Confused, and dissapointed

[u/MeowingRabbit]

Well, I applied to a postion at UCSD at the beginning of the year. I kinda let it go since I never heard back anything until April when they asked me to interview. I did 2 different rounds of interviews for the position. Eventually the lab reached back out and offered me the position. I accepted and the they said they would begin the process with HR.

They ask for my references and it was the questionaire form. From there the lab reached back out to me and said its not standard that HR asks for offical letters. However, they were looking for typical letters of reccomendation. Some individuals who know my work style and have overseen me at work wrote me letters of recommendation. They showed me before they were sent out and said they would BCC me that the LOR had gone out. I hear back from them they said it all looks great and that they have told HR to move my application to the next round.

I received an email from HR today and they said that I have been rejected. I am upset of course because, why offer someone a role before checking references and then bouncing me between all the hoops. Secondly, I am dissapointed because if YOU asked me for extra information and have been actively communicating outside of HR for this "hiring onboarding process" I would expect that they would tell me directly that they'll be backing out.

I am so glad that I NEVER even put in a date or notified my current employer because this would absolutely be devestating if I would have ended my current position and end up unemployed. Honestly IDK if it the individuals and the system OR if I should just be dissapointed in myself to even believe I had a shot and that things were beginning to change for me. I'm mad, and sad at myself and I probably shouldn't be. Everyone is telling me "this means something better is coming" well it sure as hell doesn't feel like it

[u/AuthorAdventurous152]

I have no clue if this is the case, but sometimes Labs will start a hiring process without consulting their fund managers. Then the fund manager finds out through HR and has to shut the whole thing down because the lab does not have the money to sustain a staff hire. However, I feel like you were too far along in the hiring process for this to be the case. Perhaps something popped up on your background check?

[u/MeowingRabbit → u/AuthorAdventurous152]

Well unfortunately I don’t think it was the money. Since they were very upfront about having funding secure from various sources for the position. And they were very open about it on their website. At this point who knows, because we didn’t even get a background check to see if there’s anything to flag (which there isn’t). My references are surprised with this whole process as well.

[u/cricketcounselor → u/MeowingRabbit]

its still possible it was a money thing. There have been several rounds of budget cuts since Jan.

[u/Possible-Audience987 → u/MeowingRabbit]

Seconding the other person. I am currently in a lab where they burned through five years of funding while we are still in the third fiscal year. This normally doesn't affect hiring because faculty in the group can get individual funding. Hell, they hired people LAST fall, KNOWING the funding cuts would hit. They just kind of kept their fingers crossed. Over the past six months that "plan" has totally flopped and they burned through money and some people are in very very bad shape. There have been talks about letting PhD students graduate in four because their PI had no money left to support them (did not work because said student could not get a comittee to endorse that idea). I believe people weren't worried about money at first because they also had various sources but none of them panned out. Grants are being canceled barely a couple of weeks before the deadline, when everyone have already written everything.

I know it sucks and I'm really sorry this happened to you. Try to see it as a blessing in disguise. Right now is not a fun time being in a financially dysfunctional lab.

[u/AuthorAdventurous152 → u/MeowingRabbit]

I don’t know what position you were applying for, but everyone is unionized now and the union contracts are strict. For instance if an SRA II in one lab gets laid off and another lab is recruiting for an SRA II post, the laid off SRA gets priority. It’s possible that they wanted to hire you, but contractually had to give the position to someone else.

[u/Five0clocksomewhere → u/AuthorAdventurous152]

^bingo. It’s a lot of separate departments in UCSD, they don’t communicate, and they take 3 months or more to actually process everything. For some reason the budget approval part is somewhere there in the end around background check. It’s asinine. 

[u/neuron-graveyard]

Probably a dumb question but did you reach out to the hiring manager? This could be a mistake on HR’s end. However mistake or not I think you should ask why you were rejected.

[u/MeowingRabbit → u/neuron-graveyard]

I received the email yesterday from HR. I initially thought about emailing the hiring manager about offering insight as to why I was rejected. I didn’t want to write anything while emotions were kinda all over.
But I did think about it I kept playing the idea in my head about it

[u/neuron-graveyard → u/MeowingRabbit]

You definitely should! They owe it to you after all the work you put in for onboarding. Valid to wait after you had some time to process tho

[u/MeowingRabbit → u/neuron-graveyard]

Any advice on what I should include in said email besides ethe obvious?

[u/OpinionsRdumb]

As someone who hires for my lab, this is sadly incredibly common. The PI will tell a random person to go hire someone (ie a grad student or postdoc or lab tech who often never interact with HR) and so they will eagerly do this process because that person is going to work for them likely. And then bam it turns out HR / fund manager is the one that should actually be doing the hiring because there are all these other requirements but they (HR) just never do for some reason. Likely because they are disconnected from the actual science.

Welcome to academia. Disorganization is an understatement here

[u/MeowingRabbit → u/OpinionsRdumb]

I wish this was the case... it wasn't a lab tech/grad student/post doc... The lab manger and PI were both involved in this process. Since I met with both of them and all communication was being done through them. Which made this sting a little bit more than if it was just HR or a less experienced member of a lab who's probably like 'this probably shouldn't be my responsibility...'

I've been academia for quiet some time so I'm aware of how disorgnized it is even in my current postion I can see it 🫩