What can I do if one employer used offer letter from first company against me?

Question

I had an offer from employer A and employer B forced me to show the offer letter of A to them.

In that situation I shared the offer letter with him. But he used that offer letter against me and contacted employer A and informed them that I shared a confidential letter with them. He did so because I did not accept his offered package which was less than employer A. He took it personally.

I ended up nothing in hand. What should I do? Can I file a complaint against him or his organization?

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From comments:

Q: Sorry, but how did they actually force you? Like Physically snatching the contract if you were carrying with you?
A: He said I cannot give counter offer unless he has proof in hand and he need to share that with upper management to increase your offered package...[I forwarded the letter without thinking that what could be happened if anything went wrong
Q: Was the offer letter confidential at all?
A: it was not mentioned "Do not share or Confidential " neither in the email nor in the offer letter.

Answer 1

What should I do?

Learn a lesson, hope company A does not initiate legal action against you, and move on.

Can I file complaint against him or his organization?

Forget you ever thought of this; you are the one at fault here.

To elaborate, unless company B used physical means to snatch that letter out of you (which constitutes a criminal case against them), they had no way of obtaining the latter without you providing them that.

You most likely violated all the confidentially clauses with company A, irrespective of the fact how persuasive company B was ^[1]. You should have never shared that letter with them. Either they believe you, or they don't. End of story.

Moreover, actually company B did company A a favor (willingly or unintentionally) by saving them the trouble of hiring an employee who does not understand and honor any confidentially clause. If you have shared the offer letter today, who knows what other information you would be leaking tomorrow after you're hired and have the insider knowledge?

Wipe this incident from your memory, save the learning and move on. Never repeat anything like this, ever.

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[1] You won't certainly provide them your ATM PIN / net banking password, even if they say they can't offer you a job without that - right? Confidential information is confidential - irrespective of the context.

Answer 2

I am unclear how he 'forced' you to show him the offer letter. If he said he wouldn't make you an offer without you disclosing the confidential letter from company B. It is your fault you gave in to that, you weren't forced.

What you should do is learn to walk away. The boss of company B sounds like a jerk, you don't want to work for a jerk. You certainly don't want to give them leverage over you. When he demanded to see the offer you should have rung Company A and accepted their offer and broke off contact with B.

If this company is large enough to be on Glassdoor or similar you could post your experience as warning a warning to others but I very much doubt there is much else you can do.

Answer 3

This is India.

TL;DR

Incidents like this used to happen in the past, happening at present and WILL continue to happen in future. You cannot expect any sense of ethics from the most companies and their HR representatives.

Do not hesitate to help them realize the taste of their own medicine. Write your reviews in Glassdoor, Indeed, MouthShut, LinkedIn, friends or whatsoever. That's all you can do, not with an intention to sabotage their reputation but with a noble intention to save fellow interviewing candidates like you.

To all foreign nationals, in india, it is a common practice for recruiting HR to ask the candidates for any other job offers to make a counter offer on. Therefore, you cannot blame just the OP.

Answer 4

There is nothing you can do. You've already screwed up.

This is what you should have told them instead.

"I'm sorry, but I can not in good conscience forward a private communication sent to me from another potential employer."

Please note the purposefully vague language I'm using here. It's important to not even disclose the name of company A (unless you already did). If they ask, just tell them what the company does in the most general terms, so that they know the kind of company that they're up against, but you certainly don't need to be specific.

[...]

And yes, it's company B's prerogative to decide whether you should become their employee or not, so they could very well deny you the job on the grounds that you didn't forward that offer letter to them (which is well within their rights). But at some point, you have to respect yourself enough and be willing to walk away from a potential employer that is making a seemingly unreasonable request.

[...]

And what happens if company B doesn't believe that you have an actual offer on the table from another company since you're unwilling to show an offer letter? That's fine also. If they don't believe you, that's on them. And it's not your obligation to justify, or explain yourself further, and it's your prerogative to be able to walk away from any potential employer, especially any potential employer that makes seemingly unreasonable and unusual requests.

Taken from my previous answer: Can one company ask offer letter of another company

Now the only thing you can do is to continue looking for a new job with other employers.

I ended up nothing in hand :( What should I do? Can I file complaint against him or his organization?

No, a complaint won't get you anywhere (unless India has a law like the European GDPR as John Bentley suggested).

One thing you could do is post a complaint about company B on glassdoor.com (or the equivalent web site in your country), but personally, I definitely wouldn't post a complaint on glassdoor about company A. You were in the wrong with company A. You broke the implied confidentiality of their offer letter.

That being said, this does not constitute legal advice. I am not a lawyer. And most of us on this stackexchange are certainly not familiar with the law in India. So take our uninformed opinion for what it's worth. And don't be afraid to consult an employment lawyer in your jurisdiction if you can afford it, or if their initial consultation is free.

Answer 5

I just want to chime in since every existing answer thinks you did something wrong. It's possible that in your location/field it's considered unacceptable to share information about offers, but that's certainly not always the case.

At least in the United States and with software engineers, telling a company you have an offer from another is completely 100% normal and a good negotiating strategy. From company B's perspective, they should be happy that you shared company A's offer since it gives them a choice whether they want to give you a better offer. The alternative is that they don't even know that they're competing and lose out on any opportunity to hire you. From company A's perspective they might prefer that you not talk to anyone else, but that's an unreasonable expectation since most people interview with multiple companies in parallel (unless they want their job search to take forever).

The only weird part is directly sharing company A's offer letter with company B, but even then, it's just weird in a "too personal" sort of way. Although in this case company B seemed to specifically ask, so the weirdness is on them.

If you want to see an example of how not bad this is in some places, here's a long story by a software engineer using offers to get companies to bid against each other and then publicly posting exactly what most of the offers were (including the one from his current employer who almost certainly knows about his blog).

Long story short:

1. Unless the offer letter specifically said it contains confidential information, sharing it was a social faux pas at worst.
2. If company A's offer was confidential then they're doing something sketchy by trying to prevent you from sharing offers and you dodged a bullet by not working for them.
3. If the offer was confidential, then company B probably did the right thing (don't share confidential info with a potential employer), although they shouldn't have asked to see the offer in the first place.
4. If the offer wasn't confidential, the company B is insane and you dodged a bullet there too.

Answer 6

Remember this next time someone tries to push you around.

Some people will exploit you. Some people will lie to you. Some people will take advantage of you. This is an almost inevitable certainty. You'll never be able to prevent it completely, but you can learn from past mistakes to help avoid future ones.

The next time someone tries to pressure you to do something that you know is wrong, you should think back on what this manager did to you. Saying "No" can feel really difficult sometimes. It gets much easier to make that hard choice, when you know the consequences of going along.

Answer 7

There are good answers, but I’m going to address more simply your “what can I do?”

You can choose to not work for either of them, and/or you can make sure other people know what kind of people they are.

Answer 8

FYI, if a company is forcing you to do something you know is improper, specially doing the interview, you do not want to work for them.

Second, never tell the name of the company you have an interview/offer with. If your market is small, interviewer might figure the other company out quickly. Or, might even be friends with someone with decision power in the other company to screw you up.

So, take this as a lesson and move on.

NOTE: I edited this response to agree that not mentioning you have other options weakens your position. But I still would not name names.

Answer 9

I am not a lawyer. That said, many of the existing answers and comments sounded decidedly... American... to me - something you’re often at risk of on the SE network. In my country (NZ) sharing the letter you had provided for the purpose of offering you a job with another company for a different purpose would be a breach of your privacy, and you could (at least try to) take them to court. In India it looks like there might be a similar law though I’m not clear as to whether that law is currently in place - it looks like it was being put through this year? So, It may be worth talking to a lawyer.

I’m not going to get into whether you did something wrong in sharing the letter - I don’t even know how to google that but if you’re already talking to a lawyer I’m sure they will be able to advise you on that.

Answer 10

I had offer from employer A and employer B forced me to show offer letter of A

Actually, nobody can force you to do anything. I agree that company B played dirty into tricking you to provide that information, but it was you who "agreed". They were even dirtier when the contacted company A with the info from you.

While company A has the right to make legal claims against you, that is less likely. It is too much trouble and too little benefit.

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Remember

You never disclose confidential information during an interview. Not your personal confidential information (e.g. PIN code of your banking card), not professional confidential information (previous salaries, previous contracts...).

The interview is a "point zero" with regard to prior confidential information and it is unfavurable to you to disclose this.

Confidential information is also the not-so-good experiences that you had at previous jobs. You never admit to problems. Even when you talk about something unpleasant (even though you should avoid it completely), make it sound positive.

We had some troubles, but we succeeded to learn our lessons, and on subsequent occasions, we sailed pleasantly.