More than half of workers say they've faced a ‘bait-and-switch' in the hiring process: ‘This is a flaming red flag'

Last year, Alexis Byrd started a new job she was really excited for.

Byrd, who lives in Detroit, landed an HR job in the logistics space. Though the job was remote, she was asked to commute an hour into the office for her first week of onboarding.

No big deal, Byrd thought — she was greeted at the office with flowers and welcoming colleagues.

By her third day, however, her manager told her she would actually be expected to commute into the office three times a week. Not only that, Byrd was to drive to the company's two other worksites twice a week, which would add about two hours of driving to her daily commute.

"It was kind of crazy," Byrd, 29, tells CNBC Make It. "I was overwhelmed."

Byrd tried to bring up her remote-work agreement with her manager to get clarity. "She had said, 'Sometimes things change, and you need to be flexible'," Byrd recalls. "It was kind of a brush-off."

Byrd ended up sticking it out for two months — it was a great opportunity, she liked her coworkers and she could see herself growing there. "But in the back of my mind, it was gnawing at me that I'd been lied to," Byrd says. "I was deceived in taking this opportunity, especially when I was transparent upfront" about needing flexible work. On top of that, she says her responsibilities changed, and she was taking on more work than expected.

"So I finally made the decision to leave," she says.

In a tough job market where candidates are exhausted by competition, AI systems and return-to-office battles, it's becoming more common for people to start a new job only to realize it's not quite the one they agreed to.

More than half, 53%, of U.S. workers said they faced "bait-and-switch" tactics while being hired for a new job, where the job responsibilities advertised during the interview process "differed significantly" once they started their role, according to a survey of 2,900 global workers from Greenhouse, the hiring platform.

And despite increasing pay transparency efforts, some 42% of U.S. job-seekers say the originally advertised salary for a job opening changed after multiple rounds of interviews, according to the report.

Why companies bait-and-switch job candidates

Experiencing a bait-and-switch during job interviews is a frustrating candidate experience and highlights one of the many breakdowns in today's hiring process, says Jon Stross, president and co-founder of Greenhouse.

For the most part, these experiences say more about the hiring team than you as a candidate, he says. And for better or worse, it's probably not done with bad intent.

"What frequently happens is, in the rush to get going with hiring, [companies] just grab a job description from a past job, or maybe they go online and they find a job at a different company and they copy it," Stross says.

But once they start interviewing candidates, teams better understand the role they're hiring for and what skills they need, he says, "and so by the time they actually go to make the hire, the job itself has changed from what that initial job posting was."

If that sounds like a bad strategy, you're right. "Whenever I'm talking to friends who are looking for jobs and are like, 'Wow, these companies are acting totally irrationally,' my general [response] is, 'yes,'" Stross says. "It's usually chaos on the inside."

For the most part, employers can generally change the scope of a job during the interview process or even after hiring, says Sahara Pynes, a labor and employment partner at Fox Rothschild LLP in Los Angeles. It's become a hot-button topic as big companies like Amazon, Dell and Walmart have beefed up their RTO policies, sometimes requiring remote employees to either relocate or be let go.

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"Generally speaking, most jobs are at-will," she says, and "the terms and conditions of your employment can change at any time, with or without notice, at the company's sole discretion. Then it's up to the employee whether they want to work under those conditions."

That being said, to change the parameters of a job a few days in, like in Byrd's situation, "seems like a huge misrepresentation" on the company's part, Pynes says. "That would be a big red flag about the credibility of the company."

You may have some recourse if a company changes your compensation, like the amount you're paid in commissions and bonuses, but "that needs to be in writing," Pynes says. "If it's an oral promise or if it's all discretionary, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on," she adds.

How to confront a bait-and-switch job interview

As far as confronting the experience as a job candidate, Stross says your best defense is to ask plenty of questions throughout the hiring process. "Get clarification about what the job is," he says. "If you ask, 'What does it look like to really succeed in this job?' It's a good question that both shows your interest and also helps you get clarification."

And trust your gut if things feel off early in the application process. Weston Davis, 35, an SEO marketing professional in San Francisco, applied to a marketing and communications job earlier this year. By the time he got a confirmation email for an interview, he noticed the job description included in the prep materials was different from the one he applied to.

"That rose some alarm bells," Davis says. He went into the interview with his guard up and confirmed that the role they were actually interviewing him for was a customer service job in sales.

Davis declined to move forward after the interview.

"If they change the job description on you, you could attend the interview just for education's sake, but at the end, you should do what I did and say, 'I'm not interested,'" Davis says. "This is not a normal red flag — this is a flaming red flag."

He also cautions job-seekers to be aware of job scams and other scenarios that prey on people in precarious financial situations.

Speaking from experience, Byrd adds, "I would tell people to always be vocal and not to second guess yourselves." Advocate for yourself in a conversation with the recruiter or hiring manager about what was discussed in early stages and get clarification about why things changed.

If a job changes after you're hired

If you can't walk away from a job that changes after you're hired, Byrd advises having a conversation to re-align expectations and revisit your compensation. "That doesn't mean you have to be like, 'I need $10,000 more in my salary,' but maybe there's something else that you want that is valuable," she says, like additional vacation time or a more flexible schedule.

If you were hired in a lower level and salary range, but you're doing the work of someone more senior, "then your salary needs to be recalibrated," she says.

Byrd is now a talent acquisition specialist at a new company that requires her to be in-office once a week, and she happily accepted the arrangement since they were transparent about it from the start.

During interviews, she paid special attention to their level of communication and how they treated her throughout. "Everyone spoke about their development in the company," Byrd says. "They spoke about the culture. The interview panel was diverse. And so I just knew it would be a great opportunity."

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