I turned down a bait-and-switch job offer and now they’re blowing up my phone
A reader writes:
For the bulk of my working life, I’ve been a very low-level lawyer in Washington, D.C. who managed to scratch my way into a few government contracts with the Department of Justice over the years. This definitely wasn’t my dream (poetry is … sigh), but things worked out this way and mostly it’s been okay.
After using your book (which was great), I was eventually hired full-time by another agency last December, but DOGE killed my position very shortly afterwards before I even finished onboarding, and since then I’ve been scrambling, since the whole legal ecosystem in D.C. is a mess and jobs have vanished.
Recently, a couple positions at DOJ were advertised on a normal, generic online job board. Advertised were Law Clerk I (lower) and Law Clerk II (higher) jobs in a non-evil DOJ division, on a project that was slated to go multiple years. It sounded so promising.
The company advertising the positions put themselves forward as a recruiter, and after a very lengthy back-and-forth (where my correspondent very clearly didn’t understand the norms of the government contracting world) and a call with the prime contractor (a major international consulting company), I was submitted and approved for the higher position. I was then surprised to discover the recruiting company was also the subcontractor and would be my immediate employer.
Well, okay … the prime contractor said they were desperate to hire several dozen attorneys, so maybe they partnered with a new-to-the-field company to get it accomplished on schedule.
After that phone call, the usual background checks and everything were pushed very rapidly. I got seemingly legitimate emails from the prime contractor and also the Department of Defense to fill out the usual security forms; the links in the emails all went to legitimate websites, so I felt fine with continuing.
Then everything came to a crashing halt this morning: the recruiter/subcontractor sent me the official offer letter … but it had the job title of the higher position and the pay rate of the lower position. The pay discrepancy between Clerk I and Clerk II is large — about $72K a year and $93K a year.
It felt like a simple miscommunication, so I replied politely asking for a correction. No, their HR said, that’s the rate. It can’t be negotiated — you already agreed to this.
Well, no, I didn’t. Their HR pointed to an email where I acknowledged the lower rate … as part of a general acknowledgement that there were two positions available. As in, I said, “Yes, I understand there is also a Law Clerk I position that pays X rate per hour.” But then I was submitted for Law Clerk II, and my call with the prime contractor was even titled “Call About Law Clerk II position.”
On top of the rate switch, the medical coverage was abysmal. So I declined to sign the offer letter and asked for an evening to consider my options and think it over.
Well, then I started getting spammed with urgent-sounding texts and calls from employees of all levels at this subcontractor, all asking me to talk this over. Some employees I had never even met or communicated with before!
It began to feel very scammy, and I told them the urgency seemed inappropriate. I talked to friends and family — all while still getting these texts, calls, and emails despite asking for space — and eventually decided I didn’t like the feel of this.
So I emailed the most senior-seeming employee that I was withdrawing from the position. Which was met with a reply, “Can I have a few minutes on the phone to clear this up?”
Everyone I’ve asked says this sounds like one of two different scams. The Long Con would be to hire me and bill me to the prime contractor at the higher rate, but pay me at the lower one and pocket the difference (not unheard of).
Or, scarier, The Truman Show, where the entire job was fabricated and designed to steal as much of my info as possible during the “onboarding” and that even my call with the prime contractor manager was faked. I’m really hoping it wasn’t this one, since it would mean they figured out how to fake government and corporate websites and security forms, which I dutifully filled out.
But underneath these scam theories is a nagging feeling that maybe I’m the one who misread things here?
Do recruiters or subcontracting companies normally invest so heavily in contract workers? I’ve never had multiple employees of a company text, call, and email me so heavily in quick succession to urgently “talk through” what seems like a simple mistake.
I’ve also never had a company insist I had agreed to a lower pay rate and then dig in their heels when I proved I didn’t.
What’s more: in the time it took to write you this email, they sent me an update where now they are happy to pay the higher rate and can “work something out” about the horrible medical coverage.
Am I going crazy, or is something going on here that is less than legitimate?
Something is weird here.
If you got legitimate emails from the government agency, I don’t think it’s a scam … but you should check the real sender of those emails; the “from” field can be spoofed, but the raw source data of the email can’t be, so look at that.
They may indeed be billing for you at a higher rate while paying you the lower one but, as you note, that’s a thing that happens — and it’s not the same thing as an identity theft scam or similar.
And unfortunately, it is sometimes a thing that a company will pull a bait and switch on what job they’re offering — leading you to think you’re interviewing for a higher level position but then offering you a lower-paying one.
But what’s really weird is the extraordinary high-pressure sell to get you to accept the job. Texts and calls from multiple employees there, even people you’d never talked to before? That’s not normal.
It’s possible that you have a hard-to-find skill set that’s crucial to them being able to staff their contract … but if that’s the case, the obvious next move for them would to offer you the higher-paying position, not to have scores of employees blow up your phone.
I don’t know what’s going but it’s odd, for sure.
You might as well talk to the most senior-seeming person who asked to talk about you withdrew and hear them out. Who knows, maybe they’ll say something that changes the way this looks.
But after that, if you’re considering moving forward, make sure you do a lot of research on the subcontracting firm … ideally including talking to the prime contractor again, preferably with you calling them at their publicly listed corporate number so that you’re sure of who you’re talking to. I’d also run the whole thing by anyone you know who’s part of the federal contracting world in D.C. (which is not me) and get their take, as well.
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