# Nine hours. Three rounds. One invoice.

**[TRUE STORY]** — by Marketing professional · via r/InterviewsHell

A candidate for a brand-manager role made it through three rounds of interviews before the company handed over the deciding task: a six-page take-home project requiring strategic thinking and professional-level output. The brief was detailed and the expectations were explicit. Completion was mandatory to remain in consideration.

They worked for eight hours on research and consulting-level analysis, then spent another hour assembling presentation materials. Nine hours in total.

Then came the email. The company was "going in a different direction." No feedback on the work. No acknowledgment of the time.

The candidate sent back an itemised invoice. Eight hours of research and consulting at $100 per hour. One hour of presentation preparation. Total: $900. Payable within 14 days.

The company declined. Multiple times. Their position: the project was optional, part of a standard interview process. The candidate's position: framing work as an "interview exercise" does not exempt a company from compensation obligations when the deliverable holds real commercial value.

The invoice remains unpaid. The Reddit thread does not.

*Source: [r/InterviewsHell · u/No-Street-6651](https://www.reddit.com/r/InterviewsHell/comments/1s1jkzm/spent_9_hours_on_an_extensive_preinterview/)*
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