Is it a bad idea to tell a recruiter that you have another offer and you don't really have one?
These days companies are making candidates wait weeks for an offer decision so that they can interview more people. Is it a bad idea to tell them that you have another offer to prevent this even if you don't really have another offer?
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Discussion
(5 comments)- 3
4 months agoStaff Eng @ Google, Ex-Meta SWE, Ex-Amazon SDM/SDEIs it bad to lie to manipulate them? I mean, I do think that interviewing and negotiation is a sort of information warfare, but outright lying… if they found out somehow later and fired you, would saving those two weeks be worth it?
I would say the same about pay. You don’t need to tell them what you get paid, but that’s different than lying and saying you get paid 40% more than you do.
- 04 months agoEntry-Level Software Engineer [OP]Taro Community
It sounds like the main concern is that I will be caught one day.
How would any company find out that I didn't really have another offer after they hired me? They can ask for evidence before sending an offer, but I don't have to send it or tell them the company. That wouldn't be enough to conclude that I didn't really have another offer.
I know this isn't 100% ethical, but I am sure that the multi-billion (or trillion) dollar companies were not concerned about ethics when they did mass layoffs, labeled employees as "low performers", rescinded offers, forced RTO after promising remote work, pay millions of low level workers minimum wage, and so many other things. I think TCS or some other consultancy even got caught committing fraud with H1B visas.
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4 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroFighting fire with fire just leads to both of you being on fire. I know that late-stage capitalism kind of sucks, but the elasticity of talent in the US in particular is why engineers are paid so well.
But even ignoring the ethical angle, the risk/reward isn't worth it. There are indeed companies that will ask for hard proof of your competing offer. I literally had that happen to me with my 1st job at PayPal as PayPal/eBay ask for competing offer letters. If you don't produce it, they'll assume you're lying and kick you out of the loop. You could also get blacklisted from the company forever alongside other connected companies.
Back when I was at Course Hero, we had a talented engineer interview with us. The experience was great on sides, so we extended them an offer. They accepted it, shopped it around, and took a higher offer a few days before they would have started (i.e. they reneged us, another form of lying). Our head recruiter blacklisted them from the company forever and told all his other recruiter friends to never hire this person.
Lying is very dangerous as companies obviously don't want to hire dishonest people. If you're earlier-in-career, you want to build your reputation in the overall hiring sphere, not diminish it.
- 24 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
I definitely would not claim to have an offer if you don't have one.
Instead, can you remain vague but still apply pressure on the company? This gets you the same outcome without any of the potential reputational damage. Something like:
I really need to make a decision by the end of next week. I have a few other companies I'm considering and I'd like to either end those interviews or schedule them.
This is just an example; there are countless hypotheticals you can create as a reason why you need an answer.
Another reason could be that you are embarking on a major work project, and therefore, you need clarity on the offer so you can plan accordingly. This has the dual benefit of signaling that you care about your current team (i.e. you're a good colleague) while also showing that you won't be strung along.
Some good commentary here on a related question: Recruiter saying they will wait & interview more before making an offer - What to do?
- 04 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
These days companies are making candidates wait weeks for an offer decision so that they can interview more people.
This is unfortunately a byproduct of the current economic conditions, especially for more junior engineers as there are so many ultra-talented, laid-off junior/mid-level engineers in the market.
On top of having leverage (i.e. a competing offer), the other lever is just to be better at interviewing. How interviews usually work is that there are "Yes" and "Strong Yes" votes:
- In the past, you didn't need any "Strong Yes" to get an offer - Back at Meta in the non-terrible economy, we extended offers to candidates with only "Yes" or who even had a few "Weak Yes" on their panels all the time.
- Nowadays, you need minimum 1 "Strong Yes" vote to get an offer, especially at top companies like FAANG and FAANG-adjacent.
- All that being said, companies will still extend an offer immediately to someone with majority "Strong Yes" votes. I know several engineers in the Taro community who pulled that off.
Be the candidate that gets "Strong Yes". If you strive to do that, you'll naturally get competing offers as well.
For a junior engineer to get "Strong Yes", I recommend amping up your behavioral performance as junior engineers traditionally struggle heavily there: [Course] Master The Behavioral Interview As A Software Engineer
