I applied for a developer role for their Shopify store and was assigned a marketing task as part of their interview process. The task involved researching competitor company games and putting the findings together in a 15 slide presentation. The task has nothing to do with software development, or even their own games, and the person issuing it shown to be a “producer” on their LinkedIn.
I get the feeling like someone put up a fake job posting to outsource free work. I read something similar about people applying for designer roles and receiving a task to create a design, only to be ghosted after completing the task.
The Glassdoor reviews were mostly either one star or five, with the one star reviews accusing management of faking five star reviews to pad their ratings.
At face value, the company actually seems pretty cool. Is there anyone that has actually worked there before? I don’t want to waste my time on a project if the job posting isn’t even real.
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Total black company. They’re always hiring which is a red flag for anything that requires actual certified skills to do
Their “recruit” page is a 404: http://www.zigzagame.com/workwithus/
I applied to them, I did the presentation too, but I was rejected. I can’t remember what I read, but I’m sure they’re a black company. I applied regardless because I wanted that visa and thought that as they were churning through employees, they’d be experienced in hiring from abroad and sponsoring visas. I eventually found a company through Wantedly, maybe try that site. That said, it was a long process, about 6 months from first interview to acquiring the work visa.
Had a friend go through this exact same thing with them. They asked of him word for word the same as you. He declined the task. Fishy as fuck.
I also applied to them, and was given this task. I declined them because I won’t work for free without knowing if I even have a chance at full time employment.
After reading these comments I feel like applying just to have fun trolling them
I know two former employees
Run
Reminds me of a Japanese media company that used to hire my company for outside production work. Their point of contact asked us to do more than our services normally provide (let’s call it package art and copywriting) which were not in our expertise, but since we were allowed to charge for the additional services, our boss had no problem with it. We struggled at first, but eventually got the hang of it. Eventually we even excelled at it.
Anyway, after about 2 years doing this our point of contact was replaced by a new guy and he wanted to have a meeting with us. We thought they were going to drop us as their vendor. The new guy tell us that our work is excellent and would like to continue their relationship, however, they would like to do all the package art and copywriting themselves, as we “were the only vendor who insisted that they also do that.”
When we explained that we never insisted to do any of that work, but that his predecessor had requested we do it, suddenly the new representative got embarrassed and gave us an ‘O Gomen’. Turns out his predecessor was fired for not doing his job. Basically he was handing off his work to vendors (on top of the work the vendors were hired for), so he could play around outside the office, usually at Karaoke, while pretending that he was overseeing the vendors work. Turns out that we were just another victim of his scheme to be a lazy bastard.
Sounds fishy as hell. More than black, for what you said it seems like they want free labor disguised as an assessment task.
If you are looking for game industry jobs, look at Silicon Studio Agent, Creek & River or any recruitment agency. They usually have a department centered in game industry and they have helped me before 👍🏻
Oh yeah! They asked me to do that as well, and like, as if 15 slides isn’t ridiculous enough, they also want screenshots and for you to play the competing games.
I declined lol.
No idea but I’d say most likely, they almost all are.