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Hopefully it wasn't one of those unpaid internships? I've heard of people doing an unpaid internship for a year or longer and never get hired. Why buy the whole cow when you can get the milk for free?
I've also seen temps working at the same company for years, with the promise of a full time job being dangled in front of them every day, like a carrot on a stick.
I am not aware there is any legal time limit for being an intern though. Perhaps in California but not where I live.
Yes, I was taken by one of these back in 1999/2000. I got job as a ladderop and as a tournament director for an online gaming place. I was promised if I did a good job and proved my loyalty to them that I'd be rewarded with a paid position. I'd been there over a year and had even developed the ladder and brought in new players that were buying memberships. So, they were making money from all that I was doing for them. I took them at their word. So, I finally kept questioning them about it. They fired me and banned me from the ladder instead after they found out I had told other people what was going on. I was very upset. I'd never been with a company that long before and I had trusted them. I decided to never work for free again.
I think this is totally overboard. Many people apply to tons of jobs - what if all of the employers would require you to spend a huge amount on a project like that?
In most cases they are not looking for free work to be done. You might be surprised if you ever did any hiring to find out how many people lie or exaggerate on their resume. Most of the time I can determine this by carefully crafted interview questions, but sometimes will use a small, simple project. When I have, it's not anything that would ever be useful work, it's just a test of the person's real ability to do the work. Some do fail, and for the others there is valuable information to help determine the best candidate. For example, when we give a scale of 1-10 to rate their skills with Excel or SQL, and they are asked to find any errors on a simple pivot table or script. We are not having them help us do our quality control. We made it up, and put in the error(s) intentionally.
If you want the job, you have to play by their rules, and with competition getting harder all the time, being too lazy or indignant to do a work sample project reduces your opportunities.
A skills assessment is one thing. Something that could potentially be a real project done for free is quite another.
Watermarks? Easy peasy to remove. Software has come a long way.
In literacy,marketing,writing samples...You are in power. Never assume that you are at their mercy for criteria for potential hire. Tell them upfront that (1) your article will have the main theme but not their business name. (2) that this in no way becomes their property. It remains your portfolio samples.
(3) any attempt to publish,transmit or copy will violate the author's creative license.
Then have them sign it,date it and mark it with a b, and put it in the oven for...Oops wrong process!
When a business wants samples..Tell them you want a pay check sample...
Location: San Ramon, Seattle, Anchorage, Reykjavik
2,254 posts, read 2,739,837 times
Reputation: 3203
Quote:
Originally Posted by frimpter928
I just had a phone screening with a company. They want me for the second round interview, but before they set up the second round they want me to do two things for them:
1. Create a communications plan for a new location they are opening up.
2. A press release on that location opening up.
Yeah, I am going to pass. The nerve. If they wanted to see writing samples and press releases that I have written I can certainly send those over. To ask me to do all that work just to go to the second round is ridiculous.
It's called a test of your ability to do the job they are hiring for. You self selected to fail. Good luck with that. Sounds like they were lucky not to get you.
It's called a test of your ability to do the job they are hiring for. You self selected to fail. Good luck with that. Sounds like they were lucky not to get you.
Naw, they were a small startup. I am in the running for three excellent positions at three major brands and good companies Currently getting an offer from one and in the final rounds for some others. I provided about 10 work samples from the past and it sufficed for them.
Sounds like you are probably someone who gets taken advantage of.
Location: San Ramon, Seattle, Anchorage, Reykjavik
2,254 posts, read 2,739,837 times
Reputation: 3203
Quote:
Originally Posted by frimpter928
Naw, they were a small startup. I am in the running for three excellent positions at three major brands and good companies Currently getting an offer from one and in the final rounds for some others. I provided about 10 work samples from the past and it sufficed for them.
Sounds like you are probably someone who gets taken advantage of.
More like the one taking advantage of this method for finding the right talent for my companies.
I got my first job in 1979 and was immediately sent to Ann Arbor to work on a joint project with the environmental testing lab there. While I was there, they came up with a code of conduct that their employees had to sign. Included was the provision that any patents their employees came up with would belong to the employer. The explanation was that the clients wanted this provision.
I am not referring to patents acquired while on the job. This was a testing laboratory, not a research lab. The employees were required to give up patent rights on anything they did on their own time and with their own resources (not using company facilities). I later read in an industry publication that such patents grabs had been thrown out of court. I should also point out that these were hourly employees, and that being there for one year put you high up in seniority.
I had one job tell me that they will hire me for 2 weeks and decide after 2 weeks whether they will hire me full-time or not. (if they didn't hire you after the 2 week grace period you had to resign.)
I also had a job do the same thing as OP. I did it and never heard back from them. No follow up email from them, nada! Not a thanks for the interest for the job, blah, blah. NADA!
Please keep in mind that i had a full-time salary job. I decided to pass since i wanted something more concrete.
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