I applied to a Level 2 opening in March. Recruiter reached out in late May saying I would be a good fit for Level 3 and scheduled call for the following week. Met via Teams with two section managers and the director of R&D (40 mins). A week later, met with the VP of Product Development & Quality via Teams (20 mins). Recruiter asked for my feedback on the call (weird question), and I said I was still interested. A few days later, she told me I was selected for a job offer. A week after that, she read the offer to me via teams and gave me three days to decide.
The offer was disappointing. I have 5 years of relevant experience and a bachelors degree in a scientific discipline. They dropped me from Level 3 to Level 2 without discussion. I found the $65k offer to be unfairly low and they would not negotiate, citing current team member salaries. I was offered a $3000 signing bonus, presumably to cover the restrictive non-compete agreement. I want to highlight that this non-complete will prevent any employee from working in the cosmetic/pharma industries for 12 months, anywhere Blistex products are sold. When I asked for relocation assistance, they claimed that the signing bonus was meant to offset relocation. There was no room for negotiation on any topic.
I felt embarrassed and angry listening to the job offer on camera. It quickly soured my experience with Blistex. It is concerning to me that a company would decline to negotiate in any way with the person they claimed was their top candidate, and then, seemingly, lie about the signing bonus purpose. Would love to hear what local candidates are offered in terms of signing bonus. I hope they become more upfront about the lack of relocation assistance when scheduling interviews with out of state candidates in the future.