This position was for singapore location. An HR call followed by a tech challenge to complete within 2-3 days. After submission they said that the team has put my profile on hold and looking for local candidate. This clearly should have been the first decision of the team whether to hire locally or remote before assigning any technical task . This clearly looks like a trend where companies get some of their internal tasks done for free by giving it as technical challenge and later on not responding or putting on hold. Update: HR told that my submission was the weakest among other candidates(how can one verify this ?). Well i cannot take this at face value as they can provide any reason for that. Overall i had a negative experience. It should have been a team member making initial call or a honest review after submission.