For context purposes, I was involved in 2 different designer roles: X Designer & Y Designer role (sorry for not being able to disclose what it is due to privacy purposes.
Initially, I was applying for X Designer roles. I got to the first interview, and the interviewer was nice and friendly. Then, I waited for the email to proceed to the next stage of the interview but never got one. I emailed them to ask about it, and eventually got contacted by the same interviewer.
The interviewer was promoting a different type of designer role, the Y Designer role and didn't address anything about the actual X Designer role that I applied for before, when I asked about the X Designer role, then only I was informed that I didn't get selected for it.
I eventually moved forward and accepted this new Y Designer role. They required me to do an online test before I proceeded further to the next stage. I did the online test, and it was a lot of tasks. I didn't want to be so negative but it almost felt like they were using me to do free labor. They did state on the online test page that this is just a test and not the actual job from the company, but it does feel like it's an actual job.
I submitted it and got contacted back because I was submitting it wrongly. The interviewer made me email them to say sorry and even provided actual sentences for me to write. (this is where it felt suspicious because not only the person is micromanaging, but it seems like I messed up big time for a test??) All my work is still submitted, it's just that it is submitted via a different method. I submitted via a different method because the submission page did not have the option that they wanted, hence why. I understand that this is the nature of this job to be particular and apologize to the interviewer for making this mistake.
Eventually, I wasn't chosen to proceed to the next role and did not provide the reason. What makes this whole process suspicious is that I was blamed because of the submission, and not the actual task. It seems like they didn't look at the actual task that I did, a submission mistake is a dealbreaker for them.
You are the judge for this story, but this might be a case where a company is taking advantage of the interview process to accomplish their task.
To designers applying for designer roles here, please be careful. Designers are often being taken advantage of, and it's just sad that we have to face it frequently.