Passion for the mission, but hiring process raises red flags
Pros
I love the idea of the Milk Donation Challenge and it’s one of the reasons I applied with them.
Cons
I feel the need to share my experience with Conceivabilities’ hiring process so that anyone looking to do any kind of work with them can go in with their eyes open. I went through four rounds of interviews for a role (Surrogate Business Development Manager) that had been posted for nearly a year. This should have been my first red flag. During the process, I was asked to produce substantive unpaid work, including a Core Values and a Surrogate Business Development Marketing exercise that asked candidates to identify multiple perspective marketing partners within the fertility industry and to track and analyze a current partners campaign success. I have been asked to do work before in order for the employer to get an idea of the work I do, this was not that. The ask was to do work FOR them. It required real time, thought, and expertise on my end. What made this especially personal for me is that I am a previous egg donor, surrogate, and milk donor. I did not apply to this company casually. I came in with deep passion for this industry and made that clear throughout the entire process. To have that enthusiasm met with what felt like an extraction of free labor was very unsettling. Although I cannot say definitively what the intent was, I can say that the pattern (multiple rounds, unpaid strategic deliverables, and a position that has remained open for close to a year) raised serious concerns for me. So much so that I emailed the current CEO, Cathy Kenworthy, expressing my concern and my hope that she would do some digging and received silence. Companies in the fertility and surrogacy space should hold themselves to a high ethical standard and this experience did not reflect that. If you are considering working for this company, I would encourage you to proceed with caution, ask questions upfront, and do your research.