Everything started off wonderfully with the recruiter and my initial interview. It was the holidays so there were some scheduling issues. The second interview also went well. Questions were standard and I felt I had enough time to share my story.
Here is where it starts to take a dive. I did majority of the following up during the entire process. I gave my salary requirements over halfway through since I was not asked and the information was not given at any point so far. It felt unprofessional, but I did my best to answer that question and move on. Then, I was asked to complete an assessment. Done, that’s fine. I wait for the final panel interview which was a month after first contact.
The panel interview begins with each person introducing themselves and discussing their role and essential duties. Normal enough, but it was the language and attitude they used to describe themselves. I just left a toxic work environment and I was willing to look past some of those red flags as I recognized this company needs some help because they grew the business without a scalable plan in place; effectively creating a working environment that would be hard for anyone to be successful in. Most of the conversation revolved around creating stability, standardizing training and other processes, and opening up to more collaboration company-wide.
I spent many hours researching the company and employees I would work directly with, so when I asked them my questions, I could tell they weren’t being forthcoming with all of their answers. I am not going to avoid asking red flag questions, but they just didn’t want to answer them. Afterwards, the tone of the meeting changed. At the start of the interview, the feeling was stuffy and untrusting. By the end, there was no respect and a lot of superficial interaction.
The worst part- they ghosted me! That much time and effort into their process to not receive an email at the very least. I did follow up as I had throughout the entire process with no response.
Employees today deserve as much information as possible to make a quality decision. Timber Dental was rude and disrespectful. Initially, I wasn’t going to say anything, but they were at fault.
I dodged a bullet!!! Hopefully I learned my lesson- no job is worth ignoring the red flags.