What to do when companies request examples of your work?

Anonymous

February 22,2024 at 3:10PM UTC

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What to do when companies request examples of your work? I've saved samples of social media campaigns throughout my career as those were visual & created a portfolio showing some of the content and posts. What's harder is provide is writing samples.

Most of my work was company property, saved in platforms such as MailChimp, handled by junior staff members (not going to use their work) or outdated from earlier roles that it doesn't feel relevant. It seems the higher you climb in the corporate world, most of the work is done by email and presentations during meetings rather than recorded examples.

E-newsletters I didn't save as they were through work but now that the role is done, I don't have access to them. Lesson learned but I don't feel those campaigns really demonstrated my writing, it was more branding the products.

This is the second time that I've been asked to provide writing samples and I didn't hear anything back so I need to figure out a solution before a future interview. Thank you!

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AnonymousFebruary 22,2024 at 3:45PM UTC
I was in the same boat a few years ago as I couldn’t use work examples. I volunteered with an organization and produced their newsletter and submitted that.
A friend of mine regularly writes posts on Linked-in that are work-related and now submits those when requested.
AnonymousFebruary 22,2024 at 3:51PM UTC
Include any published work, such as journal articles or other print media, as these are public documents. E-newsletters wouldn't help as much because most of them don't include the authors of the articles so I wouldn't worry about them. If they have the author, check the company's website to see if a "newsletter archive" is accessible to the public (many companies do this).
Writing samples that may be dated or are out of the scope of the job description are relevant as they show your writing style and attention to detail. Good luck, and I hope this helps. Things to stay away from are companies wanting you to develop or write a campaign specific to them, as they may only be interviewing to get ideas to use. Companies asking for past writing samples are generally ok; this is all they are looking for. I am currently a candidate for a position where they asked me to write a "personal journey" demonstrating why I wanted to work there and which location I preferred.
Kimberley Ferretti HammettFebruary 23,2024 at 7:33PM UTC
Could you try re-creating a generic version of something you have done that you don't have saved? You could potentially present it and say you re-created real work you've done to remove company-sensitive information out of respect for your previous employer. It's ok if you can't remember it exactly to the letter, if it's work from your brain it will accurately fulfill what they are looking for which is a sample so they can envision how your work will apply to their needs.
AnonymousFebruary 27,2024 at 7:04AM UTC
Do you have anything from university, or any published work you could share? If not, maybe you could write some medium pieces and use those next time.
AnonymousFebruary 27,2024 at 5:59PM UTC
I appreciated your advice. I have old material but it doesn't seem relevant at this stage in my career. I've found that the higher I get in my career the less paper trail after leaving a company. Next time, I'll save more examples but I'll mix the old work with a few examples of recreated projects.