As a former journalist, I was fully prepared to provide a writing sample for this position. They gave me several days to write on a topic. I was not prepared to then be asked to memorize facts from their own articles for a so-called hypothetical. Researching previous interviews, this phase was often just reciting back bullet points to the interviewer. The role of a journalist is not to just memorize facts, so I really saw no point to this exercise. It sapped any enthusiasm I had for working for this company because it was a lot of work for nothing. I broke off the process at this point.
Had I continued, in theory I would have had an actual informative interview after the quiz but who knows. In all my years both applying for and holding journalism jobs, I had never had to just memorize facts just to recite them back.
