An OMD recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn with an opportunity, the client and the salary for the role. It's very unlike agency recruiters to mention salary upfront like this, but I was interested because it was in my range.
I spoke with the recruiter for 15-20 minutes where she confirmed JD details, and mentioned that her boss would reach out to me with another position he was working on at a sister agency. He reached out and I spoke to him as well-- then I didn't hear from him again for a while.
For the first round on the OMD role, I interviewed with a Director on a different OMD client for 30 mins. The conversation was pleasant. Then I had a separate conversation with the Executive Director, which was fantastic. We talked openly about my interests, needs of certain roles, and what I was looking for salary-wise.
A week or so later, I spoke with another Senior Director and a Managing Director on different account -- both within the same department. I spent 30 minutes with the Sr. Director and an hour with the Managing Director. The conversations were great-- we talked about some really interesting work, nerded out about our areas of expertise, and made plans to tackle a few projects together after I came onboard. I felt fantastic after this discussion.
I got word later that week that the team liked me and I was exactly what they were looking for. The recruiter told me that it would just take some time to get offer details -- something that I didn't bat and eye at, but in retrospect, was a red flag.
Somewhere in between the first conversation that I had with the OMD Director, and this latest conversation with the recruiter, I heard back from this recruiter's manager about an opportunity with the sister agency. The recruiter said that he’d given the C-Suite lead of the discipline my phone number and that she would be in contact with me soon. Almost immediately after she texted to set up a conversation for some roles at her agency.
In the interest of full transparency, I told the C-Suite exec at the sister agency that I was near the end point in interviewing for the role at OMD, and that I expected to get an offer. She sort-of acknowledged that by saying that she'd invite multiple people to our meeting she was scheduling for the sake of efficiency. It didn’t take strong powers of perception to see that she was trying to poach me-- great for my ego, but a political mess for agencies and something that I wanted to avoid. This is something that recruiters at the same company (a manager and their subordinate, no less) should be able to coordinate more proficiently so that the candidate doesn’t have to navigate it themselves.
So again, in the interest of full transparency, I contacted the OMD recruiter and told her that someone from her sister agency was setting up meetings for interviews. She responded quickly to me, asking me to confirm the C-Suite exec’s name. Then about 30 minutes later, the meeting invite from the sister agency was removed from my calendar without notice or note.
Fast-Forward to a week after my final conversation with the OMD recruiter & waiting for the details of my offer: part of the reason why I didn't know the offer details was because the role hadn't been approved by finance. At the end of the day on Friday I got an email from the recruiter with the offer, which was significantly below what she advertised to me when we first spoke on LinkedIn (though the jobs share the same title), significantly below what I had reiterated to her throughout the conversation, and significantly below what I mentioned to the Executive Director.
I wrote back to the recruiter and told her just that. I also told her that I was actively interviewing and had an outstanding offer at the amount that we originally spoke about – all things that were true. I asked her to please counter. She told me that there was nothing that she could do since finance already approved an amount for the role (something I know to be a commonly repeated excuse given my time at agencies – there are always ways to make things work, especially with a newly created role, such as this one). The recruiter ended the note with a snide remark, something to the effect of: “that’s so great to hear that you have other offers, though”.
I was thoroughly disappointed by this interview process—but the biggest bummer was that I was genuinely excited about the role, the work, and the mentorship that I’d receive from the discipline leads that I spoke to during my interview process. I’m writing this review because I want to highlight the talent and interest of the discipline leads, and also to make sure my negative recruiting experience doesn’t get swept under the rug. It’s also worth the time for agency clients to consider the talent they’re paying for when agency recruiters employ this practice. Agency clients want the best talent – but is that possible at their agency if this is a common practice?