Worker Denied For A Job Then Re-Offered The Same One With A Different Title & $20k Less Salary
They made it obvious they knew exactly what they were doing.
Prostock-studio | Canva Pro The longer the job market stays a mess, the more it becomes clear that employers are using it to take even more advantage of workers than usual. One man's recent job search experience is a perfect example of the games being played, and the audacity the employer showed is surprising even by today's standards.
A worker was re-offered a job he was denied for, but with a different title and salary.
TikToker Patrick Mazuka works in marketing, and he recently had an experience with the job interview process that kind of says it all. "If anyone's looking for an update on the current state of the job market, do I have an interaction to share with all of you," he said in a video he made on the matter.
StockLite | Canva Pro
It started with a phone call from a recruiter he'd been working with for a while on a great job he was perfect for. He ended up not getting that particular gig, but he'd had a positive experience with the recruiter so he was eager to take the call.
"Today he reached out and he said, 'Hey man, I have this other role at that same company that I think you would be perfect for,' and I said cool, tell me a little bit about it," he explained. And immediately, it started sounding really familiar. But like — REALLY familiar.
The job description was identical, but it came with a $20,000 salary cut.
"He starts describing the role, and it is the exact same role as the one that I had previously interviewed for," Mazuka said. The recruiter was even describing it the same way, almost like he wasn't even trying to hide it.
Mystified, he then decided to ask about the salary range for the position, and of course was given the standard boilerplate. "He described to me that the salary band was very competitive," Mazuka said — except that it was for $20,000 less than when he'd interviewed before.
Naturally, Mazuka became suspicious that this wasn't actually a mistake. "I told him, I'm like, I'm not actively looking, but why don't you send over the job description like you did last time so I can read through it and think about it."
The worker confronted the recruiter about it, and he didn't deny that it was the exact same job.
When Mazuka got the job description, his suspicions were confirmed — it was verbatim identical. He had already pulled up the email job description from the first time he'd interviewed, and "they were the exact same role," he said.
Everything from the description to the requirements was the same — same required number of years of experience, same education level, everything. When Mazuka emailed back asking if the recruiter had sent the wrong job by mistake, he said no. "So he knew," Mazuka said. "He knew."
"I think a lot of companies are trying to suppress wages," one commenter wrote in response to Mazuka's video. Another man described how his employer had just laid off "redundant employees" only to then post their jobs on job boards at $30,000 less. "They know how desperate people are," he said.
All of this is to say that it's not just you — this stuff really is a mess, and employers are out here being as unscrupulous as possible. People thanked Mazuka for talking about it and urged him to post his experience on sites like Glassdoor so that the company's dishonesty would be exposed, which seems like good advice. No one is coming to help us workers but us, so the more we can help each other expose and avoid employers like this, the better. Hang in there.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.