I am honestly so tired of this market. I applied for an engineering position about two weeks ago and everything seemed great at first. The recruiter reached out almost immediately and we had a decent screening call where she talked about how much they value high quality work and precision. Then she sends me this technical test. It was not just a simple calculation or a quick sketch. It was a full residential HVAC layout that required a complete Revit model with equipment schedules and duct sizing for three floors. I stupidly thought this meant they were serious about me so I spent my entire weekend on it. I easily put in about 20 hours of work making sure every connection was perfect and the families were correctly loaded.

I submitted the files on Monday morning and got a quick reply saying thanks we will review this with the team. Since then it has been absolute radio silence. I followed up on Friday and again today but nothing. No feedback no rejection letter just nothing. It is like I never existed. The worst part is that I checked their LinkedIn and the job posting is still active but they changed the description slightly to include some of the specific equipment I suggested in my design. I am starting to feel like they are just using technical tests to get free consulting work or to solve actual problems they have on current projects without paying an engineer. I feel like such an idiot for giving away my time for free like this and I am seriously considering sending them an invoice for my consulting hours even if I know they will never pay it.

This whole industry is a joke right now. They expect us to jump through hoops and prove our worth with days of unpaid labor but they cannot even send a two sentence email to say they are moving on. If you are a recruiter and you do this to people you are genuinely a bad person. My time has value and I am not just a free resource for your firm to exploit whenever you feel like it. I should have listened to my gut when the scope of the test seemed way too big for a first round. Lesson learned I guess but man it hurts.