First stage of process was meeting with hiring team, second stage was meeting hiring manager, third stage they asked me to sign an NDA and do a take-home assignment plus a 60-minute panel presentation. The assignment asked candidates to review live Linktree website challenges, assess CRO opportunities, propose strategic recommendations, explain rollout and measurement, and submit both a Loom walkthrough and deck/document ahead of the panel.
In my view, this crossed the line from assessing capability into unpaid consulting-style work. The task was based on real commercial website challenges and could reasonably produce ideas, analysis, or recommendations useful to the business. The NDA requirement reinforced the sense that this was not simply a hypothetical interview exercise, but work connected to live business priorities.
I fully understand companies needing to assess how candidates think, but this could have been done through a discussion of past work, a live hypothetical case study, or a contained fictional exercise.
Overall, the process left me with concerns about how much candidate time and strategic input was being requested without compensation. I withdrew from the process as a result.
