Job interviews are bad enough without your interviewer leading you on and attempting to extract industry secrets from you. You feel like you’re doing so many work tasks, attending interview after interview, and somehow still not getting anywhere.

At this point, you’ve gone so high up the ladder doing interviews, you think God himself will interview you next Thursday at 1PM.

This is what upset a Reddit poster by the name of Dooski-Bumbs, leading to him being so enraged that he got revenge by taking away a company’s best client.

More info: Reddit

You may go into a job interview expecting to talk about the position, while the interviewer may have totally different ideas

Image credits: Marck Schoenmaker (not the actual photo)

The poster went to a job interview while working for their competitor, looking for more pay and bringing his expert reputation with him

Image credits: Dooski-Bumbs

Image credits: energepic.com (not the actual photo)

The interviewers interrogated him for 7 interviews, trying to extract business secrets from him, hitting him with a lowball offer in the end

Image credits: Dooski-Bumbs

Image credits: Sora Shimazaki (not the actual photo)

The lowball offer upset the poster so much, he did some risky negotiating on behalf of his current company to steal the competitor’s top client

Image credits: Dooski-Bumbs

Once the top client was pinched, the poster also got a great promotion and some other benefits

The story is pretty long, so let me break it down for you. The poster was a guy working in a blue collar job and was really good at what they do, being referred to as a “barracuda” and even known to competitors.

One of these competitors put up a job offer for the original poster’s (OP) position. They went, being interviewed by the Service Manager, Head of Sales Manager, then higher up, even talking to the Vice President and CEO of the company, for a total of 7 interviews.

Being done with this, he lets them know his conditions and that he’s more or less done with taking interviews. A while later, he got the offer, with the exact same job title, but a 20% decrease in pay.

This helped OP come to the realization that the competitors were likely just using him to fish for specific info about his current company. On his end, he was careful not to reveal any sensitive details, which could expose customers and revenue numbers.

Naturally, this exploitation enraged him, causing him to look more into poaching their #1 customer, who they had foolishly blabbed about.

With some smart negotiating, he had quickly gotten their major buyer for his own company, massively reducing their business.

About 6-7 months later, that customer is now their 2nd most profitable acquisition, earning OP a 25% pay raise and an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii with a colleague, occasionally rubbing it in the competing company’s face by parking their company cars in full view of their office.

Image credits: slgckgc (not the actual photo)

According to a super lengthy comment by OP, he shortened the story and left out some interesting details.

Some peeps were thinking that he just went in blind to poach the customer, firing away and hoping that something will stick, but he had actually done a lot of research, as well as taken into consideration all the previous things he knew about the company and their work.

He used a mix of real facts and took a bit of brave creative liberty on some statements just to make sure he got the client, but as long as it paid off and turned out well for him, all is well.

If you haven’t encountered the concept of “fishing expeditions”, sometimes it really does happen in businesses.

According to LinkedIn, these fake interviews are a real threat to companies and employees should be trained to not be “hooked” on them.

They may be used by opponents to find out company strategy, useful intel, employee skill set, among other things.

If you’re wondering, there are certain signs that could help you tell a real interview apart from a fishing one.

When you notice that your interviewer wants to know more about your current or old workplace than your skills and you as a person, that is a red flag. If they ask about the company’s targets rather than your own goals or various price ranges in your job, it’s highly likely that you’re being fished, and you’re better off just dodging these questions.

Questionable business practices or not – you may get hired after all, you never know with these interviews.

The poster’s story collected 3.2k upvotes, with more than 130 comments. Commenters speculated whether the interview was actually real, or was it actually just used to fish for info. Others also mentioned how much they enjoyed OP’s story and that it wasn’t petty whatsoever. Got stories of your own? Type ’em up in the comments!

Commenters mentioned how much they enjoyed the story, speculating about the true intentions of the interviewers

Image credits: Max Rahubovskiy (not the actual photo)

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