A nine-week (ongoing) job application has turned into a shitshow. Not sure how I should handle it...

Bullmaestro
Tue, 17 Jun 2025 18:52:27 +0000

As some of you on here may know, I was made redundant from my Assistant Commercial Reporting Analyst job three months ago and have been struggling to find permanent work since. Many of my interactions with recruiters and hiring managers have been negative and have felt like they were wasting my time, but one particular (ongoing) experience has taken the cake.

In mid-April, I applied for an Assistant Client Accountant position through LinkedIn. The role was with a large property management and building consultancy firm (offices based in the UK & France), who have some pretty big-name clients. Fully office-based, advertised pay between £25k - £29k (already similar payscales to what credit control and purchase ledger roles near me are offering), and the position ideally asked for fully AAT qualified or ACCA part-qualified candidates (I have full AAT membership, am 3 exams into my ACCA, and have over 6 years experience in previous accounting and financial reporting roles.)

Nine weeks later, I am still going through this application process which has been nothing short of a shitshow:

It has taken multiple weeks to schedule and conduct interviews for each stage, due to unanswered emails and heavily delayed responses from both the Finance and HR teams. I had emailed on nine separate occasions to schedule the the second and third stage interviews I was invited to, and only twice did I get replies. At first I was told it was due to staff sickness, but then the trend of replying in business weeks just kept going on, even after the third-stage (which I'll get to.)

The first stage interview was a 15 - 30 minute phone interview going through my CV and salary expectations. Stages 2 and 3 involved a series of hour-long competency based interviews, one conducted via Teams and the other in-person with the Head of Finance. This is already a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through for an office-based role with this salary level.

During the third-stage interview (3rd June) I was asked a lot of supervisory/leadership questions which I honestly didn't expect. It made me question whether I was being interviewed for the correct role, so I checked the job description of what I applied for. Only 4 of the 590 words contained within the job advert even alluded to me leading junior colleagues - so maybe it was easily missed?

On the 5th June (two days after my third-stage interview), I received an email from HR thanking me for accepting the Client Accountant position and asking me to confirm RTW (right-to-work) details. The thing is... I never received an offer letter, and after immediately chasing this up I found out the email was sent to me by mistake. This HR rep apologized and said they'd chase feedback. I emailed twice to chase this feedback and promised it would be coming.

Today when I emailed again to chase feedback, the HR advisor responded to raise concerns about the salary expectations I communicated in the first stage, insisted the role actually paid £26k at most and asked me to confirm a salary within their range. This is false (I know, I actually double-checked the job ad and even did a screen recording on my mobile of me going into the LinkedIn app and opening the job posting) and I get the impression that they're now trying to lowball me. I emailed again asking for clarification where I linked the job ads and I get the feeling they confused the salary bands with a Purchase Ledger role I applied for several months prior but was not considered for.

I will find out Monday (after nearly three weeks) if I was successful in my application, but even if they offer me the job at a reduced salary rather than outright reject me, I am already seeing a shitload of red flags.

At this point I've had enough. Normally I'd cut my ties and move on but with how desperate I've been for work and how much I feel like this company has taken me for a ride, I feel the need to take things further. Not sure whether I should (or even could) formally raise a complaint, drop some negative feedback on their Glassdoor page, or go public (with receipts) and openly name & shame the company on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. The latter options feel like I'd be going nucelar and as cathartic as it would be, I'm worried it would be seen as unprofessional and hurt my future job prospects.

What would be the best way to proceed?

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