SINGAPORE: A frustrated jobseeker is questioning whether some companies are abusing the hiring process by getting applicants to do what feels like “free work” through lengthy interview assignments, only to ghost them afterwards.

In a post on the r/askSingapore forum, the individual asked fellow Singaporeans how they can tell if a company is genuinely hiring or simply making candidates do unpaid work under the guise of a job application.

“How do I tell early on if a company is simply asking their candidates to do free work for them or if they are really serious in hiring?” the jobseeker wrote.

According to the post, they have gone through “many encounters” where companies handed out pre-interview assignments that allegedly took as long as a week to complete.

The jobseeker said they poured huge amounts of “time and effort” into the tasks just to meet the expected standards. In some cases, they were even invited for interviews afterwards, where hiring managers discussed the submitted work in detail.

However, despite making it through those stages, the outcome was often the same.

“They always ghosted or rejected me later on,” the individual shared. “There was even once when the hiring manager told me that they changed their hiring criteria to require a PhD for the job position after I had already submitted all my assignments.”

Fed up with the repeated experiences, the jobseeker said, “I don’t want to waste my time to do free work for such companies only to get ghosted later on.”

“Send a nice, polite email to them…”

In the comments, one Singaporean user said it was highly unlikely that the companies were trying to take advantage of the jobseeker.

“Unless your work is in creative media design (like actual artwork), no one really needs you to do free work,” they wrote. “Yes, case studies are strenuous, but people drafting a marketing campaign or operations strategy or growth strategy is pretty much like 0.0001% of the real work. Campaigns, strategy, and operations are tied to execution; anything like plans can really honestly be generated by ChatGPT 99% of the time.”

Others, however, argued that if the assignments take more than one day to complete, it could potentially be considered unpaid work.

One user wrote, “If the assignment can be done by a fresh grad in a day, it’s just a test. Anything more? Then yes, it’s free work.”

Another commenter advised the jobseeker to verify whether the company had used any of their ideas by checking the company’s website or ongoing projects.

They added, “If your assignment materially contributed to their business function or is similar to what an employee does, you’re working without being paid. That’s unjust enrichment.”

“Send a nice, polite email to them saying you did xxx work for them, and you believe they didn’t follow up on it and that the work contributed to their business. Request $X for the number of hours spent. If they ghost you, write a second letter of demand. Say if they don’t pay up, you’ll go to MOM.”

In other news, a Singaporean mum shared on Reddit that she felt stunned and overwhelmed after her mother-in-law interfered with how she disciplines her child.

In a post on the r/asksg subreddit, the woman said she and her mother-in-law had argued a few weeks ago because her mother-in-law disagreed with her approach of “shouting” or lightly “tapping her son’s hand” when he misbehaved.

Read more: Woman claims mother-in-law used S$10k debt to dictate how she disciplines her son

This article (‘Some assignments take a week’ — Jobseeker asks if companies are exploiting applicants for free work) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.