Experienced content marketer Bohdan Dovgalyuk told how the company tried to get a free consultation under the guise of an interview, which even included the CEO. It’s been a month since he’s been waiting for feedback.
Experienced content marketer Bohdan Dovgalyuk told how the company tried to get a free consultation under the guise of an interview, which even included the CEO. It’s been a month since he’s been waiting for feedback.
Bohdan Dovgalyuk received an invitation for an interview through Djinni. It was a vacancy for the position of Product Marketing Manager. According to the specialist, the meeting immediately began with questions that already led to a paid consultation.
«Like a beaten wolf (which is what I considered myself at that time), I parry all these attempts with a short phrase: «I have not familiarized myself with your product in enough detail to have enough understanding to answer this question. This is not a paid consultation,» Bogdan said on LinkedIn.
According to the marketer and founder of the Smart Zeros project, the employer pretended to like everything and asked to make a commercial offer. After that, Bohdan was invited to a final interview with the CEO, but before that, he was asked to familiarize himself with the company’s website and product in more detail.
«I’m naive — I’m familiarizing myself with all this data, because I’m sure that if the CEO directly asked for a commercial offer, then this is not a hoax. It’s a real thing,» the specialist noted.
During the interview with the CEO, the questions that are usually asked during paid consultations reappeared. But this time, Bohdan answered them thanks to a psychological trick — the company’s head and his subordinate present made it clear that they wanted to see him on the team in this role.
At the end of the interview, they agreed to provide feedback next week. A month has passed, and there is still no response.
In the comments, IT professionals talk about similar situations. For example, UX/UI designer Oleksandra Matsiychuk reminded that employers now «bring people to work for free, and then, so that they don’t ask questions, they simply remove them from Figma and Slack and say that we have business secrets, etc.»
Android Developer Vladimir Fedotov added that «in development, they are constantly being reduced to technical tasks that are a full-fledged block of a program.»
Regarding this behavior of employers, a user named Andriy noted: «When a «serious» company systematically saves on other people’s one-time services, collecting them «a little at a time» under the guise of an interview, this is no longer a strategy, but a model of behavior (typical thuggery).
