I know this isn’t particularly anti work, its mostly anti hiring processes, but I need some input. I did a 1 hour job interview followed by a writing exercise. I did my research and learned that a significant portion of the job is focusing on one specific research project. The position is new so they’re looking for someone who sounds like they know what they’re talking about (because the rest of the team has no idea what to do). Everything was great until the portion of the interview where I was required to do a writing assignment. I hate interviews that require a writing assignment because usually it is a task/project that I would do on the job and there are no clear legal boundaries to protect my intellectual property. The writing assignment was questions that exactly reflect the information they would need for their research project. I want a job like this badly to grow my career and get out of poverty so I did the assignment to the best of my abilities. However, I’m worried they might use my ideas and approach in the project and not select me for the job (this happened to me before). What do you guys think? How can you reject obviously suspect writing assignments in job interviews?
side note: im not huge on intellectual property (i.e my friends or family using my ideas to help them grow as individuals). but when an org or corp is using my ideas without credit or pay i have the right to be concerned for that especially if im broke and need a well paying job!