Met with key team who were trying to quickly fill role. Team was very nice, however, I was given an alarming assignment on a Friday @ 3:30pm in the afternoon, which was to be due on Tuesday EOD. Assignment had 5 questions, but one loaded one asking for a full fledged social strategy and full annual paid media plan in powerpoint (just no, stolen work alert). For one, the assignment was so vague that it didn’t give enough details to really solve the problem, and they took 3 days to answer my email about clarifying questions. There was no way hitting a Tuesday deadline was possible with that much delay (who sends an assignment on a Friday afternoon?). To ask for a full fledged social and digital strategy FOR FREE with little parameters, clarification, and really a terrible timeline was a red flag of a poor strategic process that sets people up for failure or just shoddy strategic work. The assignment also had spelling errors, which for a PR company, was very surprising. It’s 2023- who is still asking for this level of free labor before a job offer? Lastly, the job listing stated they were open to come up on salary based on skill. When I asked, they said the salary was fixed. For a PR comms company, there was a lot of mixed communication here.
