4y
Hi Simon,
Firstly please accept my apologies that you had had a negative experience during the interview process.
Having been close to your process myself throughout, I was surprised to read your feedback, and having investigated today, I think I have a good view of what has happened.
As you mention, during your first two interviews, it was established that your experience would best sit within a certain band in our structure. This band has a max salary cap that was some way below your expectations.
We were keen to work with you, so at this stage the recruiter had a couple of conversations with you to relay our views on level, what that means in terms of salary, and to establish if there was a salary that we might be able to stretch to that would work for you commercially.
In those conversations, it's possible that phrases such as "the max we could offer" or "maximum proposed offer" were used, but at no point was our intention to indicate a formal offer and I can only apologise if anything said at this point led you to believe we were at formal offer stage.
At this point the intention was to provide clarity and transparency around our salary bands / levels and make it clear that we would be unlikely to be able to offer at a level that was appealing.
When we agree to make a formal offer to a prospective new hire, we must seek approval at partner level from within our parent organisation, which is followed by a formal offer letter, and afterwards a contract. We clearly set that process out at the point we reach it, so that everyone is aware of the timescales and checkpoints.
It should therefore be very clear when we are making a formal offer to someone, as opposed to talking theoretically about what any future offer might look like.
At this stage in your process, I personally sought partner approval to potentially pay a sizeable % over the salary limit for the grade, in order to work with you. However, we naturally wanted you to meet with the Head of the Architecture practice in order to make sure he felt you were a good fit, and vice versa, before we proceeded.
I can understand how a proposed third interview would feel strange to you if you felt you had already been offered a job, but from our perspective, we were not at offer stage at this point.
I'd very much like to speak to you to understand where in the process you formed the impression that we had made a formal offer, incase there are lessons that we can learn for future.
If that's something you would be open to, you can reach me via your recruitment contact. I will also email you directly incase that is easier.
Best Regards,
David Otter
Head of Talent