I share situations I encounter every now in the job search and now I am starting to agree with the overall gut feeling that a lot of people are getting taken advantage of.
So you go through all the steps in the recruitment process. Then comes the employer wanting to evaluate how you work, rightfully so. That's when it becomes blurry :
- A marketing specialist I worked with was asked to translate and put company branding on a 10 page document in a 24 hrs window. As a full time employee, she produced it and never heard from the employer again.
- I was asked by a well-known global bank to produced a risk assessment for a web portal involving PII. Did it and sent it then they asked me to tweak it for a presentation for executives. Tweaked it and sent it, and now the recruiter hasn't heard from them for over a week when they would usually respond in hours.
- A consulting firm asked previously for me to provide my risk dashboard templates but I refused because it seemed fishy, I offered to do a use case of their liking. Never heard from them again
- Now, I'll be meeting a company who's looking for a cyber sec advisor. They told me that they usually request you to do a 15-20 hours project to evaluate you. Even ask you to come in their office if you want to, meet the team.
On that last one, I will refuse to do anything like that for free but I still want to meet them to get a better feel of things instead of using previous experiences to cloud my judgment.
How much is too much in terms of showing your value ?
I have heard for years about people asking you questions and using your responses to fix issues without ever hiring you but never believed it. I guess now it starting to make sense.
