Reply To: Job Interview – Advice

[Senff]

I don’t think it’s too advanced, I think it’s way too broad: “designing an enhanced means of engaging the leaner on Equality and Diversity“.

What does that even mean? A website? A web page? An infographic? You’re being asked too much. They want you to brainstorm and come up with ideas and a plan, AND come up with a design, AND come up with a site structure, AND do the implementation. In the real world, there’s a person (or a team) for each of those steps in the process.

If the position is for a Web Developer, you should be given more. Usually, this means getting a design and/or wireframes, with functional specs, so that you can create the site. And that’s all you should be doing if that is what the job is.

As for ethics… I’ve applied for jobs where they asked me to show my tech skills (mostly HTML/CSS/jQuery) by providing me with a one-page design that included an accordeon for example. I didn’t mind doing that, cause it was THE way of showing them “hey, this is my skill level for those languages“.

Spec work however, is a totally different thing and I agree that’s unethical.