[thelist] Design Job Candidate: Template or the Real Thing?

[Russ]

It seems to me that you should be directly asking the candidate these
questions.  If you've got the feeling that his integrity is in question,
well, that's a good place to start for a reason to decline moving
forward with the candidate.  Your interview process should be
well-enough defined that you can determine who the right candidate
is--this feels more like a witch hunt since you've already got
speculation and you already state that the design is "too cookie cutter"
for your tastes.  If you don't want to hire the guy, why move forward?
If you do want to hire the guy, give him a test at your offices and pay
him for his time, with an agreement stating that you own the layered
files.

I can truly empathize with you and your situation, but the reality is
that you've just created speculation on a searchable list, and you're
showing a design based-upon a test that you gave to someone--in essence,
I would feel that you had very much violated my privacy on this issue.

Let's face it, a lot of companies will ask candidates to do a "test" and
not ever pay them for it. I almost never, ever give up the source files
unless it's a paid test.  What I'm getting at is that some places can be
unscrupulous and get a test from candidates to handle their own internal
design issues.  Certainly, I do not think that this is your intention,
but if I were the candidate and I happened across this list and searched
the archives and saw your posting and my design, I'd be more than a
little miffed.  While I understand that you want to know if you've been
templated, I don't really think a public forum approach is warranted
when, by the tone of your message, it seemed that you have already made
a decision that this isn't the right candidate.

Russ

> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org 
> [mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Alan McCoy
> Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 10:11 AM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] Design Job Candidate: Template or the Real Thing?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We just gave a test to a guy who applied for a web graphics & 
> layout design job here. The test involved putting together a 
> home page layout using some provided images. The layout was 
> supposed to be for a NASA Propulsion technology enterprise mock site.
> 
> When we received a jpeg of his submission, it looked a little 
> too cookie-cutter to us. The instructions asked for a PSD 
> source file and he was very hesitant to provided it to us. So 
> while we waited, we decided to check out the rest of his 
> portfolio again.
> 
> After a bit of poking around and some hunches, we discovered 
> that every one of his designs was purchased from 
> TemplateMonster.com. Now, he may have done that with full 
> disclosure to his clients, but the image he submitted for 
> this job was supposed to be his own work.
> 
> Here is the image in question: 
> http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/926/layout7.j> pg
> 
> The rocket 
> image on the right, as well as the background 
> images in the four blocks of content and the NASA logo, were 
> images provided to him by us. The rest is allegedly his design.
> 
> Has anyone seen this same layout elsewhere?
> 
> Alan
> 
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