I received an email a week or two after submitting my resume online (through LinkedIn or Indeed - don't remember which]. HR person asked for a sample and provided information about the rates and work. The sample was requested within 48 hours. I submitted the sample and it was passed along to the lead editor. A couple of days later I was told the editor liked my piece. I scheduled an interview with the editor and met virtually to discuss the role and my sample. It was a friendly chat and was told they would follow up with the next step. Pretty quickly I was given a contract and access to their CMS and the platform with their documents and guidelines, as well as Slack. There was a trial period of one week where I was expected to complete two pieces of writing. The training process was inefficient, to say the least. One person welcomed me and told me what my first piece would be. They told me that I needed to provide an outline with headlines to another (more senior) person on Slack. The senior person tore my outline apart and told me I should talk about other points that they thought were more important to the audience (which I disagreed with). I went on to complete the piece within 48 hours and then the rest of the week was a back and forth between me and the first person about THE IMAGES! That's right, the whole week was spent formatting screenshots mostly. Once we went back and forth a few times, he finally sent my piece to the senior guy, who went on to say that my piece was horrible (in different terms of course) and provided a detailed, bullet point list of all the reasons my piece sucked. None of this was brought up previously. It was all silly, to be honest. They wanted me to use more technical language even though the piece was meant for more everyday people. They wanted me to write in the past tense because it was a past release (which I understood), and then a whole lot of things that could be improved. All this feedback came on a Friday. I was bummed, but I was really eager to continue and offered to continue editing the piece with the suggestions, but was told that since it was the first piece which wouldn't be published, I didn't need to edit it. Monday came and I messaged the first guy about the next steps and was informed that I would not proceed to the next step because of quality issues. A few hours later I received an email from my initial contact that I was being discontinued from the training due to quality issues. Immediately I had no access to Slack and other platforms. It was a great experience for me to learn that you get what you pay for - or in my case - the treatment you get as a potential employee is a reflection of how stingy the company is. What would you expect from a company that demands high-level quality work and is paying wages that would only fly in a country in the third world?