The interview process started off well. They brought me in for 3 in-person interviews with members of various teams. The interviews were pretty standard. They asked me multiple questions about my past experience as well as things that I would be comfortable doing in this new role. Everyone I met was nice and the interview process was smooth. It seemed like a good place to work and I was excited to join the team. I received a phone call with a verbal offer the day after my last interview. This is where everything went downhill.
The salary they offered was low, so naturally I asked for a higher salary, to which they refused to even negotiate. I then said I would have to think about it. They told me that they would move on if I didn't get back to them within 2 weeks. I called my contact back 6 days later and again tried to negotiate for a higher salary, although this time I significantly lowered the salary I asked for. I also said that I would be accepting the offer regardless but I wanted to be sure the salary couldn't be slightly higher. He said he would speak to his boss about it. He called me back later that day to say that the 1 person who could approve a higher salary was out of the office for the week and that they would contact me when they were back in the office.
After this call, one of my references called me to "congratulate" me on my new position. My reference said he wasn't sure if he should be congratulating me though because the person who reached out to him from Rutgers said that I wasn't going to accept the offer because the salary was too low. I thought it was extremely unprofessional that my contact would share private information like this with my references. I reached back out to my Rutgers contact who didn't pick up. I thought that was strange but I waited another week before contacting my contact again. He didn't pick up. He continued to dodge my phone calls and emails for almost 2 weeks before finally calling me again. He said that they went with another person because I had apparently waited too long to give them my decision. I said that I had accepted their offer less than a week after they gave it to me. He acknowledged that I had accepted the offer and said that me waiting plus asking for a higher salary played a part in them deciding to rescind my offer. I was kind of stunned that they kept me in the dark for so long to buy themselves times to find a replacement for me.
Lesson learned. If you're applying for a full-time position at Rutgers - the number at the lowest end of the band in the job posting is the salary you will be offered, don't try to negotiate with Rutgers whatsoever, and accept their first offer immediately or they will pull it from underneath you. What started out as a pleasant and relatively painless interview process quickly turned into a nightmare.
