Sorry guys this is abit of a TL :,DR but tell me if i was wrong doing what I did? Is this a standard practice from companies?
I managed to get a interview with a small web design company not very far from my home on monday. I applied for the position on Friday after finding it on the JSA website. However the job had been online since may, after reading this I rang the company to double check the position was still open and it was, great! Sent my CV and details via email, hour later im invited in on the monday for an interview! Sweet!
Monday comes around, I get to their office at 9am (arranged time for interview), first impressions the company has only 5 members of staff and all who are young, I was alittle taken back at first, im 24 and i felt old walking in there. Anyway I get introduced to the director/owner of the company, we sit down and have a chat about my previous employment, nothing is mentioned about my degree. Im asked afew questions about my web design background (everything is going well at this point). The ceo throws in a comment that struck me as very odd, "I tend to prefer employing people of a younger age because they are more upto date with current trends and standards", this starts alarm bells ringing in my head, firstly hes made a very ageist comment and secondly thats BS, he doesnt like hiring older people because he would have to pay them more, at this point im starting to feel alittle skeptical. Anyway I present them my portfolio which shows my best design work, they then ask me if I could demostrate my skills by working on some of there clients websites that need updating.... o......k....
Im moved into the office (i guess my interview will be a tad longer). One of the employees gets me seated and runs me through their system on how they work, I go through their emails from clients that are dated from 2 weeks ago! Apparently they havent had "time" to do the updates for clients....again alarm bells are ringing.
I will have to state I was never told on the phone or during my interview I would be doing actual work for them, I have not dicussed any pay at this point either.
So Im told to pick a few emails and start working on afew updates, remeber i was in for 9am, its now comming up to 10:30ish and Ive just finished 5 different updates for 3 different clients, im still thinking this is really strange i honestly wasnt expecting to be doing their actual work for them, but if it lands me a job I'll put the effort in, get these tasks done and tell the employee overseeing my work what else I need to demostrate so we can carry on with the interview. 5mins roll by and the employee overseeing my work turns to me and says "btw we get about an hour for lunch and you can take it when you want". Er, what? I reply "I wasnt expecting to be here for lunch, Im ment to be driving back soon so my parents can use their car that i drove here today with", "ok thats not a problem, you will have to go and speak to the director" she replies. At this point im abit **** off (only in my head, I kept it cool though). I walk into the directors office and explain that Im unsure what exactly is going on, it works out i was expected to work 2 full days unpaid, I was never told this over the phone. I gave him my excuse why i couldnt be there for the whole day and left.
The next day i recieve a text from the director asking me if everything was alright? I reply basically telling him I would prefer to dicuss pay, benefits and holiday before I give up any of my time doing their work for them, I dont want to be "lead up the garden path" just to be told sorry no. And that was that.
A truely strange interview, unless i got the completely WRONG end of the stick, or there was a communication error between the director and his employee (she arranged my interview not the director) and they were ment to tell me about this arrangment and never did?