So last night, I officially got the final rejection letter from our Social Media Strategist hopeful. Here is her rejection letter:

Hey Chris-

I apologize it took me so long to get back to you this afternoon, as I wanted to be confident when responding back to your last email.

After our last conversation and further deliberation about the salary and benefits, I need to stand by my original decision to decline the job offer. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to join the SkEye Studios team, however I have decided to pursue several other opportunities that more closely align with a means of secure financial income and access to continued education/opportunities. 

Again, I cannot thank you enough for this opportunity, and I wish that I was in a stage in my career where I could afford to take bigger leaps of faith towards a career path that I would enjoy. I look forward to seeing all the wonderful work that your agency produces and hope that our lines of work cross further down the line.

Thank you-

Just as I feared, it appears that she was using the money as an excuse as to why she did not want to work at SkEye. I think that one of my weaknesses in this situation may have been that I was too transparent in this situation. There are very talented people out there that look at SkEye Studios, and still see us as too volatile and risky. You can see, that she referenced that she is pursuing other opportunities that will provide her with a more “secure financial income.” This is painful to hear, but it is also incredibly motivating to me. I don’t know how you convey to someone that is thinking of working at your company how you are not going to allow the business to fail.

The most frustrating thing about this entire thing is that now we have to go back to the drawing board and begin searching for a new candidate. There were not really any other solid leads amongst the people that we searched for. I think that I made a mistake of revealing too much information about where our company is, and where we are going. It’s a fine line though between choosing not to say something and providing a false image of the company. I think I would prefer to always error on the side of being too transparent because I want people to understand what they are getting into.

Even amongst this frustration, I am trying very hard to trust that God has a plan and a reason for this. It is difficult to understand how all of this stress and pressure of finding someone new is going to ultimately benefit me and/or the business. But, I really hope that we end up finding someone that is an excellent culture fit, and extremely passionate about where we are going.