Game playing on the job search

If this email were coming from a potential date rather than a potential employer, I would say that he looked like the abusive, controlling type.

1. Baseless accusation: "I just saw that you also missed interviewing with two people who were on your original list of people to interview with... I would be reassured if you finished your original set of interviews."

What interviewee decides just to not go to interviews? One of the interviewers stayed home that day, but he never suggested that I had to make a phone appointment with the interviewer. Perhaps he forgot about that, but there's no way he could misunderstand and think that I missed meeting with two of the interviewers.

2. Failure to give the benefit of the doubt: at my interview, about 30 minutes into it, he said that he didn't take me seriously before meeting, so he just assigned me to random people. "We'll have to bring you back," he said, in order to meet people who might be better research mentor matches.

3. Stinginess. When I wrote to let him know that I'd be in the neighborhood (well, within a 1 hour flight of them) at a given time frame, he said he wasn't sure whether he would have funding for a position yet, but that I was welcome to come, although he could not pay for me to come. As if it would be reasonable for an interview candidate to pay for their own trip for a position that might not even exist!

4. Expecting "proof" of interest: "I like and respect you but am not yet convinced that we are a match and don't know how you feel about it, but would be reassured if you met more people and foundsome more kinship and also finished your original set of interviews. But it also, of course, depends on how you felt about us."

I should pay a few hundred of my own money in order to interview for a job? You must be joking.


Of course it's a nice location. It's the only position so far where I wouldn't have to go an hour away in order to socialize, which is why I didn't just tell him to shove it.

I told him that I'm still interested in the position although I already have an offer that I'm interested in, that he was mistaken about my missing interviews, reminded him about the interviewer not coming in, and I'd be happy to make as many phone appointments as he thinks would be useful, but he shouldn't interpret my not visiting at my own expense as lack of interest in the job. I couldn't afford the ticket, nor could I ask the other employer to pay for an open-mouth ticket, and had already taken many unpaid days, and (perhaps this was overkill, but it's completely true) I also chose not to go to a friend's funeral which happened to be in the same city at the same time as my additional interviews would have been, for similar reasons.

But, wow, I always know just how doomed a cause is when I feel like I have to get all defensive just because the other party is a complete bastard.