So one company where hubby applied to be a Store Manager, even though he is qualified to be two or three steps up from theat job, wanted to interview him for an assistant store manager job (which would be career suicide as well as not paying the bills). At least they were honest.

Another company was interviewing him for a store in Fresno (talk about suicide!) but then came back with an offer to hire him for an assistant store manager position in another town, supposedly on the "fast track" to store manager, at which point allegedly he would have to move yet again after 3 to 6 months.

Having gone through this sort of thing before multiple times in his career, I can tell you we have never seen a company keep those kinds of promises. Every time he has agreed to start below the position they say he's qualified for, they have kept him at the lower job title with the lower pay rate and worked him to death doing the job they refused to position him into in the first place.

One notable example was a retailer who has since gone bankrupt who said they wanted him as a store manager but hired him on as an assistant. Then they had him moving from store to store as acting store manager, doing exceptional work without the pay or title, trouble-shooting major problems that existing store managers had caused and/or couldn't fix, pulling their fat out of the fire constantly without ever getting that raise or promotion. The excuse was that the boss' position in charge of making that decision turned over 4 times during that period.

The reality is that there is always going to be turnover in the decision-making positions, and the new guys are always going to want to start from square one and never honor the promises that were made by the previous regime. These high-level retail guys (even the women) love to swing their dicks around and are often incompetent managers. So if you agree to their downgraded promises, you end up a chump.

I beleive that is standard business practice. Now I think he needs to start applying for jobs that are one or two levels above the job he actually wants. This acquaintance of his did get a store manager job with the first company I mentioned. Hubby thinks that a change in vice presidents resulted in a change in policy, that now they want to "hire from within." I'm wondering if it is just that his acquaintance may have applied for a district manager position and got a downgraded job offer to store manager.

Hubby was most recently above a district manager position. He was a senior manager at the corporate level doing Director-level work. Naturally they hired him in with the promise they would create the directorship for which he did all the work, but no surprise, they never got around to it.