What’s the deal with companies expecting work from job applicants who don’t even work for them yet?

Surely, places that are hiring realize that traversing the job market is difficult without expecting job seekers to bring them a polished, specialized product on top of tweaking their resume and going through however many rounds of interviews. Sure, there are a lot of types of work that require an applicant to prove their competency through something tangible, but is that not what a portfolio is for? There are plenty of ways to show aptitude that don’t involve doing a job before they even have it.

Unfortunately, what many seeking employment have come to realize is that a lot of employers like to use their hiring practices as a way to get people to work for free. They mine their ideas and skills for what they can use, and then the position they were advertising magically goes away (or gets offered to somebody else). It is yet another frustrating aspect of the modern working world that it takes real skill and attitude to fight against. Realistically, companies should not be using somebody’s brainpower like that unless they are genuinely interested in offering them a job at the end of it.