The interview took a month. I was told I’d passed, then asked to complete a “practical test.” It turned into a full, unpaid week with deadlines, Slack access, and feedback. I worked from my kitchen table in Bristol, pouring every ounce of my professional soul into a marketing strategy for their new product launch. I felt like I was already part of the team, even attending their Tuesday morning stand-ups.
Then silence. I was rejected with a generic email that didn’t even mention the forty hours of free labor I’d just handed over on a silver platter. I felt hollowed out, like I’d been tricked into a sophisticated scam. I watched their social media accounts, seeing my ideas—the ones I had stayed up until 2 a.m. perfecting—rolled out one by one under someone else’s name. It was a brutal introduction to the “modern” hiring process.
Two months later, they emailed me to interview again. My first instinct was to delete the message and block the sender. The audacity of asking me back after ghosting me was almost impressive in its arrogance. But I was curious, and honestly, a little bit bitter, so I opened the attachment. The role was no longer for the Junior Associate position I had originally applied for; it was for a Senior Strategy Lead.
The salary listed was nearly double what we had discussed during the first round. I sat there for a long time, staring at the screen while my tea went cold. Was this a mistake, or were they so disorganized they didn’t realize they had already rejected me? I decided to take the interview, not because I wanted the job, but because I wanted to look them in the eye and ask what happened to my work.
When I logged into the video call, I didn’t see the HR manager who had ghosted me. Instead, I saw a woman named Vanessa, the Chief Operations Officer. She looked exhausted, her office cluttered with whiteboards covered in frantic scribbles. She didn’t start with the usual pleasantries; she started with a sincere, deeply pained apology. She told me that the manager who had interviewed me previously was no longer with the company.
It turned out that the “practical test” wasn’t actually a test approved by the company. The previous manager had been struggling to keep up with his workload and had started using the hiring process to outsource his actual projects to unsuspecting candidates. He had taken my full week of work, presented it to the board as his own, and then rejected me to ensure I’d never show up to claim the credit. It was a level of corporate villainy that felt like something out of a TV show.
The truth only came out when he tried to execute the second phase of “his” plan, which I hadn’t written yet. He couldn’t answer the technical questions about the strategy I’d built, and the whole house of cards came crashing down. The board had spent three weeks doing a forensic audit of his emails and Slack logs. That’s when they found the “unpaid week” I had put in, and more importantly, they saw the quality of the work I had produced under pressure.
Vanessa told me they had tried to hire someone else for the senior role, but every candidate they interviewed paled in comparison to the “ghost” who had written the original launch strategy. “We realized we didn’t just owe you an apology,” she said, leaning toward the camera. “We realized we were looking for the person who actually knew how to steer this ship, and that person was you.” She offered me a signing bonus specifically to cover the “unpaid week” I had already contributed.
I took the job, but I didn’t do it for the money or the title. I did it because Vanessa promised me I could overhaul the entire recruitment process for the company. I spent my first month as the Senior Strategy Lead drafting a new policy that banned unpaid “practical tests” longer than two hours. We implemented a “shadow pay” system where anyone asked to do work for the company as part of an interview was paid a fair hourly rate immediately.
Three months later, I was reviewing the files of the other candidates who had been “tested” by my predecessor during that same period. I found a girl named Talia who had been asked to design an entire branding suite for a non-profit client we worked with. Like me, she had been rejected and ghosted, her beautiful designs filed away in a dead folder.
I didn’t just feel sorry for her; I saw an opportunity. I called her up personally, apologized on behalf of the firm, and paid her for the work she had done. Then, I hired her as my Lead Designer. It turned out that the “scam” my old manager had run accidentally brought together the two most talented and resilient people the company had ever seen. We became a formidable duo, turning the department into the highest-performing wing of the business.
I learned that sometimes, the universe has a very strange way of putting you where you belong. If I had been hired as a Junior Associate, I would have been stuck under a manager who stole my work and suppressed my potential. By being rejected and “failed,” I was forced into a position where the company eventually had to recognize me as a peer, not just an entry-level cog in the machine. The very work that was stolen from me became the evidence that proved I was overqualified for the job I thought I wanted.
The rewarding conclusion wasn’t the fancy office or the high salary; it was the day I sat on a panel to hire a new coordinator. I watched as the candidates came in, nervous and hopeful, and I knew that none of them would ever be exploited the way I was. We built a culture where people were valued for their time and their brains from the very first minute they walked through our doors. It felt like I had taken a pile of corporate trash and turned it into something gold.
I realized that your value doesn’t decrease just because someone is unable to see it or, worse, chooses to steal it. A diamond buried in the mud is still a diamond, and eventually, the rain will wash the dirt away. We often think of rejection as a door closing, but sometimes it’s just a detour that leads to a much bigger entrance. You have to keep producing your best work, even when you feel like no one is watching, because your talent is a paper trail that always leads back to you.
Never let a bad experience make you smaller. If a company treats you like you’re disposable during the interview, believe them—and then wait for the moment when they realize you’re the only one who can solve their problems. There is a specific kind of justice in being the person they have to beg to come back. I’m glad I took that second interview, not for the revenge, but for the chance to change the rules of the game.
Life is too short to work for people who don’t respect your time. If you’re in the middle of a “practical test” right now and it feels like a job, it probably is. Stand your ground, know your worth, and remember that the right door won’t require you to lose your dignity to walk through it. I found my place by refusing to stay hidden in the shadows of someone else’s theft.
If this story reminded you to stand up for your professional worth, please share and like this post. We need to stop the culture of unpaid labor and start valuing the people who actually do the work. Would you like me to help you draft a response to a company that is asking for too much “free” work as part of an interview?
