Hi! So after graduating, working part time/freelance, and quite some time of job hunting, I’ve come to find myself facing a bit of a dilemma.
Honestly the job market isn’t great, and it’s been hard to find anything I feel personally compatible with, up until about two weeks ago I got a random phone call for a job that seems to hold similar values in terms of ideals.
So here’s what’s happened:
- They asked me to do unpaid labor to show off my skills bc they thought my portfolio was a little short and wanted it by the next day.
- 2 interviews scheduled, first interview was very standard on zoom
- 2nd interview, found myself at their head office, was meant to be an interview with the owner but owner never turned up.
- they had me fill out a form asking all sorts of too personal questions: parent’s jobs, personal marital status, if I was pregnant
- a bit of miscommunication: my salary requested range was above 3k (which I have been told is reasonable for a university graduate) but they somehow heard 2k and told me they couldn’t do 3k because “that’s too expensive” despite liking my work and portfolio presented to them
- they told me they used to outsource a tiny portion of my job scope, by that I mean like 1/3 of it to an external company and paid them 6k for that.
- we discussed possible salary increment, but they would only give me 300$ more at most after a probational period.
- they had 2 job listings up online. During the first interview when I found it, it was set to 4-5k budget. Which I thought “Hey! I’m under budget, surely this will work out.” The second time immediately after the interview my friend found their job listing and they had put 3k to 3.5k. So I’m clearly still within their budget.
The interview and discussion itself went great I think, their brand goals and my personal goals had aligned very well. Only thing aside from salary, I am a little concerned that I will end up working another dead end role where the full breath of my skills and creativity sits stale again in favor of old school traditional methods. And maybe a bit of working in a non-diverse environment as all the employees were Chinese and my previous employers had issues with my third-culture nature (I have been very white washed).
Idk, this whole thing doesn’t sit right with me but I really need a decent paying job to get out of a toxic environment. And my self esteem hasn’t been great either which has been telling me “hey you know if you go with the low pay maybe they wouldn’t hate you as much for messing up”. You know, that whole “pay what you’re worth” thing, but a big part of me still thinks I am deserving of a fair compensation, especially if they want me to step into an eventual leadership role for their future interns.
15 Comme