#jobs

Sort of what I was thinking too Natalie, but in my case I’m not even qualified to do this… I kinda got the impression the VP of Marketing is just being snarky with me.

I mean in good faith it’s more than fair to ask their budget to pay and how they plan to use it as you may be misaligned in terms of their expectations or budget… if they were getting snarky, then they may pay something less than a $600 because they are expecting a lot of work and detail… also they should document in writing this is only to access your skills for the role… if not then not even worth stressing over, if you’re stressing at all lol hopefully you’re not stressed though

No, not stressed at all since I am not going to pursue this, but just truly curious to get feedback from others on how they’d approach the different aspects of the request. I think your in the Marketing Communication Women of Atlanta facebook group too and are probably familiar with how the members share and comment on these sort of scenarios.

Beyond seeing if they will pay, which I am 100% sure they will not, I would love to know others might handle the case study creation and the workflow request.

Honestly, 3 hours is ridiculous and if it were me I'd think they were playing games. I've never had anyone ask that much for an assignment.

I’ve seen worse Mary…. not necessarily for customer marketing. But wondering how many in our space have these skills. I am sure there are many, but I don’t as my career didn’t grow from demand gen and campaigns.

I will say I have the experience for most of what they ask but wouldn’t take this job because these skills are designed for a team. I got most of my experience doing this work form working different roles at different orgs not one role

I see. I do have the skills, but the time for the automation would likely take more than an hour. This would likely take more than 2.5 hours for the whole thing.

@Mary Green (Owner CMAweekly) i definitely thought the time was way off on the whole assignment too… i was thinking this is a full day of work at least

Is it reasonable to specify it be done in Zapier specifically?

Honestly I don’t think it’s reasonable but if Zapier is their dealbreaker then I see why they included that… honestly though they must be willing to compensate above market average if they sent that assignment and have those overall expectations for the role

While honesty I think if a company is asking you to do an assignment they should compensate you for it, but I’ve never had a company offer that. It’s an extremely unpopular opinion but these are the necessary evils of looking for a job. For HackerOne I built a workable database and created an 30 minute presentation, I was annoyed for sure but did make it more into showing my creativity on how I would handle the challenge. I asked for feedback after I started and honestly they said showing initiative, creativity, and ownership were what they were looking for so did not really matter on the details because there’s no way to know internal flows when you are interviewing. I also had to do something very similar for panda doc and can share over what I did.

ty for sharing that @Cara Peterson how much time did you put into the database/presentation prep?

I only had two days notice so it was probably around 5 hours?

Yikes, thats a lot. But if it comes down to not getting the job, that does make you want to do it.

I had an assignment and they said to me to spend no more than 30 minutes on it and I did.

Another company asked me to do an assignment that expected longer, about 4 hours and I asked if they would compensate and said no and I removed myself from consideration.

One company has offered to pay me for what they thought was 2-4 hours of work after I asked. They asked for my invoice and w9.

Not sure if that helps any.

I was asked to give a 45 minute presentation with about 4 hours of prep for a role. I asked if it was a paid consulting assignment. The recruiter was pretty shocked by my question. The assignment was to be presented to the hiring manager whom I had already met. This project would have been in round 4 of interviews. Very politely, I said I would be happy to have another call with the hiring manager and talk through my approach to whatever the prompt was about, perhaps with a few framework slides. I was cut from the role this morning. I truly believe: "If it's meant for me, it won't pass me by!"

Chiming in to agree with the other points here. There's a fine line between evaluating how you think and free consulting. If you have done similar work as what the assignment is asking, I'd first offer one of those assets (proprietary numbers and such taken out) as a sample of your thought process/strategy/presentation skills. If it's clear they want you to solve a real problem they're currently having, I'd either charge an hourly rate, or else put a watermark over EVERY page stating that this work is for evaluative purposes only, and used for any other reason without your express written consent will result in legal action.

@Lauren Turner I offered a company past work and they refused so I definitely turned them down without even thinking twice because they refused to pay

@Natalie Gullatt I did the same. Offered to talk through (not give) an example of a previous project. I'm at complete peace with my decision on that.

One thing I appreciated about interviewing at my current company is that they re-thought the approach to this part of the interview process. What would have usually been a take-home assignment, they pivoted to a final group interview (myself and the hiring committee)

They provided the prompt at the top of the meeting, then we went cams and mic off for 15-20 minutes while I thought through the "assignment" and pulled a few thoughts together. They did not expect a flashy presentation or a super granular plan — the goal was to understand my thought process and who are the xfn partners I'd loop in to bring the program to life. This was a "green flag" for me as it showed they respected my time and didn't need a super robust take-home assignment to prove my value so far along in the process.

After that experience, I don't think I would spend more than an hour on a take-home assignment (if that). My previous job required a 4-hour writing assignment, and while I got the job, I think I'd now ask for compensation for it.

This is pretty shocking to me. I've never given an assignment to someone I've hired, but I may put them in front of our C-level execs in the interview process. I would also definitely rely on ChatGPT or another AI tool to jumpstart this particular challenge. That's probably the only way I could get it done in 3 hrs.

What’s also interesting is that I notice it’s mostly smaller companies wanting these detailed assignments so it’s seems it’s about getting the labor and not assessing the the talent.

And i wonder as you mentioned @Megan Donaldson at Zoom with the rise of AI will assignments truly be effective in knowing if talent can truly to do the role being hired for…

Overall, I wonder if assignments should be eliminated as not only can some potential staff learn the role and honestly people seemingly aren’t l promoted for being the best at doing the work rather for who thinks they have great leadership skills… not that everyone should be a leader but I mean hiring such niche staff will backfire in the long run…

All of this. Being a functional expert and being a good people manager are different skillsets. Sometimes a company gets lucky with a handful of leaders who are both!

@Jennifer Lyons if you like the job opportunity, I help you write a customer story that meets all their criteria. We can do it on a 15-minute Zoom call together. Please LMK if you're interested, and here's my availability: https://calendly.com/sm-peerbound/30min

@Sunny Manivannan it’s not lack of ability to write a customer story, it’s two things: 1) doing ‘free’ work for a job opportunity 2) lack of enough material to write a decent story. Plus I don’t have the automation skills they were looking for and the job overall wasn’t a match.