The mystery of "remote" job listings that aren't actually remote...
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Amid the boom in remote working spurred by pandemic closures two years ago, job seekers are encountering a frustrating phenomenon: jobs advertised as “remote” when they really aren’t.
To the extreme and understandable frustration of job seekers, it’s become quite common for candidates to see a job posting for a role that claims to be remote, apply, confirm in the first contact that they’re looking for 100 percent remote work, and go through several rounds of interviews, only to find out late in the process that the employer actually wants them to come in one or two days a week or even more. Here are some typical accounts from job seekers who have written to me:
• “I’m now in talks with an exciting company that sells a service that is entirely up my street. The role seems very exciting. When the internal recruiter contacted me, the first thing I said was, ‘It sounds great, but is it remote? Otherwise it’s not what I’m looking for.’ She checked internally and told me that it was possible to work entirely remotely. Now I’m about to have my third interview with them (tomorrow) and the company has hinted that I’d need to be in the office twice a week. I can’t see why they would have gone ahead with my application knowing this, as it’s wasting both their time and mine!”
• “When I was job hunting this happened so many times. I’d tell a recruiter I was looking for remote and find out at interview that they’re actually planning to go back to the office full-time. I’d be told in the first and second interview that remote was fine then be rejected in the third because I wasn’t willing to travel to the office three days a week (90-minute journey each way in one case). I’d open a remote vacancy and they’d admit in the fine print that it was actually hybrid. One careers website, *80%* of the remote vacancies were actually hybrid. Please, companies, just stop wasting everybody’s time.”