Ep 303: When The Application/Interview Is Free Feedback

We'll read and ​discuss my article [https://medium.com/r-before-d/when-the-application-interview-is-free-feedback-eb2e98e83a2a], which was about how much free feedback and consulting Figma appeared to want in its job application. You don't have to give them that for free, and they shouldn't even ask for it. Let's discuss!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Welcome, low ego action heroes and phoenixes. This is Debbie from Delta CX, and it's time for episode 303. I want to talk about when the job application or the interview is just probably there mostly or only to get free feedback from you. Ah, terrible. Uh let me turn up my microphone a little bit. Okay, how's that? Um, hey, so this is uh an article that I'm going to read today. You can find this on our medium publication. Lots of links to our stuff at dcx.to, our Twitch, our free Patreon, upcoming events and other fun things, coaching, our free Discord community, which has over 750 people. So please join us. And if you're listening to the audio only podcast, hello. Um, thank you for joining us. So let's uh get the article up on the screen. You can find the link in the description uh because uh I knew I had to say something about this when I saw this going on on LinkedIn, and in this particular case, it was happening from a hiring manager at Figma, which in my opinion is in uh a world of trouble and has been in trouble for some time. Uh, but this to me was really low. So let's talk about it. This article is from late April 2026. I'm talking to you in late July 2026. And uh the article is called When the Application Slash Interview is free feedback. Um, and it says, this screenshot hit my Discord community recently. Now I'm gonna read you the screenshot. It says, I reviewed 75 plus candidates in the last 24 hours, skimmed resumes, read the why Figma blurbs, did some LinkedIn and portfolio digging, hundreds more to go, and I'm genuinely excited. A few things stood out. One, the talent bar is high. So many of you are wildly impressive. It's an insane job market. I appreciate the time so many of you have taken for this role and I'm sure plenty of others. Two, the candidates who stood out talked about more than work, volunteering, side projects, hobbies, etc. These aren't filler. When everyone has strong credentials, the human stuff is often what tips the scale. 3A Bonus points if your why Figma answer has an actual opinion in it, hot takes on where the industry is going, what's broken about how the industry works, what you think Figma should do next. That stuff is memorable. Safe answers blend together. 3B. You don't have to be a Figma expert, but I absolutely expect you to have dabbled in our tools. This is especially true if you're selected for an interview. Give me a one pager of all of the stuff that you hated or observed when trialing one of our tools. One pager. Uh continuing the quote, here are some practical recommendations. Lead with a short summary and a full a few bullet points at the top. Most hiring managers are skimming fast. Help me find your best stuff quickly rather than forcing us to excavate your experiences from dense paragraphs of process description. Uh also rec a recommendation in this quote I don't particularly care about how you ran the study, but more about what changed because of it. What decision did you influence? What got built differently? Lead with that. End of screenshot. It appears to be from a hiring manager at Figma reviewing candidates for what sounds like a researcher job. What do you notice about it? I'll tell you what I'll I notice. I'm suspicious immediately. Number two on this person's list says that great candidates talked about more than work, topics like volunteering, side projects, and hobbies. This is possible, but I've never had a company ask me to tell them about my side projects. And nearly 100% of the time that a potential job heard I had side projects, they rejected me, sure that I'd never have time to do their job or I wouldn't make them a priority. Why would this hiring manager want to hear about your side projects? And is that really a positive? Does it help or hurt that I'm trying to start a karaoke DJ business? The screenshot claims that when everybody has great credentials, the human stuff tips the scale. So we'll be judged by our hobbies and side projects? Do not want. Hiring manager, what about Debbie? She certainly seems qualified. Other person, yeah, but her hobbies center around singing. What about Sam? They volunteer at church. Wouldn't they be a better researcher at Figma? Third person, hmm, I'm not sure about church. What about Kim? They teach ch sign language to children. How about them for a UX researcher? Hiring manager, I still like Debbie. It says here she's also an accredited personal development coach. Other person, oh I don't know, some life coaches are really bad at what they do. Is that the conversation that'll go on behind the scenes? I really hope not. I also noticed that this person claims to want hot takes. Claims to want hot takes on where the industry is going, what's broken about how the industry works, what you think Figma should do next. Ooh, did you see how that last one snuck in? They want your free feedback on corporate direction. Consultants get paid to answer that one. If asked that in an interview, I would tell them that I couldn't really assess where their entire company should go without a lot of research around internal goals and processes, plus research with target users to learn what they need that Figma isn't delivering. Competitive analyses, market investigations, strategy work around determining where industries are going and how this can industry can lead. That's really not an appropriate interview question unless you're fishing for free feedback, and you'll need to pay way more than you're offering for a researcher job. Hey, I can do this. Call me Figma. There's also a bit of cringe in someone from Figma asking you what's broken about how the industry works. Figma was a tool for designers and is now a company nearly completely aimed at product managers. They trot out people at their conferences to shit on designers and tell product managers you will be the last tech worker with a job. PMs and AI will do it all. Pygma Figma Pygma Figma is peak and shittification. Workers and leaders are leaving. AI tools are eating their lunch. They were too overconfident too early and then abandoned their core user base to chase a different user base. I also noticed, no, really, tell us what we're doing wrong. We don't know. But 3B on the above list asks you to provide a one pager, one whole page of everything that you hated or observed while using or trying one of Figma's tools. Again, this is free corporate feedback, a full page of it. They don't just want a few bullet points. Give us a page. Research participants are paid for these answers, but you need to give these answers for free? This is unpaid user research. Is this really a job interview? I'm finding it hard to believe. It starts by setting you up to be afraid. Afraid you won't make the cut in a highly competitive job market where so many people are talented and experienced. And then it goes on to say that you need to provide extensive data and opinions about what you think Figma is doing badly, where the industry is going and where Figma should go. The why Figma section of the application appears to be what makes or breaks it, and they want some free consulting typed into that box. The hiring manager in the screenshot has already read 75 applications with hundreds to go, and I guess they weren't getting enough free feedback. They're now telling people to make sure to include these things in their applications. You haven't even been interviewed yet, and they hope you know how to fix their broken company. Figma isn't the only one doing this. It's easy to point at Figma because this example is so obvious. There are always stories floating around about startups that do this and there is no job. They want designers, researchers, and other CX and UX experts to review their company or offerings and in the application or interviews, tell them what they can improve. Maybe even redesign it as a design challenge, which they can now use for free. Thank you very much. There's a lot of unpleasantness here, but the main bullying is the subtle or non-subtle message of if you don't give us all of this product or company feedback, we won't advance you to the next interview round. So you think you have to play mini consultant and help them understand where the industry is going, what this company should do, and your suggestions for their product roadmap. But it's a trick. If there is no job, this is a trick to get free feedback. If there is a job, they will collect feedback from hundreds of people within hours and hire one person. I've heard so many stories from people who gave ideas or designs to various companies in applications or interviews, didn't get the first or next interview or the job, weren't paid anything for the ideas, and then found their ideas being used by the company. Stand up for what's right. I've made this mistake in the past. I've given companies free advice, found a few broken things on their website to prove that I can do that, etc. And I've never been hired. I found a broken checkout for a Fortune 10 that was probably costing them millions, and they didn't hire me. They ghosted me, so you can be sure that the checkout was fixed. Giving companies free advice, consulting, designs, etc. Give it give them that at your own risk. Remember that you can put in hours or days on this hoping to impress someone, and you might not get the job or even an interview. In some cases, there is no job, but a company that wants free work and consulting before you're hired sends you a message about how you will be treated there. Consider applying somewhere else. And that is this article. And we've got Anna Lucia here, always good to see you. And you're saying one of Portugal's unicorns asks for stuff like this for design jobs. Someone went on Reddit and called them out. And guess what? The CEO showed up to say a bunch of nothing. And how would we know if the person knows how to do the job if we don't give them a real problem we have? Shame on them. Totally agree. There's always so many ways that people can know when someone can do a job. The reality is that an expert can recognize competent people, even if you're not an expert. A great senior or lead or principal, UX practitioner, or hopefully a manager who came from the work, can identify who is good at UX work and how good they are. They would know where their strengths and weaknesses are, they would know what they're able to do. And we can get all of that from portfolios and conversations. I don't have to give people sample work. Every time in my life over the course of decades that I have wanted to try someone out and give them sample work, I have paid them. What's your hourly rate? Or will you accept X dollars per hour? Would you mind doing three hours of work on this so I can see what direction you'd go in with it? I'm paying you for that work. So that CEO from that unicorn who says, How would we know if the person knows how to do the job if we don't give them a real problem we have? You can do that, but you must pay them. I don't know why people feel like they should get that work and those answers for free. If that were their wife or husband or mother or child, would that be okay? Would you still tell them, yeah, yeah, go give that company hours of work, days of work, weeks of work for free, uh, so they can try you out and you can go solve their problems and not be paid for it, and then possibly not even continue working there. All of a sudden, womp womp, they don't need you. So, especially in this job market, you might think, oh my gosh, I really have to stand out. I have to go above and beyond. I have to give them all of my ideas, I have to do the extra work, I have to write the essays, I have to give them a full page on what their company needs to improve. And I would say do the opposite. That's already a company that doesn't appreciate you because they should be paying for that information. If they hired McKinsey, Gartner, my company, some other consultancy or agency, they would pay for that information. They would pay for that research, those investigations, those strategies, those answers. It doesn't make sense to ask a job applicant for a UX researcher researcher position how this company needs to change and what direction the industry is going in. That's just free consulting work. It's up to you if you want to give people that. I don't want to, and I don't want you to. I would rather you get the job that appreciates you and asks you some of these questions once you're hired and you're being paid to answer them. Anna Lucia says, cover letters are already a pain. You have to show interest and somewhat lick some boots, and now we have to do this on top of it. Hell no. Yep, I feel that same way. I just feel like I've done this in the past. I've tried it. I've tried it on applications where I gave people free consulting. I've tried it in informal challenges. Hey, find three things wrong with our website so we can see if you really know what you're doing. I've tried it in on the spot interviews where I got surprised with a question about a real problem this company wanted to solve, and I never got the job. Even though I could solve that problem and did solve the problem or offered something to solve the problem, I didn't get the job. Maybe somebody else did. Maybe someone else is telling a different story right now about the time that they gave Figma an amazing one pager and their fantastic hobbies, and they love horses and uh rainbows, and uh they got the job. So I don't know. I I like rainbows too. Yeah, Anna Lucia's got a good point. She says maybe they told them what they wanted to hear. Yeah, it would be interesting if someone said, Figma, don't change anything. You're awesome, you're the best, you're the industry leader. You have nothing to change. I think Figma's in big trouble, and I think no amount of free consulting. Like if you don't know by now what's wrong with your company and what's going on in the industry and where things are headed, and you have to ask job applicants that, that just makes me think so much less of you. Like, wow, you really don't know. You really don't know what you're doing, you really don't know what's going right or wrong, and you want to just get some free consulting from hundreds of people. Uh, all right. Well, we can certainly wrap up for today. This was one of our read and discuss an article uh uh streams. Um, let's see. Next week is the first Tuesday of the month, which means I won't be streaming here. I will uh oh no, I will. I threw in an extra one. Um, we had a conversation in Discord. Well, so we'll have uh Discord portfolio review, then we'll have karaoke stream on my other channel, then we'll be back here. Um people wanted to talk about multitasking and context switching and how do you juggle work when your company makes everything sound like a high priority. So that will be our stream next week. Uh, everybody have a super week, and I hope to see you on a future stream. If you would like to suggest a topic, you can always respond to me on Patreon or over in our Discord. Both of those are free. You're welcome to join those for free. Um, pretty much everything I'm doing right now is free, other than my books and my Claude Skill. So there you go. Um, everybody have a super rest of your day, and I will wind down the show and catch you tomorrow for Ask Me. I think we've asked me anything. No, no, no, ask me anything tomorrow. Don't show up. Um, show up on my vocal coach Debbie stream. We're gonna talk about Bohemian Rhapsody. Thanks. Bye.