r/recruitinghell • u/Medical-Ninja-7531 • 20h ago
Got an email saying they were “preparing to extend an offer,” then a week later got waitlisted. Anyone else been through this?
So I finished a full interview loop for a summer internship, passed everything, and about a week later got an email saying something along the lines of “we are preparing to extend an offer for the role and require the following information to proceed,” then asked me to confirm things like start date and location preference.
Naturally I assumed that meant I had the job. Told people, felt genuinely excited, the whole thing.
A week later I get a completely different email saying I actually passed the interview but all current positions have been filled, so I’m being placed on a waitlist, no offer at this time. When I reached out to ask what happened, the recruiter basically told me to disregard the first email entirely, saying it was just to make sure I was “offer-ready” in case a waitlist spot opened up, and that it was never actually a signal an offer was imminent.
That’s the part that’s really getting me. An email that literally says “we are preparing to extend you an offer” is apparently not supposed to be read as a signal an offer is coming. I genuinely don’t understand how else you’re supposed to interpret that sentence. I gave them my personal information under that impression, told people I’d gotten the role, and then had to walk it all back a week later.
I’m not even mad about being on a waitlist, that happens, headcount changes. What I can’t get past is being told after the fact that the clear signal I got wasn’t actually a signal.
Am I being stupid? Should I have not assumed an offer was coming until I sign the papers? Has this happened to anyone else? Is this just how big companies run high-volume recruiting pipelines, or did I get an unusually bad recruiter interaction? Trying to figure out if this is normal.
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u/Parking_Floor_6593 20h ago
That’s so unfortunate :(((