I was excited when MM reached out about my application. There was a very basic, intro interview that seemed to have gone fine. The recruiter emailed me a week later with an invitation to complete an assignment to further assess my skills. In the email, the recruiter said a few things, "This is not free work" and to please "log your hours". The assignment was enormous, in my opinion. I was asked to create an entire case study for a non-existent brand, I also was asked to create their logo. That was the 1st part of the assignment. The 2nd part was to then animate the whole thing intro a 15-30 second video. I did this in a week, and spent about 11 hours total. Almost 2 weeks later, I finally heard back about the role, and MM decided they were no longer filling this position at all. I was never asked about my hours, and there was no conversation about compensation. I shared my frustration with them and they followed up with a short email about how I shouldn't be frustrated because it wasn't a "rejection". I explained that their wording led one to assume this was an assignment with a budget for those invited. No response. I followed up with a final email explaining that this was wholly unethical of them. No response. It is WRONG to treat candidates like this. When work is so hard to come by, when time is so important, you can not lead folks on like this and then ghost them.