After an initial HR screen, I interviewed with creative team leadership. The interviews were positive, productive, and interesting! I was informed that an unpaid project “assessment” would be next. The final deliverable would require up to 72 hours of unpaid work followed by a panel presentation to “sell” the unpaid work to Marketing leadership. Asking experienced job candidates (with robust, online portfolios of their past work) to produce spec work during an interview process is exploitative. My fellow designers, please consider declining to participate in these unpaid work “assessments.” Providing free consultation or producing deliverables without compensation, to exploitative companies, continues to devalue our profession.