Unsympathetic job recruiter learns valuable lesson after one of the interviewees he belittled lands a senior position and gets him fired: ‘I’m glad he has the life he deserves.’

Author image for Elna McHilderson
Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor
Apr 15, 2026 7:15 PM EDT

"I ended my response by saying that I would not want any of our candidates to have the experience I did and would not want my organization to be represented in a callous and unprofessional manner."

There is a reason you hear "don't burn bridges" as sage professional advice. You never know who you are going to run into again when working in any professional field. Sometimes that can be difficult, because the workplace is so unbearable. But if you take the high road, it might just help you later on in life. If you take the low road, well, that might just come back around again in your lifetime and take you even lower… 

Listen, I'm all about people facing the consequences of their actions. How can anyone learn if they do not face them? But that does not mean that you are the one responsible for making them learn this lesson. Sometimes you need to know when to just walk away gracefully. This is initially what this woman did, but then karma gave her a chance to be the leader of justice, and, of course, she took it. 

I have been on the job hunt before, and it's not pretty and can truly make your self-worth plummet. Interview after interview with nobody reaching back out can make you truly believe that something is wrong with you; that maybe you are a talentless human in society. But don't let the man get you down! Just keep working hard and being kind, and you'll be fine. 

This woman was working hard, but one job recruiter in particular really put her down. She was in tears at the end of the conversation. She thought she was doomed. But, soon after, she landed a much better job with a greater pay increase and title. Then the company that this recruiter worked for reached out to her to hopefully gain her as a new client. She needed to hire employees, but decided not to subjugate any of her employees to that upsetting recruiter. She let that company know the truth and even attached old emails from that disrespectful recruiter. 

Soon after that, she saw that the man was looking for a new job… Karma can come in many forms, bestie. 

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  • Woman being interviewed for a job looking professional
    via Unspalsh+ (Getty Images)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
    Woman being interviewed for a job looking professional

  • "Recruiter treated me [disrespctfully]. 3 months later, karma had a full circle moment."

    TLDR; Recruiter was a to me during job search. Same company reached out to do business once I was employed, I said no; referenced recruiter.
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  • recruiter got fired. I was in the job market unexpectedly on the 2nd of January after being managed out of a job I loved by a toxic boss.
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  • Dusted off my CV started applying to everything and by mid January I had a recruiter from a well known national recruitment firm reach out to me about a job they were trying to fill.
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  • This is a good time to mention I had applied for this job on LinkedIn, met 100% of the criteria and when he reached out for a screening call, he attached my CV to the email so naturally I assumed he had read it and thought I was a good fit.
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  • Fast forward to the screening call and he actually went over my experience while on the call with me, seemingly reading things for the first time.
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  • Now my CV is very colourful; I have a vast amount of international experience and have held a fair amount of positions in my field anywhere from very junior to C-suite.
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  • I'm not a job hopper so all this experience was across two large multi-nationals and one small construction company.
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  • Anyway he proceeds to spend 30 minutes on this call telling me everything he thinks about my experience that makes me not suitable for hire.
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  • Goes on to say that he doesn't believe I could be competent because experience from multi- national companies cannot be translated to the US, tells me to remove my experience with the one smaller company from my CV because "no one will care what you did there, they are too small to matter" and repeatedly mentions my lack of experience with ONE particular software(not related to the job I applied for, they didn't use it).
    via Ok_Pen4842
  • He ranted for 30 minutes while I stayed quiet and then said he had to jump off but will keep me in mind if anything comes up.
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  • He then emailed me a day later to pitch a job to me that was different from the one I applied to but was one that I was maybe 10 years of experience over- qualified for and would have been a 60% pay cut on my market rate for my level.
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  • I cried because my confidence had already been knocked from the prior toxic job and felt so incompetent.
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  • A few weeks later, I got an offer for a great job matching my level of experience with growth opportunities and a 40% pay increase.
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  • It's a Head of Department position so I'm fairly senior. I started mid February and announced on LinkedIn mid March.
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  • The same recruitment company reached out to me on LinkedIn, now to pitch their services as a third party to help me build my team.
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  • I am actually looking to hire for my team but I won't be using them and decided to let them know exactly why, attaching my communications with their recruiter.
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  • I ended my response by saying that I would not want any of our candidates to have the experience I did and would not want my organization to be represented in a callous and unprofessional manner.
    via Ok_Pen4842
  • My email was escalated to their management and today I saw he posted the Open to Work banner on LinkedIn.
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  • I can't say if it was a direct result of my email but I'm glad he has the life he deserves.
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  • Business professional woman sitting at her desk typing on her laptop computer
    via Unsplash+ (Aleksandra Sapozhnikova)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
    Business professional woman sitting at her desk typing on her laptop computer

  • Ok_Entertainer_4709 Good on you. Out of like 10\~ recuriters I personally interacted with, only 1 really gave enough of a crop to work with me instead of just ghosting or asking/berrating for stupid sh.
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  • OP OK_Pen4842 It's already so bad for job seekers, no one deserves to be on! Keeping my fingers crossed for you friend
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  • BerserkChucky Recruiters have never made sense to me, they are like salesman who neither understand the product they are selling or the audience they are selling to. Maybe its different out of tech, but the amount of times I have had similar experiences to this one is crazy. Sometimes it makes me want to be a tech recruiter because I actually know who would be able to do the jobs. I had this one guy who had reached out to me after I applied to a senior analyst position, I check all the boxes and
    via BerserkChucky
  • OP OK_Pen4842 Surprising because this specific company hires exclusively in my field of work. So you would think they would have a basic understanding of what they are recruiting for. He spent a good part of the 30 mins telling me how he would do my job, wrongly of course. He went on and on about finance, was recruiting for an accounting position. Those are not nearly the same.
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  • aroseknows Wow, that's awful but I'm glad you got to share your experience with the company. Something similar happened to me at the start of my career. After years of retail and customer service, I was looking to make a change. I had applied to a job at one of those big staffing agency companies, and was so excited when I got an interview. I went there on my day off, about an hour away from home. I was very green, so I thought this was a formal interview and got dressed up, with a folder of cop
    via arosekn0ws
  • OP OK_Pen4842 I always think it's best practice to not burn a bridge but at some point, people have to be held accountable for being I'm glad you were able to succeed despite of her best efforts to hold you back. Onwards and upwards!
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  • Nerdgirl0035 This is awesome! I'm getting really p ed that hiring managers are doing this. Call you in, seemingly before they read your whole resume, spend the interview attacking you about why you can't do the job. Since the job market got bad, I've been seeing more and more of this. First of all, you've spoken to me for 5 minutes. Outside that piece of paper you clearly didn't read, you know NOTHING about me. Nothing I say about transferable skills, excitement about the opportunity or past exp
    via Nerdgirl0035
  • OP OK_Pen4842 I have a theory and I think it's to do with demographics. Completely agree with you, I have never taken time out of my day to tell someone else they aren't good enough; it's an inane concept.
    via Ok_Pen4842
  • BrainWaveCC >The same recruitment company reached out to me on LinkedIn, now to pitch their services as a third party to help me build my team. I am actually looking to hire for my team but I won't be using them and decided to let them know exactly why, attaching my communications with their recruiter. This is when they will listen to you -- not as candidate, but as potential customer.
    via BrainWaveCC
  • Enigma2MeVideos Power trips make a lot of people act like a h les, especially if they think they're invincible or too important for it to blow back in their faces.
    via Enigma2MeVideos

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