Currently, I’m trying to change jobs to be closer to family. I’m in my 50’s and have 30 years of post-baccalaureate experience. I have a master's degree, a teaching certificate and several years of teaching both at the high school and college levels.
Take note that this company does not require a teaching license, so any of my work experiences would be of value to their students, who come for one-on-one customized learning.
So my encounter with Fusion began with the company pro-actively approaching me for an initial interview. I passed this gate. Next, I had to prepare and give a lesson to an actual student, which went well. However, they immediately sent me a rejection later explaining “we had many highly qualified applicants.” Really? I thought the labor market was favoring job seekers. Whatever.
Nevertheless, the kid who was my demo student got a free lesson, at least from my side.
While this was going on, I was interviewing for another position at the company. I thought the demo I did previously would suffice. But no, I had to do another lesson for another student. These two demos occurred after I’d already interviewed with three campus or regional directors.
It didn’t stop there. After going through 5 interviews, they said they wanted three references. Fine, that’s standard procedure. But here’s the issue: THEY WANTED TO SPEAK TO MY REFERENCES BY ZOOM. Sorry, but to me, this amounts to interviewing my references. So they’re evaluating me on how my references perform? Come one. This is ridiculous!
The ridiculousness doesn't stop here. In addition to wanting to interview my references, they said they wanted to interview a CURRENT SUPERVISOR. What? Are you kidding me? Most job seekers don’t tell their current employers that they’re seeking new employment. So, this would diminish my leverage at my current job, not to mention risk me for losing my job if the employer thinks I'm jumping ship. (I got around it, by the way).
But the drama continued. I did get an offer at the end and it was a lowball one. Lowball. Low, low, low ball. After three interviews, two teaching demos and interviewing my references, they offered me $27 per hour. This is for a major metropolitan area and would barely count as a living wage. Oh, it gets even worse. They told me that they could not guarantee me full time work as hours were “dependent on enrollment.”
I declined the offer, though I held my tongue to be polite and not burn my "bridges." I have never been more insulted in my life. If you don't think I'm a good fit, fine. But why put me through this torture?
