Please do not contact my employer.
Google had invited me to an onsite interview in New York. I confirmed the date, returned the application, and made the confidentiality point explicit.
I was employed. This was an exploration.
The interview would take most of a day, including lunch. Google sent the usual instructions about arrival, identification, forms, and confidential interview questions. I sent back the part they actually needed from me.
Confirmed. See you then. Do not call Shutterstock.
I had a good role at Shutterstock with real opportunity and plenty of reason to stay. Other recruiters were reaching out too. I told one of them exactly that. I was not trying to escape a bad job.
I was checking the market.
After years of building infrastructure for a company that had gone public, I had useful experience and more choices. Taking a conversation did not mean I had decided to leave. It meant I wanted to understand what another path looked like while I still had the leverage of liking the one I was on.
That is a different kind of career decision than applying because rent is due.
The process still had to stay private. A recruiter treating an interview like public progress could create a problem at the job I actually had.
So I put the boundary in writing.
The source does not establish an offer or a move. It establishes a long day on the calendar and a confidential look at Google.
That was enough for the moment.