Company praised applicant’s 5-page launch plan, then claimed the role had 'no budget.' Three days later, they demanded access to her document

In today's competitive job market, requesting unpaid labor has sadly become common practice. Under the pretext of skill assessment, companies often force applicants to work for free. A person who goes by u/my_peen_is_clean on Reddit, too, fell for such a scam while applying to a marketing firm. As part of the recruitment process, the firm assigned them to present a communication plan for a new campaign. As expected, the applicant shared a 5-page strategy, only to later realize it was all a scam. The post, shared on August 3, 2026, has received 4,000 upvotes. 

Free labor disguised as job offer

Seeking a job at a marketing firm, the author found themselves in a demanding position. That is because, to evaluate their capabilities, they were asked to develop a comprehensive communications plan for a new social media management service. Without any hesitation, the candidate got to work. They worked hard to craft a 5-page launch plan for the company's new service and shared the file via a collaborative document link. Upon reviewing, the hiring team was impressed by their work, but then something unfortunate happened. Although the team loved the candidate's work and showed interest in hiring them, they didn't. "Unfortunately, they decided that they no longer had a budget for the role," the applicant recalled. 

Scam backfires

While it was indeed a devastating blow for the candidate, they remained extremely professional and thanked them for their time. Simultaneously, they removed the company's access to the document, so the recruiter could no longer use the strategy. Three days later, the company reached out to the applicant, calling them out for removing the access to the document. As it turns out, the company had planned to roll out the applicant's plan next month and had even scheduled a meeting to go over it with the team. Frustrated, the candidate said the company has to pay them $100 an hour to use the plan for their highly anticipated launch.

The take-home trap

Even though this candidate was able to see through the firm's real intentions and teach them a lesson, it highlights why candidates find take-home assignments so challenging. In fact, according to the Greenhouse Candidate Experience Report, 19% of job seekers report these time-consuming unpaid assignments as the biggest challenge in their job hunt. Similarly, 24% find it so dreadful that they have confessed to using AI to complete them. Moreover, interestingly, this is also the stage where a striking 12% of candidates report being ghosted by the company. 

'This was a scam'

This explains why the people in the comments were so livid. For instance, u/InformalCollege4383 commented, "The fact that they admitted they planned on using your work is wild." Meanwhile, u/Ambitious-Low-5317 noted, "This was a scam. At least you were smart enough to keep control of the output; many people just email over the documents."

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