Found job board's branded item at my workplace. Have I been found out? [closed]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

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?

manpreet 2 years ago