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A woman moved from Florida to Virginia for a new job and worked 7 days. Then they told her she'd never been hired.
Matthew Loh Oct 11, 2023, 2:44 AM ET

A 24-year-old woman told Insider she moved from Florida to Virginia for a new job.
Camryn Spina said she worked seven days as a collegiate sports coach before learning she wasn't hired.
Spina said she and her would-be boss had worked on relocating her, and even settled payroll dates.

A woman said she moved to Virginia from Florida for her new job and worked there for seven days before finding out she wasn't actually hired.

Camryn Spina, 24, told Insider she applied this summer for a job as a cheerleading coach at a college in Virginia and was excited when she heard back. The names of the college and the coach are known to Insider, but Spina requested that they not be published out of concern for potential legal repercussions.

Spina graduated with a master's degree in global sports business from Rutgers University in 2022. She said the head coach of the cheerleading program at the Virginia college arranged for a first interview with her over Microsoft Teams in June.

A TikTok she published September 2, in which she detailed the experience, has gone viral.


Interviews were 'amazing'
"This interview was amazing. It went an hour and a half, and it felt like I knew this guy my whole life," Spina said in the TikTok.

She said she then received an email from the coach asking her to visit the college's facilities in Virginia.

"They rented me a car, I got there. The interview lasted for five hours on location," Spina said in her TikTok. "So, same thing as the first interview, we just couldn't shut up — we really enjoyed talking about the job. It was really exciting."

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Spina said that at the end of her second interview, the head coach told her he wanted to hire her for the role. He sent her an email with her job details and expectations, according to records seen by Insider.


Spina told Insider she never received a contract or offer letter to sign — something she now says she should have looked out for.

Insider viewed copies of more than a dozen emails between Spina and the head coach who organized her move to Virginia, as well as receipts of her expenses for the shift.

The Virginia college did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Spina's boss started arranging for her posting
On July 11, Spina received an email from the head coach telling her that she was to start work on August 1 and that she should submit her details to human resources through a job posting on the university's website.


"This is merely a formality and can get you in the system with HR," the coach wrote. "Completing this now would probably mean you would be on a pay period starting 8/01."

She then spoke with the head coach twice a week throughout July to discuss how she would step into the job. Several emails with the coach also show he asked Spina to try her hand at a few administrative tasks, such as organizing a camp itinerary for the cheerleading coaching team.

"We had talked about whether I would relocate, how I would need to have time to find a place to live. So he put me in a hotel," Spina said.

To kick off her move, Spina said she terminated her lease in Florida and booked a storage unit in Virginia to keep all of her belongings.


She rented a moving truck, which her boyfriend drove 13 hours to Virginia while she followed in her car.

After settling into her hotel, she began working August 1 and immediately started carrying out her new responsibilities and coaching about 50 athletes at the college, Spina said.

"When I showed up in person, I was purchasing, I was ordering items, I was doing a lot of official business with the team," Spina said. "That's when I felt, like, this is it. This is a done deal."

Inconsistencies emerge at work
But Spina's new job took a turn when her boss asked her on August 8 to check whether human resources had received her personal details.


When she emailed the HR department, they said they'd received her job application.

"Your application is currently under review by the department, and if you are selected to move forward in the hiring process a hiring manager will contact you directly," the HR department's email response, seen by Insider, said.

The HR department added in its email that Spina could browse other job openings at the university. By then, Spina had already worked six days.

She replied to HR to say she'd already been hired and assumed it was a clerical error.


Spina said that on August 9, her boss asked her whether there was anything that might cause problems with her background check.

She said she emailed human resources again but was told her application never reached the stage in which her employer would run a background check.

Spina told Insider she and her boss agreed on August 9 that she shouldn't return to work until the hiring situation was resolved.

Spina said that on August 10, an HR employee called her, saying the company had "decided to move forward with other applicants for this job."


'There's no record of you'
Spina said a call from HR on August 11 confirmed her fears.

"They said this is now an issue where there's no record of you. There's no hiring process for you," Spina told Insider.

She had never officially been hired, she was told. Spina also stopped receiving any communications from her boss that day, she said.

"It was initially a panic situation, mostly because of all the money I had spent. That's a lot of money to lose in a couple of days without a guarantee of getting a paycheck to reimburse that," Spina said.


Spina estimated she had spent about $1,500 moving to Virginia.

She was eventually reimbursed by her would-be employer for her expenses and seven days of work after she wrote a letter to the college's HR department explaining the misunderstanding. In total, she received $1,600 in a check, according to a receipt seen by Insider.

Spina said she'd temporarily moved in with her parents, who live in Pennsylvania, and had been working a remote, part-time job in the meantime.

"I now know not to move forward with anything until I get official documents back instead of trusting that they'll be coming eventually," she said.


Spina said she was initially embarrassed to tell anyone about the gaffe, but she chalked up the ordeal to a miscommunication.

"There's obviously no hard feelings. I'm giving myself peace and just understanding that everyone was doing what they thought they had to do in that moment," she said.