Significant unpaid case study, mismatched feedback A recruiter reached out on LinkedIn. I said early on that I was wary of doing a case study because of the time involved, and I was encouraged to continue and told it would be a fun project. The first two rounds went well and everyone was friendly. The case study, though, was about 40 to 50 hours of work. Not hard, but very time consuming, analyzing about 5 spreadsheets of data. I am not from this industry, so it took time to research and learn the metrics energy companies evaluate so I could reflect it in my take home project within a week. I completed it, presented in the final round, found data discrepancies, and gave clear recommendations. After the presentation there was a surprise interview with the VP of accounting. All together that was 5 stages: a recruiter screen, two 1-on-1 interviews, a presentation to a group, and then the additional interview. The feedback was positive and I was asked about my availability in the interview. A week later I was rejected for "data analysis skills not up to par," which was confusing since finding the data issues was the whole point of the exercise, and I found them (So I thought). People were kind throughout. I really, really had my hopes up. It seemed like a good team and company to work with. Looking back I should have declined to go through the process due to the case study, but we all live and learn. My advice to candidates: know that the case study is a major time investment, and weigh that before committing. My takeaway is that I probably wasn't a good culture fit for the team.