Round 3 isn’t free.
We made it past the recruiter screen and hiring manager. Then they asked us to prove we could do the job by doing it for free.
Hours of work, built on the possibility of a paycheck.
Copy tests. Campaigns. Decks. Rebrands. Marketing plans.
We did the work to stay in the running. That doesn’t make the hours free.
So we’re keeping the receipts.
Anonymous. No company names. Every filing is reviewed before publication.
By the time the assignment arrives, you’re invested. You’ve met the team. Made it through the rounds. Started picturing the job.
“Just say no” gets harder when you need the paycheck.
So we’re building a shared record of what candidates are asked to make, how long it takes, and how the hiring process ends. One person’s experience is easy to dismiss. The hours add up.
Nobody asks a painter to do the half bath for free before deciding whether to hire them for the house.
Another round. Hours of unpaid work.
47%
of respondents in a 2026 survey of 1,020 active U.S. job seekers said they had been required to complete unpaid work during an interview process.
An interview should test whether you can do the work without quietly becoming the work.
Software Finder, 2026 survey of 1,020 Americans who had actively job-searched in the previous 18 months · Read the declaration →
02 Your turn
Did unpaid interview work? File your invoice.
Record what you were asked to make, the hours you spent, and how it ended.
Do not paste the original brief. Do not include confidential, proprietary, client, product, campaign or identifying details. Paraphrase only. House rules
Filed.
Your submission is waiting for moderation. Nothing appears publicly until it has been reviewed for identifying, confidential and prohibited information. We don’t collect an email, so you won’t get an approval notice.
Got a recruiter on the other end right now?
03 Hiring?
Not every exercise is unreasonable.
A short, hypothetical test of a specific skill can make sense. The line is crossed when it becomes real work. Here’s where we draw it, and a better final round.
Rate card · Estimates
How the hours are priced
Everyone’s guess at what their own work was worth would skew the total. So every invoice is valued the same way: your hours times one standard hourly rate for the level you interviewed at.
- 1Start with the salary. Average annual pay for the role, from the sources below.
- 2Convert to hourly. Salary ÷ 2,080 working hours.
- 3Double it. A freelancer has to bill roughly twice the wage-equivalent to cover self-employment tax, benefits and unpaid time. Round to the nearest $5.
- 4Multiply by your hours. That’s the “Est. market value” on your invoice.
Worked example, Senior: $118,210 ÷ 2,080 = $57 → × 2 = $114 → $115/hr. A 20-hour assignment is valued at $2,300.
| Level | Based on | Annual salary | Hourly equivalent | Rate we use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Junior | Junior copywriter | $70,796 | $34 | $70 |
| Mid-level | Mid-level copywriter and art director | $98,899 | $48 | $95 |
| Senior | Senior copywriter and art director | $118,210 | $57 | $115 |
| Lead / Associate Director | Associate creative director, copy and art | $138,688 | $67 | $135 |
| Director | Creative director, copy and art | $163,939 | $79 | $160 |
| VP and above | VP and creative director | $178,020 | $86 | $170 |
Annual salary divided by 2,080 working hours gives the hourly equivalent. The rate we use is double that, rounded to the nearest $5, to approximate what a freelancer has to bill to cover self-employment tax, benefits, and unpaid time. The doubling is our assumption, not a published figure. Without it, every dollar value on this site would be half as large.
The sources don’t agree with each other. Robert Half’s 2027 guide puts creative directors at $103,250 to $165,750 a year and art directors at $85,000 to $124,250. BLS reports a median of $51.20 an hour for art directors as of May 2023. In 2016, agencies billed clients $142 an hour for art directors and $134 for copywriters, according to the 4A’s. “VP and above” rests on the thinnest data and likely understates chief creative officers.
- Creative Circle 2025 Salary Guide: placement pay, July 2023 to March 2025. Salaries for every level except VP.
- Payscale, VP and Creative Director: 2026 average, 111 salary profiles.
- Robert Half, Creative Director and Art Director: 2027 salary guide ranges, used as a cross-check.
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Art Directors: May 2023, used as a cross-check.
- 4A’s Agency Hourly Labor Billing Rate Report: 2016 agency billing rates, used as a cross-check. The full report is paywalled.
How we run this
House rules
- Categories, never names.
- We redact company, product, program and internal tool names, or we reject the submission.
- People stay out of it.
- We never name recruiters, hiring managers or interviewers, or any title that points to one person.
- One posting, one problem.
- If a brief could only describe a single job posting, we reject it. It would point straight back to whoever filed it.
- Absurd is fine. Invented isn’t.
- We check every submission for plausibility: could this have happened? We can’t verify any of it, and the site says so.
- Edits are redactions only.
- We redact and generalize identifying details. We never add facts or sharpen your claims.
- Your words, nobody’s documents.
- Paraphrase only. No company, client, product, campaign or program names. No recruiter or interviewer names or identifying titles. No URLs, internal metrics, trade secrets, unreleased work, NDA-covered information, screenshots, private files, or copied employer material.
- What we keep.
- No accounts. We use Statcounter for visit analytics and Cloudflare tools to protect submissions. See the privacy page for what these services process.