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I live in the US and I'm looking for a new job. About two months ago I signed up for several job boards to get a sense of the market. One of them was a boutique job portal I had not heard of before. They send me interview requests once a week or so but unfortunately none of them have been a good fit so far.

Here's where it gets weird: while making my lunch today in my current workplace (which I'm looking to leave), I see an unopened bottle of hot sauce with the site's branding in a shared cabinet. It doesn't say anything about the fact that they're a job portal; it just has their name, logo, and website on it. It didn't come in the mail addressed to me, I just saw it in the cabinet.

A few possibilities that sprang to mind:

  • They know my current employer from my resume; they've looked up our address and sent this to us specifically to market to me; to make sure their name is sticky and front-of-mind and I keep using them.
  • As above, they got my company's address and sent this to us hoping to get other people who may be unhappy to sign up.
  • It's just a coincidence: they send gifts to lots of offices as marketing material, or maybe someone else in my office picked it up at a conference or something.

For obvious reasons I can't ask around to try to figure out where it came from.

I guess my questions are: Should I be creeped out? Should I ask my contact there (when you sign up you get like a liaison to advocate for you and answer any questions) if they've sent this gift to my office?

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    Is this a real question, or thinly disguised spam for a job website?
    – Laconic Droid
    May 10, 2019 at 19:17
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    This definitely seems like an ad for their site, they name dropped them far too many times and talked up their website's features.
    – Jake
    May 13, 2019 at 21:38

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You should not be worried about it. It's unlikely the sauce was sent by your contact to you. I've had companies send my office some sauce while trying to get us to sign up for their services.

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It didn't come in the mail addressed to me, I just saw it in the cabinet.

A few possibilities that sprang to mind:

It's just a coincidence: they send gifts to lots of offices as marketing material, or maybe someone else in my office picked it up at a conference or something.

It's just a coincidence.

They are likely doing a lot of marketing and sent it to your company as a potential source of open position leads, or someone picked it up as you suggested.

No need for concern here.

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I guess my questions are: Should I be creeped out?

If this "gift" was meant for you and you randomly found it in a kitchen cabinet then yes you should be creeped out. This means that someone at your company received your gift and decided to remove any indication that it was for you and placed it in the kitchen cabinet instead of delivering it to you.

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Doesn't sound terrible. Job boards are for people trying to get hired as well as companies looking to hire. It makes sense that your current company's HR department has created some kind of account/relationship with the site.

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  • Possible, but unlikely. We're a small company and do not use services like this for recruitment.
    – user104572
    May 10, 2019 at 16:57
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    @nvioli - If your company is small that would be the very reason your HR would use a company like them. Potential applicants don't grow on trees in the parking lot
    – Donald
    May 10, 2019 at 17:39