Disclaimer: I am aware that the title of this blog sounds like a modern art gallery installation by a German artist.
Brain scraping 🧠is when a candidate is interviewed when either there is no job or the job had already been filled but the company just wants the candidate’s ideas and for free.
Being a marketer is very tricky.
Interviewing as a marketer can be even trickier.
Companies will sometimes inappropriately request that marketing job interview candidates complete homework for them. Recruiters: do not ask this, and marketers: do not do it.
How do we encapsulate and make tangible, readily understandable, and our bevy of knowledge? How do we convince a hiring manager that the skills we’ve gain ed are legitimate and applicable, that we actually know what we know and that we are the one the company needs to hire?
When a company has its choice of marketing candidates for a role, those stuck not having been a VP yet face a specific kind of problem during the interview process: brain scraping
First, what is a brain scrape?
A meeting that is basically disguised as an interview but its meant to act as a free consulting session for the company.
Example: if you’ve ever been asked the insane question of how would you market this product? during a <1hr interview (esp. w/ a startup) then you know what I’m talking about.
No, I’m not pitching your product/service to you for you. There are too many unseen and opaque factors to me at play and thusly I’m bound to get this wrong and fail. 🤦🏻‍♀️
Recruiters: please don’t ask how would you pitch this service/product?
So, what generally happens afterward?
Supposedly interested parties will review the entirety of one’s portfolio site, possibly yet again,, lending the impression that they are interested in hiring us? Meanwhile, the same parties are making note of what tools etc a candidate has used (along with reading their mission statement) in order to figure out how to position themselves along with mold their protégé/recent hires. AKA not you.
For this reason, brain scrapping can be used by startups with limited funding or by SMB in smaller, less tech savvy towns. The brain scrape tactic is vulture agnostic like that.
While I don’t have a cure for the brain scrape tactic used by companies to pray upon marketers who’re reaching for that next rung in their career, what I can do is validate their experiences with this: You’re not crazy, and I’m sorry this happened to you too.