Our ideas are worth more than we’re being led to believe, and it’s time we protect our intellectual property. Back in April, I interviewed for a Content & Audience Editor position for a new literary journal based in New York. There was something wrong with their submission portal, and the current editor emailed me and asked me to apply again after receiving raving reviews about me from my colleagues’ recommendation letters. So I did.
I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been in the working world for a long time now, and thus have been on many (probably 1000 at this point) interviews. Or maybe my intuitive Cancer senses were tingling, but the interview felt like a pity interview, and I knew by the end of it that I wasn’t going to get the job. I didn’t. The rejection email that was sent to me mentioned that I:
“Articulated a very clear vision of what makes short-form literature stand out and you shared compelling ideas on how to grow a digital audience.“
That last part is what inspired this article. I recently saw an Instagram post (posted last week) from this literary journal, and one of those ideas I mentioned in my interview has been implemented in the hopes of creating more engagement.
The Modern-Day Interview Process Is Predatory
If you’ve been unemployed, underemployed, or hoping to leave your current position, you probably already know what the US job market currently looks like and how little the average American paycheck stretches. Unlike in the workplace, where we do have some protections based on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), we don’t have that many protections when it comes to the interview process.
It is illegal for employers to ask interview questions that reveal characteristics of a protected class. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) protects candidates from bias, meaning questions about race, religion, sex, age, or disability are strictly prohibited before a job offer is made. Sounds good! But what of the case of intellectual property?
It’s totally legal for an employer to require a potential candidate to do writing assessments without paying them to do so and potentially use their “test article” as content. Even if they don’t hire the person they requested the assessment from. The taking of “free ideas” is also seen during internships as well.
Spotify’s very popular “Spotify Wrapped” feature was created by a former design intern named Jewel Ham. When she conceived and presented the idea, she didn’t know her work would become such a big part of Spotify’s current Wrapped iteration and never got the proper due for it.
Ham took to Twitter and revealed how she had developed the idea during a three-month summer internship at Spotify. She even posted the elaborate design concepts she created during her internship for the Spotify Wrapped format. It now has more than 60 million users who engage with it each year.
We Don’t Have To Share
There are many reasons the world (especially the US) is facing a global literacy crisis. One reason is the idea that the humanities aren’t as important as other subjects. But if they weren’t as important, why are the ideas of visual artists, designers, writers, musicians, and other creators being stolen by AI (I’m looking at you, Timbaland), major music companies, and independent literary journals?
There’s a desperation that I believe we try to mask when we interview for jobs, but even with all the masking, the fact remains that if we didn’t need or want a new work environment, we wouldn’t be applying and interviewing for work in the first place, and employers know that and take advantage of it. Asking us questions that we believe we have to answer in order to be in the running for a position.
For me, personally? I will be respectfully refusing to answer any question about “the ideas I would bring to the company.” Choosing instead to finally move forward with the ideas that I, for whatever reason, hesitate to act on, and use them for my own creative projects. I mean, I must have good ideas if they’re worth stealing.
