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Наталя ХандусенкоWork
17 July 2025, 16:14
2025-07-17
“I don’t see the point in calling you. You either do the job or you don’t.” The recruiter refused to discuss the details of the job and immediately provided a test task. Is this the new norm?
IT Project Manager Konstantin Latoshkin was contacted by a recruiter from a company that urgently needed a PM for the weekend. Although he has a permanent job, he was curious about what kind of «weekend» job this was. Instead of providing more information about the vacancy and finding out if the candidate was suitable, the recruiter immediately sent the task. The IT specialists began to discuss this case lively and share their own experiences.
IT Project Manager Konstantin Latoshkin was contacted by a recruiter from a company that urgently needed a PM for the weekend. Although he has a permanent job, he was curious about what kind of «weekend» job this was. Instead of providing more information about the vacancy and finding out if the candidate was suitable, the recruiter immediately sent the task. The IT specialists began to discuss this case lively and share their own experiences.
«I became curious: what the company does, what projects, what culture, what kind of team. I am open to dialogue — I think we will exchange contacts, make the first short call. But instead… They just sent me a test task. No conversation. No details. No understanding whether it is relevant to me at all,» Konstantin Latoshkin shared on LinkedIn.
I wrote: «It would be good to first get to know each other, understand more about the vacancy and the company. And only then decide whether it is advisable to perform the task.»
But the recruiter replied bluntly: «I don’t see the point in calling you. You either complete the task or you don’t. All the information is in it.»
After this answer, Konstantin wondered if it was really «2025»? Is it normal to ignore basic «human-to-human» communication?
«I have already had 3 cases where they threw away a test without prior screening. I completed 2 of these tests and wasted time, after which there was silence from the recruiter, or „wait for feedback in a week“ (then, of course, ignore). Conclusion: do not do the test until they talk to you and you both discuss the company’s conditions. If the goal is to practice, it’s okay. If you end up finding a job, it can be painful for the lost time,» — Frontend Developer Mykola Smal.
«I had the task of creating a test plan and test cases on a topic that I would come up with, the result was — You are not suitable for us,» — Quality Assurance Engineer Vladislav Zhabin.
«I did it a few times just for fun when I was looking for a job for a long time. Then I received a response — „sorry, we selected new candidates,“ and a week later the vacancy opened again and so regularly every few weeks the vacancy was renewed. It’s a kind of practice to cover the product with tests and test it for free,» — Senior Manual QA Engineer Vitaliy Mazurenko.
«Testing is a very interesting topic… The other day I was given a test for more than 10 hours (and GPT counted all 40), for three days, without payment,» — Business Analyst Ksenia Sokolovska.
«I have had cases where a test is done before a pep call, but it was an easy task on leetcode (or something similar) just to weed out completely irrelevant candidates. If the test doesn’t take more than forty minutes, and is really a test, and not an attempt to force you to perform business tasks for free, I don’t see a problem with it. I haven’t done longer tests before a conversation with an employer (and I hope I won’t),» — Java Developer Denis Andreev.
«This also happened recently, I was doing a test, and then I needed to find out additional information about the company. The person who provided this test does not have the information to answer,» — Frontend Developer Oleksiy Kharitonov.
«We don’t see anything wrong with test tasks being based on real projects.» Heaven Soft in Frankivsk, which was the subject of a scandal over test and unpaid work by design specialists, commented on each incident in detail.
To pay or not. Product Manager told about a case where a candidate passed the test with 3 out of 5 and he wants money for the revision. And what do the IT community think?
