The initial process started with a screening call. This round would be a stage were the recruiter qualifies or disqualifies a candidate right?
I qualified to the next round, to be interviewed by a panel and present a real-life proposal.
I've always hated being asked this, and I am increasingly begrudging these types of interviews, because they are basically asking candidates to conduct free labour/work/ potentially take your ideas and not give you the job or just give it to an intern or current employee to carry out. It's not illegal but it is certainly is immoral.
All in all, I was asked a couple of times to share my proposal. So I know they liked it and it contained things that were very relevant to them.
It was a catch 22, share it, get the job, share it, don't get the job. They were very insistent on my sharing it, and at this point, alarm bells did go off. Were they more interested in getting their hands on this free work I had done for them than actually filling the role?
When all was said and done, they had my hard work, something that I had spend a lot of time and effort on the project for the interview and it was all for nothing.
I should of listened to my gut. But to be frank, I wanted the job and put in a lot of effort which was reflected in my proposal. It left me with a bad experience overall with this company and now I will be more cautious in the future about company's like this asking for similar free work to be carried out.
The initial screening would have answered your question about what type of person and their skill set you wanted. Not after asking for free consultation to be done and presented to you on numerous occasions for you to come to that decision.
Absolute waste of time. I'm beginning to think if there was even a job available to be filled.
it just goes back to my question above, don't go advertising for apples when you want oranges.
Be wary if you're put in this position!