They called it a “take-home project.” You called it unpaid consulting. You were right.

The marketing interview scam hiding in plain sight - and why candidates need to stop donating strategy sessions to companies that were never going to hire them.

Let’s set the scene. You’ve made it through three rounds. The recruiter loves you. The hiring

manager said, and we quote, “you’re exactly what we’re looking for.” And then - the ask.

“We’d love to see how you think. Can you put together a 90-day marketing plan, a brand activation strategy, go-to-market strategy and a competitive landscape analysis by Thursday tomorrow?” You work nights. You miss dinner. You produce something you’re genuinely proud of - something you could charge $5,000+ for if a client asked. You send it off. And then: silence. Or worse, the chirpy “we’ve decided to go in a different direction” email, three days after they had your strategy in hand.

“If you ask four finalists for a full marketing plan and don’t hire any of them, congratulations - you just staffed your entire Q3 strategy for free.”

This is not hypothetical. This is happening at companies across industries - with special frequency, and special audacity, in marketing. And it needs to stop.

The math is not subtle

A mid-level marketing manager with five years of experience commands somewhere between $85,000 and $130,000 a year. Their strategic thinking - the ability to look at a brand, a market, and a competitive set and synthesize a c

oherent action plan - is the entire reason you want to hire them. When you ask for that thinking as part of an interview process, without compensation, you are extracting the single most valuable thing they have to offer. For free.

4-6 finalists typically asked for “projects” in competitive marketing roles

~20 hrs average time a serious candidate invests in a comprehensive plan

$0 what most companies pay for this work

Do that math across four finalists and you’ve collected 80+ hours of senior-level strategic marketing work. You now have four different perspectives on your positioning, your channels, your competitive gaps, and your growth opportunities. Whether or not you hire anyone - and some companies, frankly, do not intend to - you walk away with an internal strategy document worth tens of thousands of dollars. The candidates walk away with nothing but a LinkedIn post about “staying positive.”

The “it’s just to see how you think” excuse

Seeing how a candidate thinks does not require a 40-slide deck. It does not require a channel-by-channel media plan with budget allocations. It does not require a brand identity audit, a content calendar, and KPI framework. You know what shows how someone thinks? A conversation. A case discussion. A whiteboard session that lasts an hour, with someone from your team present, where ideas are challenged in real time. What companies actually want - and are too polite to admit - is the deliverable, not the demonstration. They want the output, dressed up in interview language so they don’t have to pay for it.

“Seeing how someone thinks takes 60 minutes and a good interviewer. Getting a free brand strategy takes a ‘take-home assignment.”

Know what you’re walking into: red flags vs. green flags

Not every project ask is a scam. Some companies run genuinely ethical, well-scoped assessments. The difference is usually visible before you open a single slide deck - if you know what to look for.

•  Red flags	•  Green flags
No scope limit - “just show us what you’d do” with no time or page guidance	Clear time expectation stated upfront: “this should take about 90 minutes”
Brief is suspiciously specific: real brand names, actual budget figures, live campaign windows	The prompt is fictional or anonymized - not your actual brand problem
You’re asked to submit before any live interview is scheduled or confirmed	A live interview is already on the calendar before the project is sent
No mention of compensation, even when asked directly	They offer a stipend, flat fee, or acknowledge the time ask directly
They need it “by end of week” - urgency that serves them, not the process	The ask is strategic framing, not execution-ready output
The “project” is a complete deliverable: full media plan, campaign calendar, go-to-market deck	They invite you to present and discuss, not just submit and wait
Vague or evasive answers when you ask how the work will be used	Interviewers engage with your thinking, push back, ask follow-ups
Multiple rounds of revision requests before a single offer conversation	They tell you explicitly what they’re evaluating and why
The role has been posted for months - or reposted after disappearing	You retain rights to your work - stated clearly, not buried
No feedback offered regardless of outcome, because the work was the point	Rejection includes substantive feedback on the work you submitted

Print this. Screenshot it. Refer to it before you open the brief. The column a company lands in tells you more about their culture than any Glassdoor review.

 The standard has to change - here’s what it should look like:

Rule 1: Scope it to 2 hours or less

If you cannot evaluate a candidate’s strategic thinking in a contained, time-limited exercise, the problem is your interview design, not the candidate’s output. A focused brief, a structured response, a live presentation on a pre-shared prompt - these are evaluation tools. A comprehensive 60-day go-to-market plan is a consulting engagement.

Rule 2: Pay for substantial work - full stop

If your project takes more than two hours, compensate candidates. A stipend. A flat fee. Even $250 signals that you understand their time has value. It also filters for serious candidates - so the screening still works. You simply have to pay for it.

Rule 3: Guarantee an interview if asking for a project

If a candidate is qualified enough to receive a take-home assignment, they are qualified enough for a live interview. Project-first, interview-maybe is backwards. Work first, guaranteed conversation second, decision third. In that order, with no exceptions.

Rule 4: Do not use submitted work internally without permission

If you are using a rejected candidate’s strategic framework, their campaign ideas, or their competitive analysis in actual business decisions - that is intellectual theft dressed in HR language. It is also increasingly the kind of thing that ends up in a very public LinkedIn thread, and depending on jurisdiction, potentially in a courtroom.

A word to candidates: you are allowed to say no

The power dynamic in job searching is real, and we are not dismissing it. But here is what we know from the other side of the table: companies that respect your work before you start respect your work after you start. The ask tells you something. You are permitted to ask what the scope is before agreeing. You are permitted to ask whether there is a stipend. You are permitted to ask how the work will be used and whether you retain rights to it. A company that reacts negatively to those questions has just done you the enormous favor of showing you who they are before you signed an offer letter. And if you do the work? Watermark it. Add your name to every page. Submit a strategic overview, not an execution-ready playbook. Show the thinking without delivering the product. That distinction is yours to make, and no one is entitled to the complete, deployment-ready version of your intellectual labor for free.

The bottom line

Marketing is a profession built on the value of ideas. The entire premise of the discipline is that strategy, creativity, and insight are worth paying for. A company that understands this about its customers but not about its candidates has told you something important about how it values intellectual work. The industry norm needs to shift - from candidates accepting unpaid project requests as the price of admission, to companies understanding that a hiring process that extracts free labor is not a hiring process. It’s a procurement strategy with extra steps.

“You would not ask a contractor to build a room in your house to see if they’re a good fit. Stop asking marketers to build your strategy for the same reason.”

#PayTheStrategist

The candidate pledge

• I will ask about scope, compensation, and IP rights before accepting any project brief.

• I will watermark and scope-limit any work I submit during an interview process.

• I will share my experience - good or bad - so other candidates can make informed decisions.

• I will not accept “exposure” or “feedback” as a substitute for fair treatment of my time.

• I will celebrate companies that get this right and name, publicly, those that don’t.

  
  

Share this post with the tag #PayTheStrategist and tag a recruiter, a CMO, or a hiring manager who needs to read it. Copy the pledge. Post it on LinkedIn. Make it uncomfortable to do otherwise.

“Because the only thing that changes industry norms is when enough people decide the old norm is unacceptable.”

Executive Consultants of New York, Corp.

Executive Consultants of New York works with both job seekers, organizations, agencies, and leaders across industries. We have seen this from both sides of the table - as hiring advisors and as candidates - and our position is unambiguous: talent deserves to be treated as talent, not as a free resource to be mined during a process that may never have been genuine in the first place. ⚡️

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About the Author

Maria Frey is the CEO and Founder of Executive Consultants of New York, Corp. (ECNY), a career & business strategy, coaching and workforce development firm serving clients nationally. ECNY offers career & business coaching, resume writing, LinkedIn optimization, and Job Search Boot Camps®, with in-person & virtual programs across Long Island and the New York metro area.

Visit ecnycorp.com to learn more.