You Want a Job. They Want to Steal Your Ideas.

Have you ever been asked do unpaid work to prove you have the skills needed to get a new job? Write us a white paper, put together a strategic approach. But what happens when the work you do to get the job doesn’t get you the job and the prospective employer keeps your intellectual property?  

Recently, a woman I’ll call Belle was being recruited for a marketing position at a mid-sized advertising agency that touts its expertise reaching the coveted Gen Z audience.  Belle, who asked that her real name not be used since her current employer doesn’t know she’s looking for a new job, is a Black woman who currently runs marketing at a VP level for a global ad agency. 

After a long interview process, Belle was told she was the last remaining candidate in consideration and was asked to develop and present her suggested social media strategy for the organization. She worked for days on an in-depth plan, which included some education for the mostly white leadership team about youth culture since, as Belle puts it “You can’t have culture without Black.”  

The recruiter gushed about how great her strategic plan was. But, the recruiter said, there actually was another candidate, even though they said there wasn’t, and, oh yeah, we won’t give you the VP title, which would have made the job a demotion.

When Belle spoke to the CEO about the title, he said that “VP” was reserved for “the cream of the crop.” Belle checked LinkedIn for the job experience of one of the VPs on his team and found that the woman had similar experiences to Belle’s only at smaller organizations. But she was white.  

They did offer Belle the job, but at a mid-point in the salary range in the job description and still without the VP title. She declined.

Belle told the recruiter her experience in the interview process echoed the GlassDoor reviews of the agency as a place that treated workers of color as less competent than their white co-workers. The recruiter, a white woman, demurred, saying that the CEO, a white man, had two Black daughters.  

Now they have her in-depth social strategy and plan, for which a consultant could have charged five figures.  They offered to pay her $300.  

Donte Parks, a career strategist in Seattle, is a tech veteran who was responsible for hiring developers at his previous job. He sees a place for some work assignments in the hiring process. “What’s trickiest in hiring is how do you know someone can actually do the job.” Parks says. Work assignments can be a “vehicle to have the conversation to make sure we are speaking the same language. I’m going to interrupt you in real time and ask questions that involve nuance. If you can respond in that situation then that’s a good demonstration that you actually know what you’re talking about.”  

He advises his job seeking clients to avoid any work assignments that involve excessive time - more than a couple of hours – and are specific to the hiring company’s needs. And beware of tight deadlines. If a potential employer needs a work assignment that takes more than two hours, is about their needs and is of benefit to the potential employer, and they have a tight deadline “that’s three strikes and you’re out,” Parks says.  

Job seekers should set clear boundaries around what kind of work they will provide for free. If a potential employer wants to see creative work, a writing sample, or something that demonstrates specific skills as a presenter or strategist, the job applicant should reference work already done for another employer, with any confidential or proprietary information removed.  

If asked for new work specific to the company ask, “is there a budget for that?” Charge market rate for the work. If not, before you do it for free, understand the scope and purpose. Will it take hours or days? If they want to assess specific skills for which you have no examples, an assignment might be reasonable. If you have valid existing work that shows your skills and they still want your IP, that’s suspect.   

Pay attention to when and how the ask for an assignment comes up. The people I heard from who had bad experiences described very long interview processes, lasting months, with multiple interviews. Then came the ask, often couched as the last hoop to jump through before getting the job. One white man in his 50s was asked to write his own job description, as well as a strategic plan to fix the department he would run. He had applied for a contract position, but the CEO said this assignment would get him the full-time job he really wanted. He did the assignment but got no job at all. He called this the “string along IP harvesting ploy” to get a person invested and hopeful over time, so they believe the one-last-thing story.  As an older man who had been looking for work for a while, he fell for it.

Looking for work is hard enough already, but feeling taken advantage of, especially by a supposedly reputable company, makes it worse. Ask questions, set boundaries, and try not to spend more than an afternoon on anything you’re doing for free.

 This piece started with content from the Bad Boss Brief podcast I do with Eugene S. Robinson which you can find at the link.