Had a phone interview with a recruiter. He was a very nice guy, but there was a red flag and an unrealistic "assessment test" that I wasn't keen on. He introduced a discussion of salary, and said, "Before I get into that though, let me tell you a bit about the company." What followed was a roughly 3-minute review of how "passionate" and "dedicated" and "committed" the employees at HelloFresh were, and how some folks have even taken "50% pay cuts" in order to join the team. This reveal felt odd to me, and the tone (though friendly) and word choices suggested that I should be prepared to take a pay cut to really show my "passion" for HelloFresh. This felt unfair, and a strange way to start a compensation discussion. Regardless, I told him my salary requirement. He ended the call by saying he would send me the assessment test by day's end, and that I would have by the end of the following day to complete it. When I hadn't received it by the next morning, I emailed him, and he promptly sent it. The "assessment test" wanted a lot, in my opinion. - One 700-word blog post about BBQ. - One 700-word blog post about Dinner Ideas for Busy Parents. - One email to get new people into the HelloFresh funnel. This is a lot of work to get done in one day (and I use the term "work" loosely, since I wouldn't be paid for it). I asked for an extension, which he okayed, but then decided the red flag and this epic amount of "test" work with a high turnaround was enough to persuade me to politely say, "no thank you." Please Note: I'm not above taking writing tests, but two blog posts - and so early in the process? (My own site has plenty of writing samples, including blog posts.) If you can't get the gist of someone's writing quality/style from one blog post, or their writing samples, or their website, or their previous work, then you're doing something wrong. (I also wondered what would become of these posts in the future. Would they really just throw them away? Hmm.)