Finding work these days can be really tough, even for remote positions. This is why one Pennsylvania resident was so frustrated when a company they were ready to start with flushed their efforts down the drain. Reddit user WeylandRider posted their story on r/jobsearchhacks, warning others to double-check a business’s “state entity list” before applying to “Remote US” positions. They didn’t want anyone else to suffer as they did: “I just wasted three weeks and four rounds of interviews for a senior analyst role.”
WeylandRider explained that everything had gone swimmingly as it could have, and after passing a fourth interview, it’s hard not to imagine they were ready to be taken on board. “I was ready to pop champagne,” OP recalled. However, all that changed when the recruiter called to talk about “offer logistics.”
During this call, the recruiter touched on where OP lived for payroll. After WeylandRider said Pennsylvania, dead silence filled the air before the recruiter spoke up again. Apparently, the company is only registered in Delaware, Texas, and California, and can’t hire anyone in Pennsylvania. “She actually asked me why I applied if I knew I wasn’t in their ‘approved tax footprint,’” said WeylandRider.
The absurd bit is that WeylandRider says this “footprint” was never mentioned nor written anywhere in all the forms and descriptions they read through. “They literally let candidates spend hours prepping for presentations when HR already knew 90% of the country was disqualified from minute one. Why is this even legal?” exclaimed WeylandRider.
The Pennsylvania Applicant Says This Decision to Call the Position ‘Remote US’ Was Deliberate for Traffic
WeylandRider believes it’s because they wanted the job posting to get more applicant traffic instead of the few states they can actually hire from. Redditors in the comment section joined in with shared frustration. “They should literally get fined for false advertising for doing this,” demanded one user. “Asking why YOU applied as if they listed the states anywhere is pure gaslighting. HR knew exactly what they were doing just to inflate their hiring metrics,” remarked another.
“Blaming me for not reading their minds instead of taking responsibility for their broken job post is just peak corporate behavior,” WeylandRider wrote in response to a comment. One person pointed how it probably isn’t as though it was illegal for the company to hire someone from Pennsylvania. “They can employ anywhere they want,” the commenter explained. “They just don’t want to do the paperwork and pay the taxes.”
While the lack of a “tax footprint” might have been an oversight by the company’s HR, using “Remote US” as a means to advertise the role when only certain select states can be hired from is certainly questionable behavior. All those hopeful developments with the interviews for WeylandRider have become nothing more than time wasted, with a valuable lesson learned.
