When "Interviews" Become Free Consulting: A Cautionary Tale for Job Seekers
I want to share an experience that transformed how I think about candidate rights and interview boundaries. If you're job searching—especially while unemployed—this might save you from what happened to me.
The Setup
I was excited. A government data engineering role, good salary range posted ($87K-$122K), and after a screening call that went 28 minutes over the scheduled 20 minutes, I thought: "This is going so well!"
The follow-up email promised to "show you our work environment, discuss the work in more depth, and get a sense of how you would approach our current challenges."
I arrived professionally, on time. Ready to impress.
The Reality
What I found wasn't a work environment tour. It was a bare room with exposed wiring and four chairs around a table. Three people were there to interview me—or so I thought.
For 88 minutes, I did what any eager candidate would do: I solved their problems.
Their Azure Synapse pipeline wouldn't run on schedule? I diagnosed likely service account authentication issues and provided a troubleshooting methodology.
They were facing a SQL Server 2018 end-of-life crisis with no upgrade plan? I walked through a modernization approach.
When asked about my personal projects, I enthusiastically described my Apache Airflow data warehouse—complete with ODS architecture, star schema design, and SQL Server 2022 implementation. One panelist, who'd been scrolling his phone for over an hour, suddenly became very interested.
I left thinking I'd demonstrated exactly the expertise they needed.
The Aftermath
48 hours later: rejected.
The position? Still posted as open weeks later.
The compensation they quoted during the interview? $65K-$85K—significantly lower than the posted range.
The "work environment" they promised to show me? Never materialized, because they all had offices elsewhere in the building.
What I Learned
I wasn't in an interview. I was in an unpaid consulting session.
The warning signs were all there, but unemployment does something to your judgment. You're eager. You're hopeful. You want to prove your value. And that vulnerability can be exploited.
A Candidate Bill of Rights
Since then, I've been thinking about what fair hiring should look like:
1. Time-Boxing Matters Technical assessments should be 2-4 hours maximum, scoped to one skill area. If you're being asked to solve actual production problems, that's consulting work—not candidate evaluation.
2. Transparency Is Non-Negotiable If the posted salary range is $87K-$122K, the quoted range should be $87K-$122K. Bait-and-switch on compensation is a red flag that other misrepresentations may follow.
3. Interviews Aren't Triage Sessions "How would you approach our current challenges?" should mean hypothetical scenarios, not troubleshooting your live production failures. If they can't provide access to logs or systems but want you to diagnose problems, something is wrong.
4. Protect Your IP Your personal projects are yours. Describe them to demonstrate capability, but be cautious about providing implementation details that could be replicated without your involvement or compensation.
5. Work Environment Tours Should Show Actual Work Environments If they promise to show you where you'd be working, you should see: desks, equipment, the team, the actual workspace. Not a temporary room with borrowed furniture.
6. Professional Respect Goes Both Ways If someone on the interview panel is scrolling their phone for the majority of your interview, that tells you something about how they value candidates' time and dignity.
The Hard Truth
I provided what I estimate to be $400-700 worth of consulting services that day. I was unemployed and hopeful, so I gave it freely, thinking it was proving my worth.
Instead, I was being used.
What I'm Taking Forward
I'm not bitter. I'm wiser.
I now ask clarifying questions before technical interviews:
- "Will this involve troubleshooting actual production issues, or hypothetical scenarios?"
- "Is there an NDA if we'll be discussing proprietary systems?"
- "What's the expected time commitment, and will any deliverables be used beyond candidate evaluation?"
I set boundaries:
- Take-home assignments get a visible watermark and license
- Personal project details are high-level only until there's mutual commitment
- If compensation ranges shift during the process, I ask why in writing
And I've transformed this experience into advocacy. Because if this happened to me—someone with 20+ years of experience—it's happening to newer professionals who have even less leverage.
To My Fellow Job Seekers
Your expertise has value. Your time has value. Your dignity has value.
Don't let unemployment pressure you into providing free consulting under the guise of "proving yourself."
Legitimate employers want to evaluate your fit for their team. They don't want to extract solutions to their problems for free.
Trust your instincts. If something feels off, it probably is.
To Hiring Managers and Recruiters
Please don't use your hiring process to solve production problems. It's not just unethical—it poisons the candidate experience for everyone.
If you need consulting, hire a consultant. If you're hiring, evaluate candidates fairly, respect their time, and honor the representations you make.
The talent you're trying to attract is watching how you treat people in the process.
Have you experienced something similar? I'd love to hear your story. Let's protect each other by sharing what we've learned.
Are you a hiring manager who wants to do better? I'm happy to discuss what equitable technical interviews look like.
We can fix this together.
#JobSearch #CandidateExperience #TechHiring #DataEngineering #EthicalRecruiting #CareerAdvice
