Normal Practice or 'Free' Work

mumcoll

My son had an interview for a small design consultancy in early December. Part of the process was to design some literature for a live customer, several times over the following few weeks he was asked to make small changes to the work at the customer's request (via the agency who were offering the job).

Christmas came and went and son had heard nothing, he emailed and was told a decision would be made in the new year. The job was verbally offered to him early January with a start date of 1st Feb but was told 'Do not resign from your current employer until we get the checks back'. (They said he had to be CRB'd and Credit Checked - bearing in mind this is a design agency!)

Anyway, he still had nothing in writing so rang the company who were very evasive, until finally they told him they were reviewing the job and would be in touch in about 6 weeks.

I can't help but feel they have used his work/design skills (for free) on a live customer and there never was a job. :mad:

Any thoughts please?

Funky_Bold_Ribena

Yeah they have been having a laugh. It would be interesting to invoice them for time he worked on this [as it was a live customer]. But he can't guarantee getting any payment as he had no contract.

getmore4less

Presumably he knows who the customer is.

He could write asking for a reference saying if they are happy with his work he would be happy for them to use him again but as this was done for free as part of a job application would they contact him directly.

Problem is he won't get the nonexistant job

OllysMum_2

Shocking practice from the company! I work with a couple of design businesses and pretty sure they hire on portfolio alone, not even taking up references never mind background checks.

Can he write to or email the company, requesting clarification on the outcome of his designs? Position it that the feedback would be useful for his own development and it would be very useful for his portfolio to have had work accepted by a client company. He would then have documented evidence he had undertaken the work.

I think Getmore4less makes a good suggestion. If you are convinced there is no job here, then contact the company directly (after having done above and received response) and explain this work was carried out as part of an unpaid job trial, it does not now look as if the company is hiring, and you would be very grateful if they could give a sentence or two as a reference. if nothing else it should make the client company think about dealing with a business which conducts itself in such a shoddy way.

And yes, could always try invoicing for time spent with an accompanying letter questioning whether there was a real job here.

mumcoll

Thanks everyone for your help, some excellent suggestions here. They said they'd call him in about six weeks to 'discuss further'. He said he won't touch them with a bargepole as they seem too flaky, he wouldn't be able to trust them! We wonder how many others have been 'had' like this if it's not normal practice.

agrinnall

If he's not going to take up the job with them anyway then you may as well name the company so that other people can avoid them.

mumcoll

agrinnall wrote: »

If he's not going to take up the job with them anyway then you may as well name the company so that other people can avoid them.

I don't know the name, (he doesn't know I've posted this!)

tyllwyd

I work freelance (as an editor) and I'm pretty sure that contracts usually ask for copyright in the work that I do to be assigned to the publisher. So if there was no contract, it would seem logical that the copyright in the work remains with him, and if they don't pay him for his work they have no right to use it (with the disclaimer that I don't have any legal knowledge so I may be wrong!) If he doesn't mind burning his bridges with the company (and maybe with the agency), I think I'd send in an invoice, asking them to either pay for the hours worked or to return his work to him.