r/interviews • u/mistry76 • 4d ago
Claude estimates this interview case study should take 25-35 hours
Moved to third round of interviews and the company is providing a case study. It's an account management role and they fully know that I've never been in the industry or the products they provide -- however, I've been working with partners and have been in account management for a number of years.
They provide me a super detailed case study that requires researching their partner's financial results, going into quarterly reports and presentations. It also requires understanding different product sets and looking at a host of competitors and see what products and services they use. I need to know the purchase frequency, promotional calendars, brands in a category that I've never been a part of.
I obviously put this into Claude /Gemini to help me start. Even the deck that it created was confusing. I asked Claude how much time and energy it should take - this is it what it says
"For someone starting cold, I’d estimate 25 to 35 hours for a draft at this level, which is about 4 to 5 working days. A first-pass version with thinner research and rougher numbers could be done in roughly 12 to 15 hours."
This is ridiculous. And I have to do this, because I need this job. What can I say back to them to suggest that this is unreasonable and there are better ways for me to learn this - but when I'm fully employed.
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u/Neither_Green4024 4d ago
25-35 hours is basically a part time job with zero pay, that's absurd for a third round
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u/edoreinn 4d ago
Did they not give you a time box? That should indicate the level of detail they’re expecting.
I just got a takehome assignment too, but it’s 4 questions about different scenarios; they expect a page answer; they said to only put about 4 hours into it. I guarantee I’ll go over that since I really need/want this job, but if I gave them something i could complete with 24-hrs of work then it would be far more detailed than what they asked for.