If you’ve applied for a job and are asked to answer specific pre-interview “scenario” questions before being granted an interview … DO NOT answer them and run away as fast as you can.

TL:DR – rogue employers facing specific issues will pretend to hire and ask candidates to answer pre-interview questions that are identical to their own problems (in real life). Once they have an answer, they ghost the potential candidates. The rogue never had any intention of hiring anyone.

This happens more often to people applying for jobs that require specific training, credentials, etc., such as programmers, IT specialists, accounting, legal, etc.

Unfortunately, it's becoming a trend, where employers facing X problems, be it program coding, accounting or even legal, in real life pretend they are hiring. Once they have sufficient candidates that have applied, they will send out a pre-interview “questionnaire.” It contains the SAME problems they are facing, albeit in a hypothetical scenario manner.

Once enough candidates have answered them, the rogue employer will review all to see if there's a “consensus” of what they should be doing in real life to their own problem. Once they have an answer, they ghost the prospective candidates, without even granting them an interview. They have no intention of actually hiring anyone.

Examples of such “pre-interview” questionnaires include:

1. Accounting – say X company owes the IRS Y sums in unpaid taxes. In addition it will be audited by Z company in the following 6 months. What is the best way to go about it, in handling the situation.
2. Legal – what type of legal defenses does Y company have in handling a potential lawsuit by Z competitor if it decides to take X actions.
3. Programming/coding – describe in full detail how a code will look to satisfy X criteria using Y parameters, etc.

Why do they do this? Because it costs them nothing. The problems are not grave enough to actually hire anyone and this way, they get an input, without paying anything for it. Worse yet, they can actually use your work (such as program coding) without any consequences.

So, keep that in mind, next time a prospective employer decides to ask you specific scenario questions.

EDIT: you can typically spot these employers because every 3-6 months they seem to be hiring again for the same positions, but the pre-interview questions will be different – you can guess why.