I recently interviewed for a senior producer position for a very popular tech podcast focused on software development (later identified as “The Tech Podcast”, which is not its real name). This podcast was recently acquired by a well-known technology company (which will be further identified as “The Tech Company”, also not its name).
The position seemed perfect given my past professional experience. Many people in the software development community urged me to apply.
I applied and after a second round of interviews, I decided not to go forward following my conscience and instincts. The main reason is their inflexible decision to include an unpaid two-hour job assessment test as part of their interview process, which I find unethical and exploitative.
(I also posted this on my portfolio site here.)
For those who don’t know me, I’ve been in the radio and podcast space for almost a decade, and I got my start producing segments for Marketplace Tech, a show syndicated by NPR.
My past experience, which would be more similar to producing for The Tech Podcast, is my experience producing for the popular podcast for early career developers, CodeNewbie, as well as heading up Forem/DEV’s podcast unit after they acquired CodeNewbie.
The podcasts we launched to complement CodeNewbie were the developer roundtable DevDiscuss, as well as the tech news show DevNews. On a quarterly basis, I juggled research, script writing, guest booking, recording, audio editing, and mixing these three podcasts. I was the only producer (we hired an additional producer, but he was only with the company for a couple of months before mass layoffs occurred).
This year, in addition to editing and mixing the international affairs podcast Global Dispatches, I worked full-time for 9 months leading the production of a highly produced Wondery/AT WILL MEDIA pop culture podcast called The Big Flop.
Before that, I launched Gizmodo Media’s podcast unit, juggling producing and editing three weekly shows: The Upgrade, DirtCast, and Big Time Dicks. And on top of all this, I’ve edited and sound designed audio dramas like the Webby Award-winning musical comedy podcast, Propaganda, and the fantasy comedy podcast, Roommate From Hell.
All of which is to say that I have a lot of experience in audio production.
Going back to my experience interviewing with The Tech Podcast.
I first had a 30 minute call with a recruiter where she told me a little about the position and that due to my extensive experience and “impressive resume” I had already moved on to the next round.
The next round consisted of a 70-minute Zoom chat with hiring managers. One is the co-host of The Tech Podcast (Interviewer A) and the other is the general manager of The Tech Company (Interviewer B).
After a very interesting and productive talk in which Interviewer A and Interviewer B went over the various aspects of the position and I reviewed my career path, everything seemed very aligned. Interviewer B then asked one last question: “Do you have any questions for us?”
I had some general questions that had to do with where The Tech Company wanted to take this newly acquired program and the potential to create more podcasts on top of that, but my main question was about a 2-hour assessment test, which the recruiter had told me about. I asked him if the assessment test was paid for, to which he replied that no one had asked that before, but it was not paid for. However, he said it was okay not to get paid because “it would be a fun task.”
I’ve done my fair share of hiring in the past for podcast producer positions and I’m in no way against assessment testing. What I am against is not paying people for their time.
I told Interviewer A and Interviewer B that I didn’t believe in unpaid evaluations.