I was excited to apply for a position with BetterUp and thought the application process would be easy considering they seem so eager to hire new talent. Almost every single employee has the “We’re Hiring” stamp on their LinkedIn photo or #werehiring in their bio, so automatically it gives the impression that, well, THEY’RE HIRING?
In July I came across a job ad for BetterUp on Indeed. On July 23 I began making connections with BetterUp staff on LinkedIn, because someone from the company told me that they receive thousands of applicants for their open roles. I was really excited about potentially joining the company, so I thought by networking I would increase my chances of getting an interview. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I dedicated hours upon hours into this effort….I was constantly making connections on LinkedIn, applying for open jobs, researching the company, and I even held a couple of phonecalls and video chats with Account Managers that were actually willing to, *gasp*, HELP ME. I was super excited about what they do and considering a couple of their core values are “Courage” and “Grit”, I thought they would appreciate my dedication to getting their attention. Not only that, but several people that I spoke to said that “BetterUp is always looking to hire people that are excited about our product”-which was me.
After about a month, I finally landed an interview. The day of the interview arrives and the recruiter called me 15 minutes late and asked me to put the interview out a few hours. I was willing to do anything for an interview, so pushing out the meeting time was a small price to pay. Fast forward to the interview, he calls me (5 minutes late this time) only to tell me that he has no positions for me, “but maybe another recruiter does”. He recommends that I continue to make connections on LinkedIn and not to give up. And this is my first complaint with BetterUp: The entire company is structured in a way that makes it impossible for one recruiter to know what other recruiters are managing and I even got the impression that they don’t communicate as one department, but rather each individual is basically their own department. The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.
A month or two goes by and I am still making connections, networking and doing everything I was advised to do. I even signed up for an account to receive coaching (imagine how awkward it was to tell my BetterUp Coach that my goal was to get BetterUp to actually respond to my emails). I attempted to connect with the recruiting director and she never accepted my invite, nor did she even respond to my message. And that same goes for several of the people on the recruiting department. They are totally unresponsive, which is incredibly unprofessional, because at this point I had about three different internal referrals for open positions and I’m fairly certain that the recruiters were aware that I was going above and beyond to get a meeting with them.
The last straw for me was when I was invited to have a video chat with a manager at BetterUp. At this point we were in mid-September, so I had been working at this for about two months. During the call we seemed to hit it off and he gave me some recommendations on who to reach out to and he even said he would reach out to the recruiting director and get back to me. Obviously, I did everything he asked me to do and followed up with him the next day, only for him to completely ghost me. I was/am totally in shock. I don’t understand why someone would schedule a video chat with me, hold the meeting, tell me that BetterUp is always looking for people like me, tell me that I’m doing the right thing by networking and putting in the time….only to ghost me? It’s unprofessional. It’s harsh. And it’s completely opposing to what BetterUp claims to be about (“Empathy” being another one of their core values).
Bottom line. It got to a point where I realized that I was putting in hours and hours of effort into a company that wasn’t even willing to take 15 seconds to send me an email to tell me they weren’t interested. And ultimately, who on earth would want to join a team that operates like that? Since giving up on BetterUp, I have applied to other jobs and I’m still experiencing the feeling of shock when they actually respond to my application and treat me like a human being, because that’s something I haven’t experienced in a couple months.
This is just my cautionary tale. I noticed that their sales department is constantly active on LinkedIn, making post after post after post about how great BetterUp is. It’s always a red flag when people are posting/emailing on the weekends and evenings.
