Friday, February 7 - "Is This Company Taking Advantage Of Me?"

Happy Friday!

Here’s what’s on the job description for today:

1. New roles from an innovative beauty and hair company.

2. Today’s Question: “A company has asked me to prepare a presentation on how they can grow. Are they just taking advantage of me to get ideas?”

IN HIRING

Treatwell

• A company aiming to transform the legacy beauty industry through technology, Treatwell is an interesting company for those with an interest in beauty or hair.

• Currently there are about 70 roles open in areas such as product, sales, and marketing.

• Here are a few of the most interesting roles available

  • Inbound Sales - Click here for full details

  • Local Marketing Manager - Click here for full details

  • Product Manager, Marketplace - Click here for full details

Click here for the company’s career page

TODAY’S QUESTION

Today’s Question: “A company has asked me to prepare a presentation on how they can grow. Are they just taking advantage of me to get ideas?”

Recommendation: while this is a common interview style, it’s pretty annoying. Here are my thoughts:

• First, the current reality of today’s job search is that you end up doing a lot of things that would have otherwise been out of the questions.

  • If you had companies chasing employees to come work for them, you could say yes or no to interview styles like this that take a lot of time and energy. In today’s environment, it’s more challenging than that.

• Second, it is a real risk that some nefarious company is using you to gain ideas. There’s nothing that says they can’t take all the assignments and presentations created, hire no one, and use the ideas to grow their business with the staff they already have.

  • The real issue is that you don’t know which are doing that and which are not.

  • One thing I would say, if you haven’t yet had an interview and the pre-screening questions are asking for something like this, walk away. It’s too early in the process to dedicate a ton of time to something like this.

• Finally, in the end, you’re best bet is to usually just do the assignment.

  • While most candidates just want A JOB, there’s no point in taking a role if you’re going to quit in a month and be right back at it.

  • One way to screen out jobs you’d hate is to judge how interesting their project is. If you hate it, do yourself a favor and walk away. If you like it, then bonus!

Conclusion:

You never can be quite sure who’s taking advantage of you in desperate times but most often, you don’t get much of a chance to say no to different styles of hiring at the moment.