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Comment by toolslive | Hacker News Reader

Anyone had a "bait & switch"? In essence: You applied for job X but "Yeah that job has been filled, but maybe you're interested in Y?" (X can be Haskell, CTO, .... and Y can be Php, architect, ....)

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This happens ever now and then in the company I work for. Sometimes we have a good candidate who doesn't make it for the position they initially apply for, so our hiring managers offer them a similar position that might be a good fit as well (after talking to the manager of the other team).

But this is not intentional bait, rather offering more opportunities for both sides and totally legit in my eyes. And it worked out well - at least for the company I work at...

I don't think that's a bait and switch. It's totally possible that the position got filled, and they are still interested in hiring you.

I can see how that would be frustrating on your end, but I wouldn't immediately attribute it to malice.

I once went to an interview and was told that the job had been taken but that they "still wanted to have a chat with me".

You just can't steal people's time like that.

Sure. On both sides. It's just a thing that happens?

You've made a hiring decision, but you still have 2 strong candidates from the process that you know are good hires for other positions so why not ask what they feel about it?

Well, what happened was that they let me come over (I took the bait), and 15 minutes into the first interview, they performed the magic switch.

I've interviewed someone for my team, and when he was hired, he was added to a different team. He didn't really fit in there and was soon fired, but I still wonder how he would have done in my team.

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