A wierd but true story of getting job offer as Test Email
It was in the year 2011. My family along with my sister-in-family, all went to Vaishno Devi in early May and returned to Bangalore around 14-15th May. Immediately after coming back, I got an email from a software company HR for a walk-in interview on Saturday 21st May. I applied for that and by Friday, I got the call letter for interview. I attended the interview on Saturday. There were 3 rounds of interviews, I cleared all rounds, finally HR told me that they will release the offer in weeks’ time. I was happy that I was about to get an offer with my choice of role, with good compensation.
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
There was a walk-in again, next week, on Saturday 28th May. In this walk-in one of my friends from same company selected. I did not receive offer by 28th May. The recruitment process was still going on, so I thought there may be a delay in releasing offer. I thought to wait for some more time. After few days, I started worrying.
I was not able to understand why they did not release the offer. HR assured me that offer would release. I thought to contact them and ask if there is any update. I tried calling the number, mentioned in the email, but could not reach to the HR. Then I dropped an email, thought to wait for some more time. There was no response for email also. Now I started worrying. All kind of self-doubts started coming into mind. Whether they found some other suitable candidate and put me on hold. Or did I ask more compensations which was kind of out of budget or something else.
Now I started calling everyday the same number and emailed again asking for update. But there was no response. Finally on 8th June, my friend who attended interview on week after me, got a call from HR. HR informed him that his offer released. He told me that his offer would be coming in sometime. I asked him from which number he received the call, luckily HR called from his mobile and not from any landline where we could not call back.
I immediately called that number and introduced myself and told him the whole story. On listening to my story, he said that they already released the offer letter. I told him to confirm the email id where he sent this offer. He told me some other email id on which I said it was not mine. He asked me to send a test email to his id. I did the same.
After some 30 mins, I got my offer in the same email, i.e., Test Email. So finally, my offer came but the subject line was Test email. I was happy to receive the offer but little disappointed with the way it came. I opened the email and was thinking where my offer went earlier. To my surprise, there some other email id mentioned, which was not mine, but created with my name only. I further tried to find out about the email. I tried logging into this email, tried change password with my details and I could do that. The email created on the same day when the offer released. My original job offer was also there. So somebody created the email with my details and sent the offer on that. It sounds weird but it is true. I still wonder how it happened.