I’ll explain the question. I recently went through an interview process for a programmer/analyst position which was conducted entirely via phone and email.
Part of the process included writing some software samples. Two of the problems were Access VBA programs that, given what the company does, could actually be useful to them on an ongoing basis.
The other were T-SQL questions, which described tables and fields by name and were relevant to what the company actually does. One in particular was a complex problem that required a lot of thought and a few hours of my time.
I gave them good professional well structured and well documented answers. In the case of the VBA applications, I went above and beyond what was asked for in the user interface and functionality. They said they liked the answers and proceeded to a second interview. A couple of days later I received a rejection email.
A friend pointed out that I did a number of hours of free work for this company and provided them with potentially useful tools and solutions. Is it conceivable that this could this have been the whole point of this process?
Wow. I’ve never heard of a job interview that required such pre-work. Sadly, it doesn’t really surprise me that there are unscrupulous people, though.
When my husband was an undergrad in business, he took a class that had only one assignment, a group project, worth 100% of their grade. My husband’s team was told to visit a nearby abandoned commercial property site (the old Ford plant) in the town where the college was. Their assignment was to make three recommendations on the best use for that property. It was a semester long project, so we’re talking hundreds of hours of research, creating graphs and posters, and meeting with real estate developers, etc. When they presented their recommendations to their professor, the mayor and a few councilmen from the town were also in attendance.
Fast foward a year or two later, and we were driving by the old Ford plant site. Lo and behold, a movie theater had been built there, which was exactly what my husband’s team had recommended.
In his case, he not only worked for free for the town, but he paid the university for the privilege of offering up his free advice.
I had a series of interviews in 1999 or 2000 that I always have suspected was something like this. This was with an internet start-up, and they were looking for someone to work as their Direct marketing Manager. I went in for a couple of interviews, and then had a final one that consisted mainly of them showing me samples of different ads and mail pieces thay had mocked up, and asking me what I thought of them, would I go with style A or style B, etc.
I never heard from them again, and have always wondered if they found a way to get some free advice.
Jokes on them, though, I wasn’t nearly as much of an expert on copy and advertising as I pretended during the interview. My experience was much more on the data side and I was faking the rest.
I had an interview a while back where they started grilling me about business practices in China, which I have some experience with. It came out that they were hoping to expand there. I knew beforehand that the job wasn’t a great fit for me, so When they pressed I said I would be more than willing to offer my services as a consultant, and we could meet to discuss rates.
Understand, it wasn’t framed as “pre-work”. I was told that it was a test of my programming skills, which is fair enough, I suppose, since that’s the job I was applying for.
It may be that this was completely legit. It may be the exact same test they give everyone else, but still, you have to wonder if a company could use this process to get some tasks done for free. They could employ a bunch of recent graduates or, even less expensive, young H1Bs, then when they come upon a particularly tough nut that they can’t crack, they find the resumes of some more expensive seasoned professionals online, email them, send a test with some problems including the real problem, then choose from among the best answer while hiring another H1B.
Which is why I’m always skeptical of the idea that companies use interviews to get free work out of people, despite the fact that a lot of people have a story where they’re “sure” they were taken advantage of.
At the end, the company is only going to get a few hours of work out of a person this way. And they’ll need to pay for an HR person to spend an hour or two on the fake interview. And then, since lots of people over-exaggerate their skill sets on resumes, they’ll need someone who is also an expert on the issue at hand to vet the interviewees work. The end savings for the company for such a complicated ploy would be pretty minimal, even in the case of a very high-paying job.
I read about a case like this in a security textbook a few years back.
Applicant goes to interview with Employer A. Employer A is actively trying to woo the applicant, so they show him all their great plans for the future. Applicant goes to his next interview with a competitor, Employer B. Applicant reveals everything he learned from Employer A. Oops.
Not really a “false” job interview, but things like this do happen. I’m assuming OP watched last week’s “How I Met Your Mother.”
Well, I can certainly imagine a company doing fake interviews to try and see what competitors are doing, or even trying to get some tasks done for free, but complicated programming seems like exactly the wrong kind of task for this. If nobody at the company is smart enough to write the code, who is going to install and maintain it? That’s leaving aside the problem of figuring out if it’s correct.
I mean, if it were me doing the hiring, I might choose problems that we’re actually working on, since I’d be familiar with the problem enough to be able to evaluate the submissions, and might hang on to any that seemed particularly clever or otherwise well-written, but I can’t imagine that having them would be by itself worth the time and energy of running a whole hiring process (including fake interviews).
And of course, in the OP’s case, if they only wanted the programming samples, why did they bother with a second interview?
I was in the “gifted and talented” program back in the day, and a common activity for us would be to enter competitions where businesses would submit real-world problems and ask students to come up with solutions. There’d be different age groups from grade school up through high school, and the businesses would evaluate the submissions and pick winners. Problems ranged from “what can we do with all these freaking pallets?” to “How can we make money off of people playing games online?” (this was in the mid-to-late 90’s, when online gaming was just starting to be a thing). I remember there would always be a form explaining that by entering the contest you waived all rights to your idea, i.e. they could use your idea to make money without giving you anything. It struck me at the time that we were essentially working for the company for free. Even if our work was rather simple or preliminary, if nothing else the hundreds of submissions from smart, creative students of varying ages would provide plenty of fodder for corporate brainstorming.
Of course, the people from the company had to give up some time to judge the contest, etc, and maybe one idea in 500 was actually a good one. We were essentially part of a public focus group, and were compensated for our ideas with the learning experience it provided. Basically a win-win.
and us students got a valuable learning experience
Code is covered by copyright law. They cannot legally use your code without express permission.
That’s not to say they wouldn’t, and it would be difficult to prove if they’re using it for an internal system, but most companies wouldn’t take that risk. Much safer and cheaper to hire a contractor for a few hours.
I’ve lost track of the ‘clever’ startups and small shops that think they can get advertising, marketing, copywriting, etc. free with these kinds of scams. It was endemic in the early Oughts.
I particularly liked the keenness of the two edges of the sword: what THEY were doing was worth zillions in VC or buyout, but what everyone ELSE did was commodity product, open to taking at any price down to free. But then, these startups were usually started by folks still in their college sweatshirts, who had spent the last 4-6 years hollering for open source and free software, but upon graddyating wanted every nickel they could squeeze for their product.
I’ll bet that it happens. I don’t know about setting up an entire “fake interview” process for that purpose, but in terms of deciding who to interview and what to ask of them, certainly.
A colleague of mine was laid off about a year ago and he interviewed at a smaller firm. That firm made him put together an entire “sample” presentation etc. etc. and eventually did not make him an offer. He was convinced that they had strung him along because they wanted to see what a presentation from a senior practitioner at a major firm would look like and otherwise pick his brain. I don’t have any knowledge of that particular situation, but I know of other people who’ve interviewed at that firm, and it’s believable.
At a much, much lower level, I’m certain companies use it to get free work. Once, when desperate for work, I interviewed for a job working at a train station coffee bar. The interview comprised working an entire morning, including the shittiest bits that would be done only occasionally - getting on a ladder to clean the high shelves, for example. Then there was a basic literacy and numeracy test.
I was told I’d failed the test; my score was too low. Now, I’m not claiming to be a genius, but I know I didn’t fail that test. I’m certain it was just their way of getting free work out of desperate people.
I’m still sceptical. Unless the coffee-bar is constantly busy, the employees aren’t going to making/serving coffee the entire time. And it doesn’t cost the manager any extra to have them use their down-time to clean the high shelves instead of hanging out waiting for it to be busy. There’s no reason to go through an elaborate ruse with fake literacy tests just to get a few hours work out of someone.
Plus the guy that’s administering the test, tellling you where to clean, showing you where the ladder is, etc. is presumably being paid. If they wanted their shelves cleaned, it’d be a lot more efficent just to have that guy clean them, instead of paying him to trick you into clean them for free.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true, as I’ve heard of companies running fake advertising pitches where the pitch involves coming up with a brilliant idea for product x, then appointing none of the pitching agencies. Lo and behold, the best idea happens to be used for the launch of product x.
I think in some cases though, this is prevented by mutual NDAs if it’s properly done, or by paying a fee for participating in the pitch.
Plus maintaining software is hard enough with the writer there. A more or less standalone piece is unlikely to integrate well with the environment. I hope **davidm
** put a comment in the code saying that as a sample piece for free he wasn’t going to comment this code. And of course if the get five or ten such chunks, which one to use?
It might happen, but a company using this tactic would be more stupid than immoral.
Anyone who provides proprietary information to a job candidate deserves what they get. If they really need to, get an NDA. And it is wrong to tell another interviewer what you heard from someone else, but probably not illegal.
When I interview anyone who has had a job and ask about it, I start by reminding them not to tell me anything proprietary.
