I interviewed for a recruiter role at Publitas a while ago, and honestly, it was one of the worst candidate experiences I’ve had. The process began with an overly long and complicated application — open-ended questions and a video recording before any human interaction. As a recruiter myself, I don’t think this is a smart or respectful approach. In today’s market, where candidates have options, making the first touchpoint this complex only drives good talent away. After applying, I got an auto-rejection email. Then days later, the recruiter reached out saying it was sent in error and that they actually liked my profile. I was asked to confirm my salary expectations, sign an NDA, share my government ID, and agree to complete a task — all before speaking to a single person. After doing all that, there was a full week of silence. I had to follow up myself. Only then did I get a response — the recruiter claimed my email had gone to her spam folder. Personally, I don’t buy that. They were clearly using an ATS, and it just came off as unprofessional. Eventually, I was sent the task: unpaid, time-consuming, and highly specific to roles they were actively hiring for. It honestly felt like I was being used to do free work. I spent a full week working on it and finally got a debrief — my first human interaction. The recruiter said I did very well and gave me great feedback. I left that conversation optimistic. Two days later, I got a rejection email — early in the morning. Their “reason” was that some candidates had proactively suggested process improvements or came from similar companies. But if that was a dealbreaker, why move me forward at all? That information was already on my resume. And let’s be real — I’m not about to hand over free strategy and ideas to a company that isn’t even paying me and might not hire me. The worst part is that they didn’t hire anyone. I checked their team updates for over a year — no new hires on the People team. It genuinely felt like a disguised attempt to extract unpaid labor. Now they’re hiring for the same role again. I noticed someone from the team recently left, so I’ll be watching to see if they finally hire someone. But overall, the experience left a bad taste in my mouth. If this is how they treat candidates, I can only imagine what goes on internally.