# The Hypothetical Deck That Ended Up on Their Homepage

**[TRUE STORY]** — by Growth marketer · tech · via r/jobs

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.

*Source: [r/jobs · 5.1k upvotes](https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/1wdlofc/they_rejected_me_after_a_hypothetical_takehome/)*
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