It's no secret how atrocious the job market is right now, especially for certain industries. However, it might actually be much worse than we thought.
To cut costs, there are undoubtedly companies out there who require their applicants to complete free tasks before stealing their work and rejecting their application, effectively stealing their time and intellectual property.
With the new prevalence of AI and bot accounts, as well as scam accounts, it's hard to distinguish between quality jobs and listings that only want to steal our personal information and potentially train AI.
X-user @beaversteever may have just been the victim of one of these offenses, as they'd already completed 11 rounds of interviews, plus a free take-home project in which they'd created and supplied code to the company they hoped to work for.
Then they received the dreaded "We've gone in another direction" email, but this one had a few special twists.
Not only did the company admit to how many rounds of interviews they'd expected from their candidate, but they also admitted to being impressed with their work and utilizing their free labor without paying them or hiring them.
The rejection email read:
"Thank you for your interest in this role and for taking the time to complete [the] first phase of our interview processes that included 11 technical interview rounds, and the completion of the one-week take-home project."
"We were actually impressed with the quality of your submission, and your work has actually been accepted into our codebase."
The company's interesting choice of the use of the word "actually" was followed by the usual copy-paste rejection:
"This was an incredibly difficult decision, especially given your technical capabilities. However, after careful deliberation, we have decided not to move forward with your candidacy at this time."
"We truly appreciate your interest in [our company] and wish you the very best in your job search and future endeavors."
You can see the original email here:
Fellow X-users empathized with @beaversteever, but they also had their doubts about the quality of the company.
Typically, when a company rejects an applicant, the email will be incredibly vague, simply thanking them for their application and possibly their time dedicated to interviewing, before stating that they've gone in another direction.
The fact that this company specified that there had been 11 interviews was suspicious at best, and their confession that they were impressed with the X user's work and even implemented their work without paying them or hiring them feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
These mistakes were enough to give fellow X users pause and made them wonder if @beaversteever had fallen for a scam.
@El_King888/X
@El_King888/X
It's unclear if this was a legitimate company with terribly questionable practices or if the X user had fallen for some kind of scam that lost him time, money, and intellectual labor.
If it was a scam, he was fortunate not to have disclosed financial or other personal information that could have further implications down the line, but that doesn't make the lost time and effort feel any less disrespectful.
