In the age of AI, human ingenuity is more valuable than ever. We protect it by respecting it.
The Fair Test Pledge is a collective effort to bring ethics, fairness, and clarity to the hiring of creatives. Whether you’re a designer, copywriter, creative strategist, social media creative, art director, anything or everything in between these titles, or employer hiring one of them, this movement is for you.
At its core, we ask for one thing: mutual respect in the evaluation process. We believe that unpaid, unstructured, and exploitative test assignments have become a normalized but harmful part of creative recruitment, and we want to change that.
Many creatives today are being asked to complete complex assignments, sometimes tied to real client work, without pay, transparency, or relevance to the role. These requests are often made even when applicants have robust portfolios and years of experience. What started as a way to assess skills has become, in many cases, a tool to extract free labor under the radar.
We also know many companies don’t intend harm. They follow inherited practices. They’re unsure how to evaluate creative fit. They worry about hiring the wrong person. We’re here to help both sides do better.
That’s why we’re building:
- A pledge creatives can unite behind to speak out, when they feel the proposed test is unreasonable or unethical.
- A framework to guide ethical, effective hiring tasks.
- A set of standards both sides can use to collaborate fairly.
- A library of free resources for creatives, like example sentences for navigating conversations, copyright clauses to protect test work, etc.
- A badge to signal commitment to ethical practices.
This is not a fight—it’s a proposal for change. We believe better hiring practices lead to better matches, stronger creative outcomes, and a healthier industry.
The action plan for our initiative:
