Went through two rounds of interviews with their IT Team, and they absolutely were loving me the entire time. Since I had been with my current company for so long, they asked me directly if I was going to make a counter-offer to my current employers. Since I believe in honesty and transparency, I told them "Yes, I am going to do that" and things move on from there normally.
They make me an offer over the phone and stated I could move forward with the forms for the background check. Then a few days later, the background check comes through perfectly fine. The HR person tells me this, but was very insistent in asking if I was able to confirm the start date, trying to get me to hard commit to it. I decided in the interest of transparency that I was going to remind them of what I said in the interview, that I will make that offer to my current employer, but I advised them that I doubted they would match it. The HR person informed me this was fine and asked if I was available for "next steps." I wasn't at the time as I was busy that entire Friday, but took down callback information.
An hour later, when I am in no position to call them back, I received an email. It stated "We contacted you on [that Friday I took the HR phone call], and 'with additional information,' we are rescinding our offer." The soonest I was able to reach out to them about this was on Saturday, but no one was available. I finally got a hold of them the following Monday and confirmed my suspicions; They had rescinded the offer of employment because I "didn't seem as interested as they thought" I was. When I asked if they had remembered I had said I would make the offer with my employer in the interview, apparently the manager had "not recalled this." No call, no discussion. That was that.
My personal opinion on this? I was essentially punished for being honest and open with them. Whether or not I had TOLD them that I was going to make that offer to my current employee, I was still going to do it. But because I told them the truth, they decided that wasn't the type of person they wanted there. That makes me strongly question what sort of company culture I was going to enter into if my potential colleagues had been selected through a process that strongly incentivizes lying and sweet talking.
Not only that, in retrospect, it also makes me wonder about what caused this strong of a reaction to rescind the offer without negotiating or talking it through. Is this also an indication that perhaps there was some insecurity about the pay rate and being able to compete with someone else? The pay was good for me, but it makes me wonder.
On top of all this, I never got the offer letter. The "next steps" that I could not get to until later included HR drafting up the official letter. They told me that I could still try and get a counter-offer from my employer, but because they had already declined me, I would never receive any physical proof that the offer had been made in the first place.
Truth be told, I can understand if the tone of this might come off bitter, and there is a small part of me that is, but a stronger part of me feels that this was a great red flag to be aware of out of the gate. I have to agree with many of my professional friends and colleagues on the subject: Even if they apologized and made the offer again, I would still decline them, since now I have a small inkling of what I just luckily avoided.
