Should you do speculative (spec) work?
By: Rizwan Javaid
Tags: Web Design, Business, Visual Design, UX, Freelancing

Types of Spec Work

Spec work comes in many forms. Here are a few examples:

Freelance Bids

When starting out, it is tempting for designers who freelance to do whatever they can to win a project. This need to win a project can come from wanting to build up their portfolio or being desperate to make money. There is nothing wrong with either, just be careful and not lose too much time or energy in chasing projects that you won’t win.

Agency Pitches

Feeling like they need win a project at all costs even good agencies fall victim to doing spec work. The pressure to bring in paying clients is so big that well-intentioned people fall prey to doing work for free. On the surface, it looks like little harm is done when an agency spends a few hours that could help it win projects.

If we dig a little deeper, we can see that the designers at these agencies who end up doing the spec work have the most to lose. They are the ones putting in their heart and soul into the project only to realize that they wasted their time and effort. The trust they put in their managers and the agency also erodes over time. No one wants to waste their energy on something that was never going to succeed in the first place. Agencies have a lot to lose including their time, money, and their credibility when they decide to take on spec work.

Design contests

Design contests could be the evilest of all spec work. These contests take advantage of designers looking for exposure by luring them in with a chance for quick money, but the odds of actually winning are quite low.

Designers fall into the trap of easy money only to realize they’ve come out on the losing end. The lure of getting a cheaply designed logo or website attracts businesses to keep returning to these contest sites. As long as designers sign up for these contests, they will continually be taken advantage of. These contests place little value in the time and effort designers put into their work.

Interview homework assignments

There is nothing in the interview homework that a hiring manager couldn’t find out during an on-site interview. Managers who are for the take home assignments claim that they help them see how an applicant approaches a challenge, solves the problem, and works within a tight deadline. An on-site interview whiteboard challenge can easily find out the same information in less time and with less risk for the applicant to waste their time.

These assignments will always work in favor of the companies because the risk is set squarely on the applicants. Yes, sure the company found a great applicant who passed the assignment but what we don’t hear about are the dozens of rejected applicants who got their hopes up and wasted many hours when the odds were clearly not in their favor. Another reason this type of spec work is horrible is that there is no guarantee that the hiring manager will provide any feedback about the submitted homework.

Personally the interview homework assignments I have had to do have all burned me. Either the feedback was just a few words, or there was no feedback at all.