Job interview cancelled after hopeful candidate asked about salary

Taylor Byrnes was told not to come in for her job interview after asking what seemed like an obvious question. Photo / Twitter

It would seem like an obvious question to ask at a job interview: "How much do you plan on paying me?"

But a young woman claims she was shown the door when she inquired about her potential salary.

Taylor Byrnes was preparing for her second interview with Canadian food delivery company SkipTheDishes when she emailed a member of the company's HR team to ask about how much she would be paid.

But if she was expecting a run-down of the benefits on offer, she was in for a rude awakening.

The recruiter shot back with a message advising that she could forget about the interview as she was not the right "organisational fit" for the role.

Applied for a job at @SkipTheDishes. They cancelled my interview b/c I asked about wages/benefits @CBC @CBCNews @ctvwinnipeg #boycottSkip pic.twitter.com/CjBdnFvY1P

— . (@feministkiljoyy) March 13, 2017

Byrnes posted screenshots of the conversation on Twitter and called for a boycott of the company.

"As a start-up company, we seek out those who go out of their way to seek out challenges and new opportunities. We believe in hard work and perseverance in pursuit of company goals as opposed to focusing on compensation," the HR staffer's email said.

Byrnes said she had already had an initial phone interview for the menu development role, making it through to the second round face-to-face interview stage.

In her politely-worded follow-up email, she wrote: "I had another question that I wanted to ask you. If I do end up filling this position, how much do you think I'll be getting paid an hour? Benefits will also be included, right? Sorry, I just thought I should ask now. Thanks for your time and have a lovely day."

This apparently raised a red flag because it was "such an early stage" in the recruitment process.

"Your questions reveal that your priorities are not in sync with those of SkipTheDishes. At this time we will not be following through with our meeting this Thursday," the recruiter wrote.

Byrnes' call to #BoycottSkip was re-tweeted more than 4600 times, prompting the company to backtrack by apologising and inviting her to come in for the interview after all.

In a statement to Buzzfeed Canada, co-founder Joshua Simair said the email sent to Taylor was "wrong and does not represent our team's approach or values".

"We are very disappointed in how it was handled. We do share a compensation package prior to hiring. As soon as we became aware of it on Monday, we reached out to Taylor to apologise for the email and reschedule her interview," he said, promising to train staff to avoid similar situations in the future.