Abundance Mindset: Spark
You’re reading the “Spark” edition of Abundance Mindset.
On the second week of each month, I share a personal reflection, story, or mental model to help you think differently, stay inspired, and take meaningful action in your career & life. For more on-demand insights, career thinking, and career coaching, follow my YouTube Channel.
FRAMEWORK SPOTLIGHT
How To Calculate the Value of the Work You Did During a Job Interview
….and why you should never let that work go to waste
Today I’m coaching you through something that we all eventually face: UNPAID LABOR during the job interview process.
Many hiring processes now ask candidates to produce “strategic work.” Things like decks, plans, frameworks, research, or full program outlines…without compensation.
Most people hand it over without ever naming its value. (And I’m not ashamed to say, I am “most people” and I too have handed over documents without understanding the value).
Whether you choose to do this unpaid labor is up to you. I’m not here to tell you what to do. BUT… what I will help you see is the value that you bring if you do decide to do the work.
And, I think I finally cracked the code, with one single AI prompt!
Copy + Paste This Into Your AI Tool
Prompt:
I participated in a job interview process where I was asked to complete unpaid work. I want you to break down the work I performed, estimate the level of consulting effort involved, and provide a realistic pay range for what this work would normally cost if I were hired as an external consultant.
Here is what I provided during the interview process:
[Paste the tasks you completed—building a deck, creating a strategy, outlining a program, drafting a curriculum, creating personas, writing a plan, selecting speakers, etc.]
Please do the following in your analysis:
- Identify and categorize each component of work (strategy, design, research, experience design, writing, planning, etc.).
- For each category, provide a typical U.S. consulting rate or price range.
- Label anything you cannot directly verify as [Unverified] at the beginning of the sentence.
- Calculate an approximate total value if a company had hired a consultant to do this same work.
- Present the final value as a range, not a single number.
Do not treat any assumptions as facts—tell me clearly if something cannot be verified.
End with: “Here is the estimated consulting value of the work you completed during this job interview.”
Where Else This Shows Up (It’s Not Just Job Interviews)
Unpaid labor doesn’t stop at a company’s hiring process. It shows up everywhere in our lives, especially for people who naturally lead, create, or solve problems. You may also be doing high-value work for free when you:
Build a strategy deck for a friend’s business “as a favor”
Help a family member map out a launch, event, or project plan
Redesign someone’s résumé, portfolio, or website “just to look it over”
Offer branding, messaging, or marketing ideas during casual conversations
Fix workflows, systems, or processes at your current job without recognition
Create templates, frameworks, or tools that others use but you never get credit for
Serve as the “unofficial coach” or “unpaid consultant” in your community
This AI prompt helps you name the value of all of these contributions, so you can stop giving away expert-level work without the language, boundaries, or compensation that should accompany it.
Why Understanding Your Value Matters
This prompt doesn’t just put a price tag on your work, it reframes how you see your own expertise. Most people minimize the depth of what they produce during interviews or “favors” for others. By breaking your contribution into clear categories, you begin to understand the actual scope of what you delivered and how it aligns with real consulting services.
Once you see your work through that lens, everything shifts. You move from feeling like a candidate trying to prove yourself to recognizing that you were already providing value at a professional level. This specific mindset shift helps you set better boundaries, communicate more confidently, and stop giving away strategic labor without naming it.
Here’s what this clarity unlocks:
A realistic understanding of the value you bring to the labor & business markets, and to companies specifically.
The ability to articulate the true scope of your contributions instead of shrinking them.
Awareness of when an interview process crosses into unpaid-labor territory.
Language to describe your work using consultant-level terminology.
A mindset shift from “candidate” to “expert providing value.”
Stronger boundaries when companies ask for excessive take-home assignments.
Confidence in negotiating compensation by knowing the market rate for your skills.
Documentation you can reuse for future roles or consulting opportunities.
A clear record of your strategic thinking, systems, and methodology.
Material you can turn into portfolio pieces, case studies, or client pitches, showcasing your expertise without unintentionally giving it away.
This is how you stop seeing your labor as “free work” and start treating it as evidence of your capability, credibility, and readiness to lead.
Your Next Step: Don’t Just Apply, Repurpose!
AI levels the playing field for EVERYONE. Please stop using it only to draft emails, use it to turn the work you’ve already done into proof of expertise. What you produced for an interview, friend, family, or your community can become:
a case study
a portfolio piece
a client-facing example
a foundation for pitch decks
a consulting sample for paid work
Gatekeeping is alive & well, but AI can help you kick the door open to MORE pathways towards success, not fewer. Let’s stop treating our talents like it only has value when a gatekeeper approves it.
🤔 QTNA #1: What’s one piece of unpaid work you’ve done recently, during an interview, for a friend, or on the job, that you now realize had real consulting value?
🤔 QTNA #2: If you used this prompt today, what’s the first project you’d plug into it?
Hit reply and tell me your answers. I’d love to see what you’re reclaiming! 🙂
RESOURCES
YOUR THRIVE ESSENTIALS
Until next time,
DEJA WHITE | BREAKROOM BUDDHA
