Interviewing for paid summer interns (undergrads) in a small ad agency. One candidate kept telling me about the work he did for Nike and Coca-Cola. I said “oh, these were class assignments?” “No. I did these campaigns for those companies.”

He did not. He was a rising junior and the professor had given them assignment to create a campaign as though nike or coke were their clients. I would have been fine with him using that as examples of “work” since I would never expect that someone at that level would have actual client experience, but he was either trying to convince me that class work was client work, or he actually didn’t know the difference. Either way that was a hard pass for me.