The process began with a standard phone screen interview that lasted one hour. The interviewer asked about my background, why I was interested in the position, and why I was looking for a new position. I asked many questions in this interview to get a good sense of what they were looking for with the position. The second step was a take-home project. This step is where I felt the process became more of a negative experience as a candidate. The project requirements were vague and it was not clear to me as the candidate what they were assessing. The project involved two weeks of Google Adwords data and they asked to prepare a presentation to convince top executives of "what is working" and "what isn't". No other information about what they cared about was given. When I asked follow up questions to help clarify the objective of the analysis task, they said that I had to make the assumptions and they wanted to see what I'd come up with. I did my best for only working with two weeks of information and prepared an in-depth analysis that displayed relationships present in the data based on what I believed was important from a entry-level understanding of advertising with Google. The task was also confusing since, during the phone screen, the interviewer explained the role as centered on data analysis for improving the user experience for current users, not for data analysis for advertising goals. But, I initially brushed this confusion aside as I thought maybe they just wanted to have proof I had general analytic skills. With my submission, I demonstrated that I had the programming and statistical skills to do data analysis, but, not having any information about their specific business/marketing objectives were and how I could target them with the project, I felt like I had a hand tied behind my back as an analyst. Knowing your audience is crucial to good data analysis and they gave me no contextual information about how marketing is conducted at Fundrise and what specific questions I could answer for them with my work. If they are going to use an assessment project, I highly recommend they ask specific questions that can be answered by the data and see whether the candidate can extract that information, manipulate, and visualize the data appropriately. If multiple candidates can sufficiently pass that phase, then differentiate further using a final interview or by asking follow up questions. Otherwise, if they stick with the current method, it is very unclear what they are expecting and it is demotivating to be rejected after working hard on an open-ended project that they give little guidance on what they are looking for other than "show us what works." It is not fair to candidates to provide so few requirements for a project and give no indication of how it will be assessed or what types of responses would be convincing for their specific needs and use cases.