Showing your work is ridiculous

At some point, interviewing stopped being about whether you can do the job and became about whether you can perform the job before you have it.

That is where it starts to lose me.

You apply for a role. You send the resume. You send the portfolio. You answer the same questions in a form that is already answered by the resume they asked for. Then, if you make it through that, someone asks you to complete an assignment so they can “see how you think.”

I understand the idea.

In theory, showing your work makes sense.

In practice, it can get ridiculous very quickly.

Because now the candidate is doing unpaid labor to prove they can do paid labor, while the company gets to evaluate the output without taking on any real risk.

And somehow this has become normal.

A short skills assessment is one thing. A writing prompt, a small design exercise, a practical task with clear boundaries. Fine.

But some of these assignments are not assessments.

They are projects.

They want strategy, design direction, campaign ideas, content samples, audience breakdowns, timelines, and sometimes a presentation on top of it.

For a job you do not have.

With no guarantee they are even seriously considering you.

That is not “show us how you work.”

That is “do a little free consulting and hope we call you back.”

And the worst part is that candidates are expected to act grateful for the opportunity.

You cannot push back too much because then you seem difficult.

You cannot ask too many questions because then you seem unprepared.

You cannot say, “This is a lot of work for an unpaid assignment,” even when it clearly is.

So everyone just pretends this is reasonable.

Companies say they want to understand your process, but most of the time they are not really asking for process. They are asking for polish.

They want something clean enough to judge, specific enough to use as proof, and impressive enough to make their decision easier.

That is not the same as understanding how someone works.

How someone works includes context. Resources. Access. Team dynamics. Time constraints. Stakeholders. Feedback. The actual mess of a real job.

A take-home assignment does not show all of that.

It shows how well someone can complete unpaid work under artificial conditions while trying to guess what the company wants.

That is a different skill.

And maybe that is the real issue with interviewing in general.

A lot of it measures how well you interview.

Not how well you work.

Some people are great at talking through hypothetical scenarios. Some people are great at packaging their thinking. Some people can build a beautiful case study around almost anything.

That does not always mean they are the best person for the job.

It means they know how to perform competence in the format being requested.

And yes, candidates should be able to explain their work. They should be able to talk through decisions, process, and outcomes.

But there is a difference between explaining work you have done and being asked to create new work for free.

There is a difference between assessment and extraction.

That difference matters.

If a company needs a test assignment to make a decision, the assignment should be small, relevant, and respectful of the candidate’s time.

It should have a clear scope.

It should not require a full weekend.

It should not resemble something the company could turn around and use.

And if it does, pay people.

That should not be controversial.

The hiring process already asks a lot from candidates. Time, energy, preparation, emotional control, patience, and the ability to stay interested while being dragged through multiple rounds of uncertainty.

Adding unpaid project work on top of that only makes sense if the company is being honest about what it is asking for.

Because “show us how you think” sounds nice.

But sometimes what they really mean is…

Show us how much you are willing to give before we give you anything.