Some time ago, I actively went to interviews and I was even hunted by other organizations. One of them was Bondora. If you have not heard of it, then they offer microloans from person to person (peer to peer). They asked me to apply for a position in a new direction, in which it was necessary to make payments through mobile devices. A person would receive a loan and immediately be able to use the money through Apple Pay. A kind of competitor to Revolut and even banks.
Since they contacted me themselves, they immediately sent me a task to understand if I could handle it, it was necessary to nurture a “new” department or group, the person had to know what he would do and how.
They sent a sufficient general task aimed at describing what I would do in this position. Since my desire was high enough, and the task was interesting, before writing an essay, I sat down at the excel and began to sketch out a project plan. It immediately included the number of people, budgets, dates, when and what will follow, who is responsible and what resources will be needed from the company. I immediately designed a beautiful plate through Gant, put 2 development scenarios on how to do it and the final price for the company as a whole for this project + subsequent support for the new team and development grew, taking into account VAT. In general, I praise myself, I did really well.
I put all my thoughts in a short summary and sent it along with the excel file.
A day later I was contacted. They asked me to come talk to the CEO and the director of the department. The girl from HR at the meeting immediately said that she was very surprised by the implementation of the task. The CEO at the interview began to bite into all the numbers and ask for details.
Unfortunately, HR specialists are very meticulous at Bondora (maybe this is a good thing). But they began to ask to pass all sorts of tests for character and IQ. Honestly, I already wanted to refuse, but since the motivation to get a new direction was great and I stepped over myself. I spent a lot of time on all these tests (by the way, the results were quite average or slightly above average) - but oh well.
But in the end, they called me from Bondora and did not refuse in the usual way, saying that I didn’t fit as a candidate or they found a new one. And they said that after me they decided not to develop this project. Too expensive and they believed in my numbers and plan and they didn't agree with their budget.
I don't know how to react properly. It seems to be good that I showed them everything and did not waste my time or theirs. But, on the other hand, he took and did the work for them, which, under normal circumstances, could cost about 100k for the organization as a whole (not the personal benefit of the employee), in order to understand that they should not develop this direction.