I had an introductory interview with a recruiter which went well. Based on our conversation and my experience, she told me she thought I might be a good fit for the role and that the next step in the process would be for me to complete a sample project. She emailed the project details to me that day and, upon reading the documents, I realized that the project would take many, MANY hours to complete. Remember that this was before I had a chance to speak to the actual hiring manager or anyone connected to the role I was applying for!
In my opinion, projects like this are a little unreasonable and disrespectful, especially in a field in which most candidates have a portfolio with work samples.
I probably should have just said no thanks, but I didn't. I opted instead to partially complete the project – I completed key components of the eLearning module that would make the biggest impact in demonstrating a variety of my skills, but I left out some of the more redundant subpages that would have taken significant additional hours of my time for less impact. It still took upwards of 15 hours of work.
I submitted the project to the recruiter and, 3 weeks later, I still hadn't heard back. I don't know if this was just their normal process – or maybe they were not interested because of my incomplete project or some other reason. I got a great offer somewhere else that respects people and removed my application from consideration, so I guess I'll never know! I felt compelled to at least warn others considering applying here though.
