I went through with the HR/recruiter interview screening and it went smoothly and didn't appear to have any issues. However, following this interview I was asked to do a take-home assessment. I'm personally not a fan of companies asking to do these free projects, but I can see how it may be necessary in the FINAL stages of the process. I completed and assessment and was later rejected, which is not my problem as their concerns with the results were fair. My issue is that I never once met with the hiring team to even understand the needs of the role/team more or was able to speak about the work I poured into this project. Projects/assessments should only be given to final round candidates and NOT early on in the interview process. You're having candidates take hours out of their week to present polished ideas before ever meeting the hiring team and not even giving them the time of day, which in my opinion is exploitative and discouraging in the hiring process.

I had two interviews, followed by a project with sample social media posts and sharing ideas/strategies. After that was an hour long round of 15 minutes interviews with 4 different people. After than I didn’t hear back. Then they reached out a month later and I politely declined.