only”.

    At my former job, my boss listed some positions as “possible remote” because he was open to considering a fully remote role if he got a unicorn applicant. But when it came time to look at the applicants, the out-of-state applicants were just normal qualified and he wouldn’t interview them.

    1. Lab Boss*

      Which isn’t inherently dishonest, I think it’s fair to show what you COULD offer the right candidate, but you have to make it clear what sort of restrictions you’re putting on that 100% remote perk (or that high salary, or that moving assistance, or whatever).

      1. Internist*

        Yeah, it certainly wasn’t intended as dishonest, but I think the way it was executed felt a little dishonest to me in the end. He could have added something like “strong preference for candidates able to work a hybrid in-office/remote schedule” which would have let remote candidates know they weren’t going to be considered equally.

        1. Lab Boss*

          What makes it tough for me is that most of us agree jobs should all post salary ranges, even though the vast majority of the candidates won’t be able to get the top of the range. Why do we think “candidates can be realistic and recognize that if they’re not a unicorn, they won’t get the very maximum listed salary” but also think “if the job says remote work is a possibility, it’s fair that every candidate assumes they will be eligible for it?”

          Not trying to be argumentative with your point, because I see where you’re coming from- it’s just weird to me that one of those feels like transparency even though most people won’t get the maximum, and the other feels like misleading people since most of them won’t get the maximum.

          1. Internist*

            I see your point, but I think salary ranges are a different case–in my experience, they describe the range offered for the qualifications described in the posting, and some candidates might come in with more or less of those–and the top of the range is not unattainable with ordinary skills & qualifications.

            At my company, we would offer close to the top of the salary range to candidates who solidly fulfilled the job requirements. The one ‘unicorn’ we hired (for a position had been posted as in-person only) was offered the top and then was able to negotiate a higher salary than the posted range. We actually reserved the bottom of the salary range in case our options were limited and we had to make an offer to a candidate who was coming in with a lot less experience/skills than we hoped for.

            It’s totally possible that some companies do use the top of the range as a bait & switch, but that hasn’t been my experience.

            1. RebelwithMouseyHair*

              Yeah, for the salary range, the company can say “you don’t have as much experience in llama grooming, so you’ll need a bit of training”. But remote work shouldn’t be offered like that when it’s perfectly feasible to work remote.
              Lots of people here saying that they want remote work because it’s easier on their handicap and it would be very churlish to insist on someone in a wheelchair hauling themselves into an office to spend all day on zoom. I can see that it will simply become a legal way to discriminate.

    2. Zee*

      Okay, but if there’s a 99.9% chance that the person you hire won’t be allowed to be remote, it’s ridiculous to list it as remote… especially when he’s not even saying that unicorn candidate will actually *be* remote, just that he’ll *consider* letting them. (And, quite frankly, if I knew I was that unicorn candidate and I wanted fully remote, I wouldn’t waste my time on a posting that wasn’t guaranteed remote.)

      1. Internist*

        No, that’s not the case, for the unicorn candidate, he would have definitely let them be remote.

        However, I agree that it was stupid to list this as a possibility when it wouldn’t have applied to 99% of candidates. It definitely worked to ‘get more applicants’, but all that really did was waste staff time wading through them all.

        This wasn’t really that attractive of a job, which is probably why ‘unicorn’ candidates weren’t applying in the first place.

    3. Be kind, rewind*

      I came across this recently. Position was listed as remote, but when I got on the phone with the hiring manager, I found out it was “we’re all on-site, but this can be remote for the right candidate.”

      I ended up getting a call back but ultimately declined moving forward, in part because I didn’t want to be the *only* remote person.

  13. MidWasabiPeas*

    This has happened to my sister twice now in a span of less than a year. One job was advertised as fully remote, for her to find out late in the process that no, it was not. It was “could be considered remote at a later date.” The second was advertised as “flexible remote schedule encouraged.” She took that job and found out that the newly hired boss didn’t like remote and was not open to it and she fought to get Mondays and Fridays remote (she lives in a vacation destination area and traffic on Mondays and Fridays is insane).

    She turned down the first job, and when the reality of the second was made clear, she started looking again. She just started with a company that actually is remote-as in “they don’t have brick and mortar offices” remote and she loves it. She’s in an executive position (one tier below the COO) so she’s a person who has earned their credentials and proven their credibility in her field and wasn’t looking to play semantic games around defining “remote.”

    1. Snarktini*

      If I do look for another job, “remote-first” is the goal. In an all-remote (or mostly remote) company the chance of WFH being rescinded is nil and we’ll all be on a level playing field!

  14. Mostly Managing*

    The best remote/in office/hybrid plan I’ve seen is actually where my husband works at the moment.

    Like most tech companies, they were nearly all fully remote through the pandemic. (There were a few people who had to be in the building, but we’re talking 2-3 people out of about 100. )
    The office is reopening, and people are currently encouraged to be in person at least two days a week.
    BUT
    if working from home is a better plan for you, especially if it’s due to being high risk or having people in your circle who are higher risk, please let your manager know
    AND
    if working from home was a hot mess for you and you’d rather be full-time in the office, please let your manager know.

    In other words, they want to start to get people back in, because the nature of the work is such that in-person collaboration is a benefit. And, at the same time, they recognise that everyone has different needs and comfort zones at this stage in the pandemic and they are more interested in retaining good staff than “bums in seats”.

    Hubby was hired in the middle of the pandemic, and it was clear upfront that WFH is an option, that there will be times when being in the office is required (client meetings on site, etc), and that there is flexibility.
    Part of the attraction to this company was the openness about it all.
    (plus his commute is 20 minutes if he walks!)

    1. Tinkerbell*

      My partner’s company got a big contract and increased in size by ~40% over the course of the last two years… while moving offices. The original plan was to hotdesk until the new office got built, but then the pandemic happened and they discovered they could just let everyone work from home. The ones who really like in-office work had plenty of space to keep their own desks and everyone else just grabbed whatever was available when they (rarely) needed to come in. Now that the new building is nearly done, the company is trying to ensure everyone who wants space gets it… but if you would rather work from home, they’re HAPPY to let you do so. Right now my spouse goes in about once a week for in-person meetings and does the rest of the work from a folding table and a comfy chair in the living room :-)

  15. Workfromhome*

    Why cant we find good applicants and fill our jobs?
    Because you say its remote when its not and won’t tell anyone how much it pays..DUH.

    3. Curmudgeon in California*

      Yep. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Employers can’t seem to understand that prospective employees aren’t idiots and can see through their nonsense.

  16. Katherine Vigneras*

    This practice is so disingenuous and gross, but also who is it serving? Like, do people honestly think that top talent (candidates with choices) are going to take bait-and-switch jobs? Nah, dawg.

    1. Zee*

      Seriously… it reminds me of how in the non-profit sector it’s so common to not list salaries that are well below market rate, because they think that a candidate will magically fall in love with the organization so much that they’ll forget about the fact that they need to pay their rent and buy groceries. This happened when we were hiring at a past job. We literally got zero qualified applicants. Board President said “we shouldn’t have listed the salary in the ad, I think it scared away a lot of people” and I’m like… okay? But what would have been the point of interviewing the people who wouldn’t accept that salary?

      Since this is the kind of behaviour employers have been exhibiting for ages w/r/t salary or other benefits, I am not at all surprised that they applied the exact same belief to remote work.

    2. Charlotte Lucas*

      It also ignores the fact that many people *can’t* just pick up & move closer to work. They might have a spouse whose job requires them to be on-site, a child who is in school, an older family member they need to care for, etc.

      1. Katherine Vigneras*

        Absolutely, which further reduces the chance that they’ll find a star. Plenty of star candidates have life circumstances additional to their own individual careers!

      2. Jora Malli*

        Even if you don’t have those restrictions, moving is EXPENSIVE. There’s the cost to get all of your possessions from one place to another and first and last month’s rent in your new location. Then you have to get an ID in your new state and if you have a car, change over the registration, neither of which are free. It’s a lot of time and money and frustration, and I probably wouldn’t consider doing it for anything less than a unicorn dream job that’s going to double my salary and give me amazing perks.

    3. pancakes*

      Some of these employers likely know they aren’t looking for and don’t want to pay for “top talent.” Remember the Applebees exec email that went viral a few months ago? The guy who wrote about how useful it could be for them if gas prices continue to rise, and who acknowledged that many of their workers would have to take 2nd and 3rd jobs because of the low pay? A guy like that knows he doesn’t need top talent to bus tables, etc.

    4. Dawn*

      I’d imagine the thinking – using that term loosely – is “hey we’re finding it impossible to hire qualified candidates, we need to broaden the applicant pool!” They’re not even looking for top talent, they just haven’t adapted to a labour market where everyone isn’t desperate or gullible or both.

    5. Midwestern Scientist*

      THIS. In today’s job seekers market (for my industry) if you’re company is playing these games you’re going to lose out on probably the top 25%+ of candidates because they have other options that don’t play these games

  17. A Pound of Obscure*

    To be fair, sometimes the opposite happens. My organization was advertising for a position that requires special training and education but that (in some settings) is either partially or fully travel-based. However, we are a government agency and the job posting clearly indicated the job was located in our city. In the current job climate, far fewer applicants came forward, but among those who did, only one (from a city 3+ hours away) had the requisite qualifications. He went through the ENTIRE interview process, during which our director had explained the position is based in our city and would require relocation. And yet, he waited until he received an offer to express that he just assumed he could stay in his current city and work remotely, which was not the case. Applicants, do not think you can strong-arm an employer into letting you work remotely if the position is not described that way. At the very least, ask for clarification up front.

    2. len*

      And? Was his reaction unreasonable when the offer was rescinded? Seems like he had nothing to lose by doing it that way tbh, as someone said earlier applicants understand the sunk cost fallacy just as well as employers always have.

    3. Unkempt Flatware*

      This isn’t the opposite, though. And employees are starting to be in a much better position to strong arm in the current climate. I will not drive in this economy no matter what I may have agreed to when I took my job. If they really want to fire me for that, good luck to them. I’ll be just fine.

  18. SharpieBuildee*

    I just got a new job that was advertised as remote and the city with the office. They preferred someone who could do hybrid, but we’re open to remote depending on the right person. I really like hybrid for myself. The company tries (pretty hard) to have all internal meetings on the two days where most everyone goes into the office. There is also some perks for those who do a hybrid schedule that fully remote people don’t get.

  19. irene adler*

    Just last week I was asked in a screening interview which I preferred: on-site, remote, hybrid. So they do recognize there are differences.
    I’m local so all three appeal to me. Just wonder though, if they will do any bait-and-switch down the line. Guess we’ll see.

  20. CR*

    What I’m experiencing during my current job hunt is jobs being advertised as remote when they really mean remote FOR NOW; when the pandemic gets better they want people back in the office. It’s so deceptive!

  21. Ann O'Nemity*

    The job posting tools I use have “Remote” as a yes/no option. There is no option for hybrid, which is what our positions are. I can explain this in the job description, thought I know that I’m missing a lot of candidates who filter for remote but may actually consider a hybrid schedule.

    Another complication we’ve had over the last couple years concerns jobs that are temporarily remote. Again, the systems have no option for that.

    1. Jora Malli*

      This is a really good point. The job posting sites aren’t being helpful to employers or job seekers here.

    3. Gnome*

      I’ve seen that out in the job titles “Llama Specialist (currently remote)”

      Or for a hybrid schedule: Llama Specialist (hybrid)

      The best spell out that it’s X days per week or as-needed or whatever in the description.

    4. Zee*

      Idealist has a “Temporarily Remote” category, which is great, although people still end up posting in the wrong category sometimes.

    5. Nanani*

      That is an unfortunate limitation but it doesn’t explain why, as per the article, employers swear up and down tha ta job is remote -in the interview- and then pull out a “well actually” later on.

    6. Liz T*

      Agreed. But then these sites have always had baffling search limitations–we get around that by being clear in the job descriptions, and in first round interviews. The article is about employers directly ignoring the words that come out of people’s mouths!

      But yeah, Idealist, why don’t you have a “hybrid” radio box? And while we’re at it, an option to only show jobs that list salary???

  22. Catalyst*

    This just happened to a friend of mine who works in HR. The listing and the whole discussion during interviews was that the job was fully remote part-time except when a new employee was starting or of course meetings that should be in person, which was perfect because they have 3 school aged kids. During the call where they were offering the job, the employer threw in that it would become full-time in the fall and they wanted it to be mostly in the office at that time. That’s a huge change that should be discussed during the interview process. They ended up turning down the job, but the employer was shocked. I think they dodged a bad employer with this one.

  23. Good Wilhelmina Hunting*

    It’s not just remote versus non-remote. Organizations have been misrepresenting parts of the job description since time immemorial. I remember as an interning trainee tutor having to cash in a lot of goodwill with an experience colleague to cover my classroom while I attended an interview for a “weekend” document production role. “Weekend” means normal working hours, Saturday and Sunday, right? Wrong. It was only when I spoke to them they revealed the hours for the role were a graveyard shift Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, knocking off Sunday morning. It would have overlapped my tutoring hours and meant three successive all-nighters. My, their, and my colleague’s time wouldn’t have been wasted if they’d been upfront.

    1. Zee*

      My current job lied so much about my job duties that it’s almost unbelievable. Lied about the schedule too. I was hit with it on my 2nd day of work. So now I’m job hunting after only a few months here, and they’ll be out the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to replace an employee, PLUS they’re unlikely to find someone who’s as good at what I actually was hired for as I am… and if they do, that person is probably also going to be unhappy with all the other bullshit that gets piled on them and will leave quickly too. (My predecessor was here for a long time, but she was also really bad at her job, so she didn’t have a lot of prospects.)

  24. Generic Name*

    My company employs a fair number of fully remote people, but apparently we won’t hire someone who live in certain states due to labor laws or some other legal thing that I don’t fully understand. We were about to offer a job to someone in another state, but we were then told by HR that we couldn’t hire anyone to work out of that state. It was frustrating for our team, and I’m sure it was frustrating to the candidate who did absolutely nothing wrong, but had their time wasted.

    1. Decidedly Me*

      There are a lot of reasons not to hire people in certain states (specific laws, creating a nexus, etc). However, it’s bad that your HR didn’t let you know which states they won’t allow in advance. It’s becoming more common to see certain states listed in job ads as places will hire from (or, exclusion lists instead). Maybe talk to your HR about updating that?

      1. Generic Name*

        Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’m not really involved in hiring. I just heard this story when I asked for an update on the search for someone to fill a new position. :/

  25. Decidedly Me*

    My company is fully remote (always has been!) and we get people that apply with questions like “Is it actually remote?” or “Are you still going to be remote after COVID?” – likely from running into deceptive ads. I also wonder how many people end up not applying at all because they don’t trust that remote means remote – we could be losing out on good candidates, which is a pain.

  26. EvilQueenRegina*

    The other side of this is, they could be doing themselves out of candidates who don’t actually want 100% remote. I don’t like remote that much and wouldn’t apply for anything that was advertised as 100% remote, but if they came right out and said the job was hybrid, I would be fine with that. By claiming it’s all remote, they could lose out on candidates who do want some in person time.

  27. I should really pick a name*

    I wonder if employers who do this have ever run the numbers on how many people turn down the job when they find out they’ve been tricked.

    1. Zee*

      No way they’re self-aware enough to do that, or they wouldn’t behave like this in the first place.

  28. Mimmy*

    Well this was disheartening to read as I prepare my own job search! My options are more flexible, but it depends on what the job is and its physical location. Still, I’m unhappy to see that employers intentionally label an ad as “remote” when it is at least hybrid.

    Alison (or anyone else) – can you offer suggestions to screen for this? (I haven’t read all the comments yet, so apologies if it’s already addressed).

    1. Decidedly Me*

      A few thoughts:

      * Focus on remote-only job sites (weworkremotely.com, remote.co, etc)
      * When looking on another site, try to look at the job posting on the company’s actual website. Due to job site limitations (not actually having a hybrid role option, etc), the most accurate post is by looking direct. This won’t entirely eliminate issues, though, of course
      * Check glassdoor reviews for the company
      * Ask in the very first interview (though I wouldn’t as your first question) if you do apply

    2. Nancy*

      If the posting happens to have a contact name, reach out and ask. If not, confirm expectations when someone contacts you to set up an interview. Out postings are very clear on onsite, hybrid, and remote expectations, but I still rather be asked in the beginning than go through the interview process for no reason.

      In my experience, a lot of glassdoor, indeed, etc postings are outdated, so I would only use the to get ideas of places to consider and then go directly to the company website for the actual posting.

  29. 1-800BrownCow*

    My other favorite….100% remote and then further down in the description you find that you need to be able be available to travel 75% of the time between their 2 facilities on opposite coasts. Yeah….remote in that you don’t have an actual office, however you’re hardly ever working from home.

    1. Liz*

      I know “remote” usually ends up being working from home (or a coffee shop, wherever), but I don’t assume the terms are interchangeable.

  30. VP of Monitoring Employees’ LinkedIn and Indeed Profiles*

    Might some employers lie about remote work in order to artificially inflate the number of applicants for “diversity” purposes? (“See? We interviewed 10 Klingons , 7 Daleks, and 5 Minbari. This shows how committed we are to an inclusive workplace.”)

    1. Liz T*

      Possibly? But wouldn’t it be WORSE for their DEI numbers if they showed that they interviewed a lot of BIPOC candidates, but hired none of them? The usual defense is, “We want to hire differently, but look at our candidate pool! We can’t make people apply.”

  31. Unkempt Flatware*

    We’ll soon start seeing employers complaining about people like me who take a job going, “yeah, yeah, sure, sure I’ll move to your city within the year so I can work in the office (for no good reason at all)” and never intend to. Sucks but it is what it is.

  32. Zee*

    I get pretty tired of employers saying “well there’s no hybrid category on the job site, so it’s not our fault we lied to you and claimed it was remote.” If you have to go to the office, whether it’s one day a week or 5, it’s an in-person role. And then you can indicate in the posting title, something like “Llama Groomer HYBRID” and make it clear in the job description what the expectation is for how often you’re in the office so that there is no chance of accidental misunderstanding or purposeful bait-and-switch. It’s really not that complicated.

    1. Snarktini*

      I continue to be dismayed by listings that just…don’t address it at all. It’s completely unclear what the work setup/location is, like that isn’t the one piece of info everyone is trying to sort out (after money)! We all know it’s confusing and it may not be a simple as checking a filter box, but literally all you have to do is spell it out in words. This is what we expect, now and later. Why are companies so bad at this?!

    2. pancakes*

      It does seem like a really weak excuse. If the tools aren’t fit for purpose, they need to find better ones to use. Particularly if they’re paying for the listings.

      1. Dawn*

        Right like, “This site doesn’t actually allow us to list jobs as hybrid!”

        Then stop using that site. And maybe send them a brief email sketching out why they won’t be getting your job listing dollars moving forward.

        They have zero imperative to change if y’all just grumble and put up with it and keep paying them.

        1. pancakes*

          Yes. And technically this does not seem like a complex tool to build at all. In corporate litigation there are often teams of people working on coding enormous sets of documents, millions of pages, often using fairly sophisticated AI algorithms running in the background of the app that trains the system to improve itself while using it. When a team needs a new button or drop-down menu, they have the vendor add one to the coding panel, and run some tests to be sure it works properly – they don’t just muddle along miscategorizing everything.

    3. Liz T*

      Prexactly. Most aspects of a job don’t have a checkbox on the job site–that’s why you also write a job description, with WORDS.

  33. I'm Just Here For The Cats!*

    even before the pandemic I found quite a few “remote” jobs that were either
    1. not remote if you lived in that city
    2. Remote, advertised in my state but then were not actually open for people who did not live in the state the company was in (so many were California!)
    3. Not truly remote.

    I think that the pandemic has just made this worse and that everyone is hoping on the remote bandwagen and think that the potential employee is going to “love” the job so much that they will overlook and not care that they are not getting the remote benefits

    1. Dawn*

      “Remote unless you’re local” is just bizarre to me. I saw that today for a job that was “Remote unless you live in the GTA” – the Greater Toronto Area.

      The GTA comprises more than 7,000 km² and 15% of the population of the country. Nobody in Burlington is going to apply to drive to your office 100km away every day.

  34. Jess*

    It doesn’t explain when employers remain vague when asked directly, but I do think the limitations of job search sites play a part.

    The one I’ve used has a “work from home” category, but not a hybrid option, or a way to filter where the physical location of the WFH employer is. (For instance, I’d have liked to be able to filter for jobs where it was WFH but the office is in my city.)

  35. Pascall*

    Yup I’m trying desperately to search for a fully remote position and the number of openings even on LinkedIn (who SPECIFICALLY has tags for Remote, Hybrid, and On-Site) in the wrong category is absolutely mind-blowing.

    It’s super discouraging and makes the job search unnecessarily more difficult. I definitely commiserate with others in the same position as me really looking to ditch the office commute for any reason.

  36. Brett*

    “Other employers will consider remote work for candidates who aren’t located near their office—but if you are, you’ll be expected to come in every day.”
    I’m finding this to be extremely common in my field. If you are near the office, then you get hybrid. If not, you get remote. What’s even worse is that this is often because they need the hybrid people to take on “office” tasks to support the remote people.

  37. Retired Lady*

    Last week I had a problem with my home wifi acting weird. I looked up Down Detector and saw that many, many other people were reporting the same thing and that they were given estimates of DAYS, not hours, before it would be fixed, and they needed it to work from home. Now I’m retired so it was just an annoyance to me, but what do people and companies do in this situation? Does it make a difference if the job is all graciously approved WFH or if your company reluctantly lets you do it? What if you live too far to get to the office? Losing a few hours of work (and/or pay) is probably no big deal but a couple of days would be.

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      When my ISP has been down in the past, options included:
      1. Work from a nearby fast-casual restaurant (e.g. Panera) or fast-food (e.g. Wendy’s).
      2. Work from a (semi) close relative’s or friend’s home on a different ISP.
      3. Work off my cellular phone’s hotspot feature.
      4. Take PTO.
      5. Go into the office.
      6. Temporally shift my shift (e.g. sleep during the day, work that evening/overnight).

      Of course, all of those alternatives are subject to plausibility.

    2. Maggie*

      At my previous company you had to come into the office or use PTO. However, if possible there are several other options like coffee shop, friends house, personal hot spot, working from your phone.

    3. Zee*

      Well, what do people and companies do when the office internet goes out? They do whatever work they can without internet, and if there’s nothing they can do, they go get coffee.

    4. drinking Mello Yello*

      What if there’s a massive snowstorm and you can’t drive to the office to work for a few days and don’t have the equipment to work from home? There are situations and events that’ll prevent come up that you from being able to work whether you’re based from home or an office.

      1. WillowSunstar*

        You take PTO that day or at least ask the boss if you can take PTO that day. Then spend day watching Netflix and drinking hot cocoa.

    5. OrigCassandra*

      My home router died suddenly mid-pandemic. I used my phone as a hotspot for a couple days while a replacement came my way. Not ideal, but survivable. By some miracle (and UBlock Origin) I didn’t even go over my data limit for the month, which surprised no one more than it did me.

      1. Kayem*

        Oooh, that’s good to know about Ublock Origin, I hadn’t even thought of that. I have it on my browser under my computer’s main account, but hadn’t installed it on any under my local work account.

    6. Nanani*

      What if aliens?
      What if robots took over the company?
      What if bees made a nest in the office?

      A massive wifi outage could affect in person work too. This reads like looking for an excuse to, I dont even know, cry foul about remote work in general?

      1. Kayem*

        I can tell you what happens with the bee nest from experience at an OldJob. First, there’s running and screaming. Then while half the office is cowering in their cars and the other half is clueless, someone tries to call an exterminator, only to be overruled by a manager who absolutely refuses to let any harm come to the bees. She calls the bee removal service and orders a couple flunkies (me and the stoner guy) to stand guard (while being very very still) to make sure no one slips in with a can of Raid. The bees are removed to a new home and everyone is happy.

    7. Cat Mom of 4*

      This happened to me last week! The internet was out in my neighborhood for most of the work day. I kept my supervisor updated and after about an hour and me unable to figure out using my phone as a mobile hotspot, she suggested I head into the office. I live about 20 minutes away and agreed. Definitely felt strange after being work from home since the beginning of Covid. I stuck it out until I was notified that my internet was back up, then headed home. I can do it again in a situation like that, but definitely prefer WFH. Never thought I’d love it when Covid began but I quickly took to it. Now if I look for another job, it needs to be fully remote or at most one day a week for the right role.

    8. Kayem*

      I have a laptop with a 4-10 hour battery life, a backup laptop, a tablet with cell service, and I can use my phone as a hot spot. Even if I couldn’t do all that, I could do paper based work or even read piles of documentation I had already printed, which is no different from when I worked in an office and the power went out. In fact, a couple years ago at an in-office temp job, the building’s power went out and everyone spent the rest of the work day filing, organizing, and cleaning the office.

    9. Unaccountably*

      That’s happened a number of times in the building I work in. We all hang around playing phone games until the company tells us to go home. The people in our west coast office are working from home as we speak because the building’s AC went out, and they’re supposed to be out of the office all week.

      Before we were allowed to work remotely, that would have just been a week the company paid for where no work got done. Now if it happens in the building I can go home and work, and if it happens at home I can use my phone as a wifi hotspot or walk three blocks to Starbucks.

    10. pancakes*

      When we have a wifi issue we call our ISP. It doesn’t happen often, but 95% of the time there’s a recording saying they know there’s an outage in such-and-such area and it will be fixed in x amount of time. A website like Down Detector isn’t going to be in a better position to tell you when service will be restored than your own ISP will. It can be useful when you don’t know whether the problem is an app or website or the wifi itself, but it’s not a substitute for contacting the ISP if you have a wifi problem.

  38. drinking Mello Yello*

    “ the employer told me they would expect me to work from the office two to three days a week and that they posted the job as remote so they could have a bigger pool of applicants.”

    They just really said the thing out loud, didn’t they?

  39. Elizabeth West*

    ARRRRRGGGGGGGHH

    I hate this so much. I LIKE coming into the office most of the time, I’m actually LOOKING for a hybrid role (if I need to work from home in case I test positive, there is 4 feet of snow, etc.), and I’m 100% available to relocate—IF I can start remotely.

    This. Is. Not. That. Hard. What. Do. I. Have. To. Do.

    But as you know, all us applicants are lying liars who lie. And apparently, it’s okay to lie to us.
    Oh, and as if this weren’t bad enough, depending on the job, 3-5 years of experience (or more) is NOT entry-level, y’all. Pay us accordingly!

  40. Fake Old Converse Shoes (not in the US)*

    I have the opposite problem – I have my inbox full of messages of remote opportunities, but the descriptions are vague and the pay is in questionable ways… A.K.A. crypto, Western Union or Venmo. Also, 5 out of 20 in the last three months were from people with Russian and Slavic names, which turns all the alarms on.
    There’s a high chance none of those jobs are real, and at least one sounds like human trafficking, so all the invites go to the trash.

  41. Lemon Basil*

    On the other side: we have some jobs that must be done in person. Think duties like unlocking the doors, working reception and recieving deliveries, sorting and opening mail, providing in-person IT support to teachers and students. The job posting and description will say it’s in person. We’ll confirm the on site nature of the job at the first and second interview. Candidate agrees, we hire candidate.

    Day ONE candidate asks about hybrid/remote opportunities. Line manager confirms the duties require the role to be completed in person. Shortly thereafter the person quits because they want something remote.

    So frustrating, especially when we’ve really tried to be transparent about the nature of the role!

  42. Dawn*

    Yeah, I’ve had to be PAINFULLY up-front in my cover letters and at the beginning of interviews that I am only looking for 100% remote positions.

    I’m medically-vulnerable and there is actually still an ongoing pandemic, I currently HAVE a fully-remote position, and I will not budge, so please don’t waste my time.

  43. DJ*

    Shame about the filters on job sites. But shame on employers that aren’t up front in their adverts!!
    It was like years ago when employers didn’t advertise their location. A friend applied for a job carefully looking up where the company was located which was in the CBD area. When they contacted him they advised its actually in X location which was 2 lengthy train trips from home over 90 mins each way. He naturally said all you had to do was indicate the location in your add, you’ve just wasted my time. What was wrong with saying looking for X position to work in Y location.

  44. Xarcady*

    Definitions of “remote” I have heard in the past few months:
    —Oh, we’re back in the office. Just haven’t had time to revise the ad.
    —Remote work is available after you have worked here for a year and if your manager approves.
    —You can WFH one day a week.
    —We expect all employees to work from home when sick.
    —Remote work is for snow days.

    I really don’t want a commute longer than an hour. I wouldn’t apply to places father away—if their ads were truthful. No way am I doing a 4 hour round trip daily commute.

  45. Kayem*

    We had to move to a far more rural area in another state after the pandemic shut down all the facilities in my field. There is 0.01% chance of finding a replacement job in my field where I live now. I’m not going to move again any time soon and I’m not going to spend two or three hours a day commuting. So the only way I’m ever again going to work in the field I worked so hard to enter in the first place is if the position is remote. Fortunately most (if not all) of my work can be done remotely. Unfortunately, there’s a severe lack of remote opportunities and those that do say fully remote usually end up either being a scam or they want someone in the office most of the week. And this is why I’m working underpaid remote temp gigs with $150k in student loan debt looming over me.

  46. WillowSunstar*

    As someone who is probably on the opposite side of this issue than most because I live in an apartment and cannot always control the noise level around me, I would not want a job that said was remote and actually was remote and not hybrid in some matter. Plus when you are single and live in an apartment, it’s incredible lonely. So there’s more than one reason I would want to be in the office. Even if I only talk to 2 people that day, for less than 5 minutes, it’s 2 more people than I would have talked to in my apartment.

    I agree that the web sites need to update their code to allow for hybrid jobs. Accurate descriptions will mean that they will have happier employees. People who want to weed themselves out can do that easier. Managers who want to weed employees out who won’t be happy will also be able to do so. More accurate listings will be a win/win for everyone involved. Companies need to not do the bait and switch thing and the job listing sites need to help them not do it.

  47. Irina*

    This is as bad as lying on your resume. I would refuse to work for a company who did this. How am I supposed to trust anything they say?

  48. The Witch of Sanity's Annex*

    YES, holy frustrating frustrations, Batman! Before successfully negotiating to keep my current role and move from South of the South to Just About as North as One Can Get in the USA, I did some looking around New City for a remote position as I have been fully (and productively and happily) remote since 2017. Every job listed in a 25 mile radius around New City that was listed as Remote was either actually hybrid or not remote at all. Or in Boston…which is SO not 25 miles from here!

  49. anonymous73*

    I’m so sick of the bait and switch with job postings and recruiters. The remote work is the biggest thing right now, but I’ve also encountered 2 recruiters who reached out to me for Project Manager jobs that also required you to be the team’s personnel manager, one of which was to manage a team of 70! I have zero experience being a manager, so not only am I not be even close to qualified to manage a team of 70, it’s not something I want to do…ever. For both recruiters I explained that it was a deal breaker and they both still insisted I talk to them and then interview. And the personnel manager issue came up multiple times for both. Why is it so hard to understand? Do they think their job will be sooooooo awesome that I’ll suddenly change my mind about the fundamentals of what I want to do? And companies wonder why they can’t find people to work for them…on top of salary and benefits, maybe stop trying to lure people in by lying to them and then wasting their time.

Comments are closed.