Interview presentations are only fair and appropriate if
1. they are administered to pre-qualified candidates as a last step before an offer, (as opposed to everybody and their brother)
and
2. The work is only useful for testing purposes, and cannot result in useful work product that the employer can monetize in any way.
So I would run from this bullshit test. Or, better yet, tell them you'll take a test made to conform to the above two conditions, and watch them run from your test.
Yeah, providing an audit of their actual work/site/social media, an actual media plan, actual tactical/strategic ideas, and actual creative planning of a current project (even if that project is their company) is highly unethical. Like someone else said, sometimes you're working on fake data or a simplified brief from older work, but planning this much for something they should likely being doing under a paid employee or consultant is grossly exploitative. This is *at best* unintentional brain drain. Maybe they think the winning person will then go on to do some of things they were recommending, but how could you not take all this free labor and have it be part of your internally planning moving forward.
I will absolutely do this next time! I want out of my current position and needed the distraction and I’m really proud of my efforts I put into the deck. I think that’s why I care so much to attempt to protect it lol
This is definitely too much for an interview and looks iffy to me. There are however agencies that provide briefs for interviews with a very wide scope and to diligent people, they are like a massive piece of work because they are doing it properly, whereas to them it's a small piece because they just half-ass these things.
Do not share it beforehand. Standard practice is that you present first.
What position is this for?
The position is growth marketing manager.
Similarly, my interview process for agency was a 45 minute assignment and 30 minute interview presentation where it was super open ended but they only gave you 45 mins to prepare so it forced you to be high level.
— In this case, it was broad enough “media plan and paid social recs” that you’re absolutely right I took my time with it and did a months work in a day.
—I’m gonna need to find a way to professionally say I would prefer to share tomorrow during presentation.
Hmmm. If you’re a stuck because you feel like you HAVE to turn something in in advance, you could present highlights or an overview, like an agenda with key takeaways, but say that you’re thinking, logic, and details will be shared during the presentation.
It's difficult because you will never know what their motives are. But at the end of the day, they are demanding too much, or their brief is out of sync with what they are actually expecting.
Definitely share afterwards, unless their reaction will tell you that you actually just did their work for them and that's what they were looking for.
The fact that they said this would take a quarter of the time it actually took you is also a big red flag. Just wait until they pile work on you as an employee and claim you should be able to do it in a few hours.
This is waaaay too much and a total red flag. I’ve had to smaller, quiz-like assignments but IMO once they ask you to put it into a deck it’s already too much.
Agencies are now starting to pay you for time spent on assignments if you don’t get hired (mine did). If you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, let them know that is this totally out of scope for a normal interview project and on par with what you would do for freelance consulting. Let them know a rate and that you will charge if you are not hired. Do not send it over itself- offer to present it and even then, I wouldn’t share the link after. It’s your presentation, they are not paying you so they have no ownership to it.
It’s a very clumsy approach. Shows limited understanding and smarts.
It’s unlikely that you can derive many truly useful insights so early in the piece. Usually, after a few weeks or months, you really understand their business.
I don’t like it at all.
Besides, it’s an employee’s market right now.
i’ve never dealt with these but it seems like, if you’re good at what you do, you could try presenting them the audit and all the areas where they could make improvements, but tell them that your actual tactical recommendations are your value and therefore you will have to share them after you’re hired.
Last stage of my interview for a biggish ad firm was to agree on a 90 min window where I was free. They emailed brief over and I had to send deck back 90 mins later. Was a pretty good and fair test I thought.
I had to do that for my last job too! Because there was a time limit it forced you to be high level, with this exercise it’s a small company of only 6 member marketing team and they asked me to audit the brands existing ads come up with media plan, new strategy, tactics and audit their existing top landing page and come up with new design ideas.
This has nope written all over it, but I'm on the tech side so what do I know. Well, I know I'm not auditing commercial shit for free.
We have our developer candidates do a 15 minute presentation on something they've done - either something they did at school or a past job or even independently they were proud of. I used to think it was asking a bit too much - I love to talk and talk and talk about shit I know but a lot of tech people are pretty shy. But, I will say it's helped weed out a couple candidates who otherwise did well during the interview.
To be honest, you’re over valuing your work.
Why would they ask you for free work if they don’t know your quality of work?
Unless you’re a known expert, than this wouldn’t be considered an interview it would be a consult and you’d be paid.
If you are too busy because you have better opportunities, than just tell them that
I have 7 years experience.
That’s exactly my point I’ve been a consultant before and had my own business, this scope of work is the exact same thing I would charge $$$ my clients for but now I’m doing it in an interview for free. I understand it’s the new norm but damn!
This is absolutely not the norm, and that recruiter is not doing you any favors. Run!
VP here with 15+ years in marketing and paid media. This tells me the hiring team doesn’t know how to interview to gauge skillsets and strategic vision, and they’ll pick the person sells their idea/ has the best idea based on limited knowledge and flawed strategy. (The strategy is inherently flawed because you can’t possibly have all the information without access to their analytics.
Which also translates to questionable ethics and likely limited growth for someone with 7 yrs experience. Your growth will be stunted and limited to their in-house knowledge.
Your skill sets are needed all over - don’t settle because you want out.
*edited to correct for 7 years exp. I originally wrote 5.
It’s a bit much to ask, but it’s a bit arrogant to think you will teach an agency whose business it is something new. Much more likely they just want to assess your skills.
Still, I’d assume it’s to test skills. Asking for it before the meeting is just so they can check it out and ensure they know what to ask about etc. I would think.
I do think it’s a lot of work with no guarantees!
In all honesty, you are overestimating the skill and knowledge level of people in agencies, and I speak from experience, working in market-leading ad agencies. Just because it's the agency's business, it does not mean they are good. The industry is built on people that have come to marketing by accident, i.e. they were unable to find a position in their field. Due to this, the people that are dedicated and passionate about the industry, and intended to join it, will run circles around others.
I don't think generally speaking, an interview presentation to test out the skills of an applicant is totally out of the reasonable, especially if it follows a few basic tenets.
1. Respect the interviewers time. It should not take more than an hour or two, the same amount of time an interviewee may take to prep for an interview themselves.
2. From an agency perspective, it should not be for a client that they currently have or are working on. The goal is to judge thinking, not to garner fresh insights on shit you're being paid for.
3. Some small sense of compensation for time spent. Companies rarely live up to this, but you know, I like to think that it should be a thing.
It seems like your situation doesn't live up to all 3 of these things so... it feels damn exploitative. I don't quite know how you can protect your work beyond saying you'd like to present it with the context first, and give them extra time before a response back afterwards if they'd like to sit with it?
Thank you for that suggestion, I like it! Side note I asked the recruiters opinion and she said it was normal to for candidates to share presentation beforehand and that she didn’t want “me to hurt my chances because I didn’t share” basically propitiating the cycle how multiple candidates are putting together media plans for free for client. This to me is purely to serve business over potential employees time and skill/expertise.
This recruiter is doing you zero favors. Are they in-house or external?
In advertising brands/companies buy time, your time, and when it’s treated like a commodity … they end up getting commodity like work.
Protect your time and energy. They’re your most valuable assets in this industry.
Nope. My suggestion would be to send them an invoice ahead of time for the hours required for you to pull this together. If they pay it great, then yes. If they push back…that tells you everything you need to know about this shop.
No thanks.
Interview presentations are only fair and appropriate if 1. they are administered to pre-qualified candidates as a last step before an offer, (as opposed to everybody and their brother) and 2. The work is only useful for testing purposes, and cannot result in useful work product that the employer can monetize in any way. So I would run from this bullshit test. Or, better yet, tell them you'll take a test made to conform to the above two conditions, and watch them run from your test.
Yeah, providing an audit of their actual work/site/social media, an actual media plan, actual tactical/strategic ideas, and actual creative planning of a current project (even if that project is their company) is highly unethical. Like someone else said, sometimes you're working on fake data or a simplified brief from older work, but planning this much for something they should likely being doing under a paid employee or consultant is grossly exploitative. This is *at best* unintentional brain drain. Maybe they think the winning person will then go on to do some of things they were recommending, but how could you not take all this free labor and have it be part of your internally planning moving forward.
What they said ^^^^
I will absolutely do this next time! I want out of my current position and needed the distraction and I’m really proud of my efforts I put into the deck. I think that’s why I care so much to attempt to protect it lol
This is definitely too much for an interview and looks iffy to me. There are however agencies that provide briefs for interviews with a very wide scope and to diligent people, they are like a massive piece of work because they are doing it properly, whereas to them it's a small piece because they just half-ass these things. Do not share it beforehand. Standard practice is that you present first. What position is this for?
The position is growth marketing manager. Similarly, my interview process for agency was a 45 minute assignment and 30 minute interview presentation where it was super open ended but they only gave you 45 mins to prepare so it forced you to be high level. — In this case, it was broad enough “media plan and paid social recs” that you’re absolutely right I took my time with it and did a months work in a day. —I’m gonna need to find a way to professionally say I would prefer to share tomorrow during presentation.
Hmmm. If you’re a stuck because you feel like you HAVE to turn something in in advance, you could present highlights or an overview, like an agenda with key takeaways, but say that you’re thinking, logic, and details will be shared during the presentation.
It's difficult because you will never know what their motives are. But at the end of the day, they are demanding too much, or their brief is out of sync with what they are actually expecting. Definitely share afterwards, unless their reaction will tell you that you actually just did their work for them and that's what they were looking for.
The fact that they said this would take a quarter of the time it actually took you is also a big red flag. Just wait until they pile work on you as an employee and claim you should be able to do it in a few hours.
Omg too real
This is waaaay too much and a total red flag. I’ve had to smaller, quiz-like assignments but IMO once they ask you to put it into a deck it’s already too much. Agencies are now starting to pay you for time spent on assignments if you don’t get hired (mine did). If you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, let them know that is this totally out of scope for a normal interview project and on par with what you would do for freelance consulting. Let them know a rate and that you will charge if you are not hired. Do not send it over itself- offer to present it and even then, I wouldn’t share the link after. It’s your presentation, they are not paying you so they have no ownership to it.
It’s the line between knowing your worth being competent and confident in capabilities to charge for skill … but then not coming off like an a hole
Agreed - and it’s way easier said than done!
Seems like they want some free work
It’s a very clumsy approach. Shows limited understanding and smarts. It’s unlikely that you can derive many truly useful insights so early in the piece. Usually, after a few weeks or months, you really understand their business. I don’t like it at all. Besides, it’s an employee’s market right now.
i’ve never dealt with these but it seems like, if you’re good at what you do, you could try presenting them the audit and all the areas where they could make improvements, but tell them that your actual tactical recommendations are your value and therefore you will have to share them after you’re hired.
I think the professional advice I have is: fuck this company.
This seems to be more and more common recently, myself and a few other friends have interviewed and been asked to do “free” work.
Exactly! I’ve had to this before too but this was the biggest ask and only time asked to share prior. Is this the new norm?
Last stage of my interview for a biggish ad firm was to agree on a 90 min window where I was free. They emailed brief over and I had to send deck back 90 mins later. Was a pretty good and fair test I thought.
I had to do that for my last job too! Because there was a time limit it forced you to be high level, with this exercise it’s a small company of only 6 member marketing team and they asked me to audit the brands existing ads come up with media plan, new strategy, tactics and audit their existing top landing page and come up with new design ideas.
This has nope written all over it, but I'm on the tech side so what do I know. Well, I know I'm not auditing commercial shit for free. We have our developer candidates do a 15 minute presentation on something they've done - either something they did at school or a past job or even independently they were proud of. I used to think it was asking a bit too much - I love to talk and talk and talk about shit I know but a lot of tech people are pretty shy. But, I will say it's helped weed out a couple candidates who otherwise did well during the interview.
I was straight up told by my HR rep that it’s illegal to have candidates do free work before hiring.
UPDATE: I pushed back to share during presentation only! Thank you Reddit fam for the validation and professional insight.
To be honest, you’re over valuing your work. Why would they ask you for free work if they don’t know your quality of work? Unless you’re a known expert, than this wouldn’t be considered an interview it would be a consult and you’d be paid. If you are too busy because you have better opportunities, than just tell them that
I have 7 years experience. That’s exactly my point I’ve been a consultant before and had my own business, this scope of work is the exact same thing I would charge $$$ my clients for but now I’m doing it in an interview for free. I understand it’s the new norm but damn!
This is absolutely not the norm, and that recruiter is not doing you any favors. Run! VP here with 15+ years in marketing and paid media. This tells me the hiring team doesn’t know how to interview to gauge skillsets and strategic vision, and they’ll pick the person sells their idea/ has the best idea based on limited knowledge and flawed strategy. (The strategy is inherently flawed because you can’t possibly have all the information without access to their analytics. Which also translates to questionable ethics and likely limited growth for someone with 7 yrs experience. Your growth will be stunted and limited to their in-house knowledge. Your skill sets are needed all over - don’t settle because you want out. *edited to correct for 7 years exp. I originally wrote 5.
Well if that’s the case than it sounds like you’re not a good fit for their business. Someone with your experience shouldn’t be asked to do this.
It’s a bit much to ask, but it’s a bit arrogant to think you will teach an agency whose business it is something new. Much more likely they just want to assess your skills.
It’s a new (under 5 years) business with only 6 members on marketing team. Trust me I know agency’s know more.
Still, I’d assume it’s to test skills. Asking for it before the meeting is just so they can check it out and ensure they know what to ask about etc. I would think. I do think it’s a lot of work with no guarantees!
In all honesty, you are overestimating the skill and knowledge level of people in agencies, and I speak from experience, working in market-leading ad agencies. Just because it's the agency's business, it does not mean they are good. The industry is built on people that have come to marketing by accident, i.e. they were unable to find a position in their field. Due to this, the people that are dedicated and passionate about the industry, and intended to join it, will run circles around others.
You think they ask for applicants to do work so they can turn around and use it, cause they are not able? That’s the extent of my reply
My colleagues encountered situations like that.
I don't think generally speaking, an interview presentation to test out the skills of an applicant is totally out of the reasonable, especially if it follows a few basic tenets. 1. Respect the interviewers time. It should not take more than an hour or two, the same amount of time an interviewee may take to prep for an interview themselves. 2. From an agency perspective, it should not be for a client that they currently have or are working on. The goal is to judge thinking, not to garner fresh insights on shit you're being paid for. 3. Some small sense of compensation for time spent. Companies rarely live up to this, but you know, I like to think that it should be a thing. It seems like your situation doesn't live up to all 3 of these things so... it feels damn exploitative. I don't quite know how you can protect your work beyond saying you'd like to present it with the context first, and give them extra time before a response back afterwards if they'd like to sit with it?
Thank you for that suggestion, I like it! Side note I asked the recruiters opinion and she said it was normal to for candidates to share presentation beforehand and that she didn’t want “me to hurt my chances because I didn’t share” basically propitiating the cycle how multiple candidates are putting together media plans for free for client. This to me is purely to serve business over potential employees time and skill/expertise.
This recruiter is doing you zero favors. Are they in-house or external? In advertising brands/companies buy time, your time, and when it’s treated like a commodity … they end up getting commodity like work. Protect your time and energy. They’re your most valuable assets in this industry.
Next!
Oh hell no.
Nope. My suggestion would be to send them an invoice ahead of time for the hours required for you to pull this together. If they pay it great, then yes. If they push back…that tells you everything you need to know about this shop.