# Employer Rescinds Job Offer **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 8, 2015, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303 "2015-08-08T09:28:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303/181 "2015-08-14T18:19:12Z")
I would have accepted it, based on the fact it would then be much easier to find a better job. It’s always easier to get a job if you have one. ---
**Author:** ![BeeGee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5a626/32.png) [@BeeGee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeeGee)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303/182 "2015-08-14T19:45:53Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > All I can say is that doesn’t match my personal experience, either being hired or on the hiring committee. > > In my opinion, a phone call from the person who did the interview, or from the team leader where the new hire will be working, is a much warmer way to welcome someone to the group. Well, but in a DOD funded agency, warm is nice and all, but legality comes first. So HR receives resumes, does the citizenship and education scan, and then forwards the qualifying resumes to the hiring department. They do their interviews and tell HR which candidate they’d like to extend an offer to. HR completes the background check, does a couple of other screens, gets valid school transcripts, etc., and then IF everything checks out, extends an offer. After the order is accepted formally, THEN the department is notified and can extend their warm welcome. Usually we do this with breakfast tacos the first day. Personally, I’m grateful for this process. We were about to hire a woman a few years back who turned out to have lied about her service discharge. Later events proved that she was clinically batshit insane, so we dodged a bullet (or knife, as the case turned out) there. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303/183 "2015-08-14T19:51:10Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I would have accepted it, based on the fact it would then be much easier to find a better job. It’s always easier to get a job if you have one. I’m not sure that it would have been easier to find something better. You’d have to work at least a reasonable amount of time at that place before looking elsewhere (as I noted above, short-timers are not generally viewed favorably), but if the job didn’t actually last very long (see j666 above), now you’ve got a short stint on your resume to explain. Reasonable hiring managers can understand short stints, but at too many companies, the applicants are screened first by somebody in HR who sees “short stint = Big Risk,” and the application gets tossed before it can ever land on the desk of somebody who cares. To my mind, accepting this job could end by making it more difficult to find something better later. When combined with the sleazy bait-and-switch tactics, I still think the OP dodged a bullet. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303/184 "2015-08-15T00:36:44Z")
> [@BeeGee](#): > > … We were about to hire a woman a few years back who turned out to have lied about her service discharge. Later events proved that she was clinically batshit insane, so we dodged a bullet (or knife, as the case turned out) there. You just want to watch us beg, right? Okay. Oh, please tell us the rest of the story, oh please oh please oh please oh please. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303/185 "2015-08-15T02:46:45Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > I’m not sure that it would have been easier to find something better. You’d have to work at least a reasonable amount of time at that place before looking elsewhere (as I noted above, short-timers are not generally viewed favorably), but if the job didn’t actually last very long (see j666 above), now you’ve got a short stint on your resume to explain. > > Reasonable hiring managers can understand short stints, but at too many companies, the applicants are screened first by somebody in HR who sees “short stint = Big Risk,” and the application gets tossed before it can ever land on the desk of somebody who cares. > > To my mind, accepting this job could end by making it more difficult to find something better later. When combined with the sleazy bait-and-switch tactics, I still think the OP dodged a bullet. So, you’re saying a short stint is worse than no experience at all, and not having a job?:dubious: ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303/186 "2015-08-15T04:05:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > So, you’re saying a short stint is worse than no experience at all, and not having a job?:dubious: Yes, a short stint that makes it harder to find a long-term position is worse than no position. In my particular niche of a career, for example, many of the positions are in government. If you left a government position after three or four or six months, the **automatic** assumption of many hiring managers is that you flunked probation (failed to complete the mandatory probationary period for a permanent civil service position). If you flunked probation, that means you are either grossly incompetent or have such a difficult personality that your manager couldn’t deal with you. That’s serious baggage to be toting into your next job interview, and it’s baggage that somebody with no experience at all simply doesn’t have. Even in the private sector, there’s a tendency among HR types to believe that somebody whose sole job experience lasted only a few months has some major flaws, and that they were either fired or quit in lieu of termination (or are on the verge of being terminated). That’s why many people are uncertain even whether to list a short stint job on their resume, precisely because of the negative connotations thereof (see, e.g., the [recent thread right here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=764884)), and it’s [pretty](http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2011/03/21/should-you-include-a-short-term-job-on-your-resume) [common](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9965/is-it-ok-to-leave-very-short-term-employment-off-my-resume) [advice](http://www.theladders.com/career-advice/how-to-short-term-jobs-resume) [from](http://www.livecareer.com/jobs-tips/how-to-handle-short-term-jobs-on-your-resume) career advisers not to list any jobs that lasted less than six months, or at least to be very careful how you do so. A job that supposedly gives you experience, but can’t/shouldn’t be listed on your resume or requires careful explanations to get it on there, doesn’t add much if anything to your resume. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2015, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303/187 "2015-08-15T10:16:07Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > So, you’re saying a short stint is worse than no experience at all, and not having a job?:dubious: Yes, especially if it was at a company with a bad reputation. Some hiring managers will not consider candidates that have worked at certain companies, arguing that the candidate may have “picked up bad habits”, or that “if s/he can’t even make it there, s/he must be really incompetent”, or “I don’t want the regulators to come in here and see a bunch of people from Company-They-Just-Fined-Millions-and-Put-Under-Consent-Decree”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/employer-rescinds-job-offer/727303.md?page=9)