I just wanted to write this after job searching here has weighed on my family recently. I have my own story but I want to talk about my wife's problem with a company.
She has applied to this media company as a writer, and they asked her to write an article as a test of her writing. With this, they offered to pay for her a fairly large amount whether she gets hired or not.
Mind you she already has writing jobs for other companies and her articles have good SEO ranking with some even appearing on the first page of Google when searching for the topics she wrote about. She's also completed a novel that we are currently talking with people to have it published.
The company had their team go through it and gave her some changes that they recommended her to make. She made the changes and sent it. Afterwards she assumed that the company would send a yes or no response after the edits were made.
Then, the next day after the changes were made, the article was posted on the website. There were some changes so she understood that it wasn't good enough, so she was waiting for an email since they published it the next day. For 2 days she waited, then nothing. So she sends an email asking if there was a decision made.
Nothing.
For the whole week with no response. She tried getting in touch with them a few times. She even called the company and left her name and phone number for the company contact she was working with.
So far they have been ghosting her and I feel so bad for her since this was a company she has always wanted to work for. On top of this she first applied months ago since the staff would wait days to respond.
This is a well established company so I wouldn't expect it from them. She has said it isn't even the money she cared about, she just genuinely likes writing and an avid fan of the website. I am a novice at anything creative, and I like her writing ALOT! I just want her to succeed with something she is passionate about. She was working on it for days and she talked about it frequently and was always excited about updating me and being grateful for the chance they had given her and she was going to do her best. They have their own rules and guidelines that are different from her style of writing, doesn't mean she's bad at it but she understands her style may not be what they are looking for. Meanwhile, her articles with other websites are doing fine and the editors barely changed a thing of what she wrote, so I know she is good at what she does.
The bare minimum is a courteous "generic rejection email." Or are we asking for too much these days? Considering she's worked hard on it and the least they could do is send a response back? Are they intentionally ignoring her so they don't have to pay her for what they originally agreed upon? I think at this point, she just wants some kind of closure from them after making her wait for almost 3 months! They did make a lot of changes to the article and may have thought they didn’t need to pay her anymore because of that.
As far as I know, she's just disheartened not for the money or the rejection but for the lack of basic courtesy.
Now I would like to talk about my encounter with job searching.
I applied to a company just after the new year this year. It went really well in the first interview and they had me do some speak aloud tests to see how I am with reading data. I stayed up for about 5 hours working on this to make sure it was perfect. I put extra time because I really liked this job and loved the concept of the company.
After this was finished I then I had a mock consultation with a client where one of their employees would role play with me. It was only 10 minutes and I did really well. I hit the questions that should be asked and gave a personal touch. After this I was told I was in the top 3 and they will choose withing a few days with a date given.
3 days pass and I get an email saying they will postpone the hiring for several weeks because of a problem with their system that gathers data that I would be using. I email after a few weeks and he says that nothing has changed and that I am still on the top of their list.
A month goes by and I send an email again to ask if there are any changes. This is because, I really liked that position. No change of course. This last email was back in March. I spent hours working on the huge amount of data they wanted me to analyze and then tells me the last minute that they have problems with the system. So they just knew about it the day of? I don’t believe one bit that their system suddenly crashed a day before they were supposed to hire someone and that it is such a huge damage that it’s been broken for over 4 months? How is their company functioning then?
I really want to email to ask again, but I have just been thinking more and more lately about companies that use people to mine data, so they interview people and get the people to do the task for free in the guise of it being a test for a position. Which is what I know by now, that is what happened to me.
TLDR:
My wife's:
She wrote a test article for a company that she applied at, and has wanted to work there since she moved to Japan. The article was heavily edited and then posted it the next day. Then gets ghosted with no closure.
Mine:
Applied to a company and did data analyzing and mock consultations. Then the position gets delayed for "several weeks." Now it has been 4 months later. Got used for tasks they don't want to hire to do.
Edit: The company just emailed her now to formally tell her no. What a nice coincidence. They said they will pay her half of what they initially offered because “they didn’t actually use her draft.” They could have said this earlier honestly instead of me needing to resort to reddit to get their attention. My wife honestly doesn’t want to take it as she sees it as “pity money” and she is quite stubborn in this regard. Lol But anyway that’s it.
Edited: I have spoken to one of the staff and have resolved the writing issue amicably. Thanks for the comments but my wife is good now and doesn’t wish to engage or talk about this anymore. 👍
by Cantevensurvive