They called it a practical assessment. A Series B tech startup, final round, growth marketing role. The hiring manager said they needed just one more thing before putting an offer together — a go-to-market deck for the company's new analytics tool. Real company metrics, specific ad copy, audience segmentation, channel budgets.
The candidate gave up a Saturday. Twelve slides, custom Figma mockups, a campaign tagline written from scratch.
On Monday at 9:00 a.m., a generic rejection arrived from an unmonitored inbox. No feedback, no call.
Then a friend sent a link. The company's new product landing page was live. Their tagline was in bold across the banner. Their acquisition-funnel diagrams were on the page, unedited. The header copy hadn't even been reworded.
The assessment, it turned out, was not an assessment. It was a way not to pay a contractor five grand.
“We should of put watermarks across every single slide,” the candidate wrote.
Twelve slides. One Saturday. Zero credit.