Applied for a job with the Indeed assessments team (formerly Interviewed.com). Started with a phone screen, then a paid ($300) work sample lasting up to 8 hours. Payment was through PayPal. After the work sample, I was told to contact them the next week to schedule the next phase of the interview. I contacted them twice the next week and didn't hear back. Upon contacting again after 2 weeks, we were able to schedule the next part of the interview. The second part of the interview was two days of paid contract work. I was told it would be $75/hr, 8 hours a day. At the end of the first day, I was told by the reviewer that I "pretty much nailed it" and would be contacted the next morning on scheduling the second day. The next morning I got a denial letter, which also asked for my Upwork profile to initiate payment. I asked for feedback, and received a canned response saying they had no specific feedback and that I had done well, but was "up against other strong candidates". I have never used Upwork, and was paid for the last phase through PayPal. After telling the hiring manager this, he told me that Upwork was their only sanctioned form of payment. Upon creating an Upwork account, I found out that Upwork would take $110 of the $600 payment. I also had to go through Upwork's verification process 3 times before they would unlock my account. After finally being "paid", I found out that Upwork would hold the payment in escrow for 6 days. The actual interview process itself was quite good. The sample project and work contract were well coordinated, once I actually got a reply on the scheduling. Forcing people to go through Upwork, however, is completely unacceptable.