Salary negotiation tactics...suggestions

[Rain Man]

We had a job candidate a while back who seemed promising, but we had a few concerns, chief among them being that she had held a "recreational job" for several years instead of pursuing a career. We asked her if she was really planning to concentrate on her career because we didn't want to compete with the recreational job (ski instructor). She assured us that she was ready to get to work. We had also informed her of our salary range.

So we make her an offer, and all seems well. Then out of the blue she comes back and says that she wants a salary that's way out of our salary range, 50% or more higher than her job offer. It was completely unrealistic. And then she informs us that she plans to keep her ski instructor job in addition to working for us, which essentially told us that she just wanted a paycheck from us and that she wasn't committed to a career with us.

I wasn't on the hiring team for that one, but our hiring team huddled over it and told her, "Thanks but no thanks." She had been in a near dead heat with another candidate, so we were going to go with the other candidate. She came sputtering back and said, "I was just negotiating with you. I'm ready to accept your offer."

I don't know who gave her advice, but it was really, really bad advice. We hate job negotiations to start with and tell people that we make the best offer we can and don't negotiate. We're not bluffing. But then to have someone come back and make a completely unreasonable salary demand that was out of the range we'd told her, and then also inform us that we're going to be second on her list of job priorities was a fatal mistake, particularly since it wasn't what she'd promised us in the interview. Our team pulled the job offer and moved on.

I actually felt kind of bad for her, but geez, get a clue.