Highland interview questions

I was contacted by Director of Business Solution Delivery with an interest to speak with me about this position. After our interview, I was informed that I would need to conduct a workshop assignment and present it to 6 of their staff members (Consultants and Sales). These are the instructions I received for the workshop: _______________________________________ Business Solutions PM/ BA Workshop Workshop Prompt: Prep for your week Part 1: Before the Workshop Two (2) days before your workshop, Highland will provide: A chance to review the prompt and ask questions: Prepare a presentation of about 15 minutes, which covers your analysis of the calendar invitations. Your steps to prepare for each invitation. Your instructions to the client before each session. What you would recommend for each client to do next after this meeting. Optional: Set up your own trial instance of monday.com (NOTE: We recommend the Free Trial on the "Pro" plan, NOT the "Individual" or "Basic" plan.) Part 2: Day of the Workshop Candidate will need the Zoom app to be able to share their screen Workshop (25 mins) Assume the Highland team will role-play as your team of consultants. Candidate will present their presentation. Candidate will demo any set-up done in monday.com. Conclude the role-play, and all be ourselves to debrief on the workshop. Traditional Panel Interview (35 mins) Highlanders may ask additional questions about your thought process or approach to the workshop, your skills or previous experience, in a group interview. The candidate may ask Highlanders questions as well. Additional info: Preparation for this workshop is expected to take 30-60 minutes __________________________________________________ I took a couple of hours to develop this workshop. I presented a thorough, very detailed workshop, as well as downloaded a copy of monday.com and created content to match the workshop, as requested. During the presentation, I noticed many of the Highland participants taking a lot of notes (basically copying my slides) and asking very specific situational questions. The consultants also spoke of how much work they all had and discussed the fast pace of the environment and being overwhelmed at times by the workload. After this workshop, I was given positive feedback and then scheduled to meet with their Principal of Business Practice. During that brief meeting with the Principal, I was again provided positive feedback regarding the workshop and my previous interview. After that meeting, I was informed a couple of days later that they decided to go with another candidate because that candidate "offered suggestions". The exact nature of their workshop was designed to offer suggestions so that explanation didn't quite make sense. In summary, it is my opinion based on my experience with Highland that this entire process appeared to be an exercise is soliciting and receiving free consultant work from candidates. I had heard of this happening with other companies but certainly had never experienced it. My opinion appeared to be supported by the director's inability to explain why they chose another candidate. I genuinely wanted to know as a learning tool but it quickly became clear. This is an unfortunate practice if this is indeed what happened here.