Initial call with the recruiter led to 1:1 with Director of Marketing, and then I was given a “Design Challenge”. Against my better, and previous judgement, I agreed even though this practice is extremely exploitive to designers and useless given the prevalence of portfolios and a general distaste of unpaid labor by most employers. The design challenge was *extensive*- an event brand identity system including logo, typeface(s), color palettes, a website mock-up, social media designs, apparel and other items. As a senior level designer, this took me 3 days to complete. The “presentation” component was next. Until this point, each interview was scheduled within a day at most and I was given positive feedback from the recruiter about my candidacy. During the presentation, I got positive feedback before the time ran out and the call was wrapped up in under a minute. I was told they’d touch base with the recruiter. 10 days passed and I heard nothing. After reaching out, I was then told the director had been on vacation and promptly rejected.