Context: Had a phone call interview and then a full 1 hour interview with two of the managers via Zoom. It went well. I'm over qualified for the role and a very good fit for the company due to my previous experience. This is for a company who rents out short term lets, similar to Airbnb.
They then vanished for a week despite me following up twice. No response. Nothing. I assumed I had been ghosted.
They finally got back to me today. No apology for disappearing or explanation. Just a full list of completely free, unpaid tasks they want me to do for the third interview.
I firmly and categorically DECLINED. They could easily steal these ideas and use them for their social media then vanish again. I've seen it happen numerous times to job seekers.
Here is the full list of free, unpaid tasks they want me to produce for the sake of an interview with no guarantee of a job at the end of it:
Following the culture interview last week, we think you'd be a good cultural fit for the company and would like to invite you to a technical interview which involves a task.
This exercise will give us an idea of how you would approach a project in a real-life work situation.
Below is a brief containing a few questions we'd like you to answer and present back to us with the presentation lasting no longer than 30 minutes. We'll then use the remaining 30 minutes for questions relating to what you've presented.
The brief:
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Based on our current social presence, what would be your top 3 recommendations for improving engagement. Give examples or visuals where relevant.
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Based on seasonality, our peak period is January. We'd like you to draft a social media campaign for this time frame aimed at attracting our new short-term vacation rental hosts and capturing the increased demand.
Please detail your approach to the following:
• The platforms and placements you would use and why
• Content ideas/recommendations
• How you would monitor and report on the performance of the campaign
- Attached is a paid performance report from Meta.
Please analyse the data and feedback 3 key takeaways or recommendations.
(Yep they've literally sent me a copy of their real ad campaign data where they've clearly failed to get a decent amount of clicks and want me to tell them how to improve it – for free!).
I'm staggered. This is the third time in a row I've encountered this now. How is this becoming so common?