Protecting Interview Tasks
TaskLock helps candidates share take-home tasks with prospective employers through controlled viewing links, audit trails, and protected access.
Why TaskLock Exists
Candidates are increasingly asked to complete take-home tasks during interview processes. These submissions often include valuable ideas, analysis, design, strategy, or code, yet they are usually shared with little protection or visibility.
TaskLock gives candidates a safer, more controlled way to submit interview work, replacing open attachments with protected viewing links, access controls, and audit records.
Features
Upload your interview task as a protected PDF instead of sending an open attachment directly to an employer.
Generate named viewing links with expiry controls and limited access sessions for prospective employers.
Record access events, track viewing activity, and monitor suspicious behaviour for greater traceability.
Security
TaskLock is designed to protect interview task submissions by replacing open file sharing with controlled, secure viewing. Instead of sending documents as downloadable attachments, candidates share protected links that limit how and when their work can be accessed. Each document is delivered through a structured access flow, ensuring that only intended recipients can view the content under defined conditions.
Access is controlled at an individual level. Candidates can create named viewing links tied to specific email addresses, set expiry dates, and revoke access at any time. Documents are opened within a controlled session rather than being transferred directly, reducing the risk of uncontrolled distribution. This approach gives candidates greater control over who sees their work and how long it remains available.
TaskLock also provides visibility into how documents are accessed. Viewing activity is recorded, including access attempts and session behaviour, helping candidates understand when their work has been opened and how it is being interacted with. While no system can prevent all forms of copying, TaskLock is designed to reduce casual misuse, improve accountability, and introduce a clear layer of control and traceability into the interview process.
Secure viewing links, email-based access for named recipients, link expiry by date and time, manual revocation, and invite-level permissions.
Controlled viewing sessions, no direct file delivery, limited access windows, and session-based access handling.
Viewing activity logs, access records, detection of common inspection behaviour, and session-level event tracking.
How It Works
Download the TaskLock interview task protection PDF guide
Create the task requested by your prospective employer in Google Slides, PowerPoint, Word, JPEG, PNG, or another format, then export it as a PDF.
Sign in with your Google account, upload your PDF, and label it clearly, for example with your name and the role you are applying for.
Generate a link for a named recipient, set an expiry date and time, and send it to the employer instead of attaching the file directly.
The recipient opens the link, verifies the invited email address, and accesses the document through a controlled viewing session.
TaskLock records access events and can respond to certain common inspection or capture attempts to improve traceability and accountability.
FAQ
Upload the document, generate a private viewing link, and send that link instead of the PDF itself. That keeps your work inside a controlled viewer rather than handing over a file that can be stored, forwarded, or reused without you knowing.
Yes. You can create access for a specific recipient, add expiry rules, and revoke access when needed. That gives you more control over who can open the task and when.
If your submission contains original thinking, product ideas, code, writing, or design work, sharing it through a controlled viewer reduces the chance of it being casually downloaded or passed around as a normal attachment.
Yes. You can see whether the task has been viewed, which is useful when you want confirmation that your submission was received and opened rather than disappearing into an inbox.
No, screenshots and screen recording are blocked on mobile devices. Most attempts are blocked on laptops and PCs also. All attempts to screenshot or screen record are logged. No platform can completely eliminate the risk. The goal is to make reuse harder by removing the downloadable file, limiting access, and creating more accountability around how the document is viewed.
Once a file is emailed, control is gone. A secure viewing link gives you a stronger position because access can be limited, monitored, and switched off, which is much harder to do with a standard attachment.
No. It also fits trial projects, take-home exercises, case studies, writing samples, design work, and any other document you want to share without fully giving up control of the file.
Take-home interview tasks are now a standard part of hiring processes. While they allow candidates to demonstrate real skills, they also introduce a less discussed risk: your work can be used without your knowledge or consent.
Take-home assignments are often presented as fair assessments. In my experience, the risks only become clear after you have already invested serious time and strategic thinking into the work.
Sending interview tasks as email attachments has become the default, but in my experience it is an outdated way to share work that can carry real commercial value.
One of the questions I keep coming back to is simple: who actually owns the work I submit during an interview process? The answer is not always as clear as it should be.
After submitting an interview task, one of the biggest questions on my mind has always been: did they even look at it?
Over the past few months, I have completely changed how I think about interview task submissions. Not because I dislike take-home tasks, but because I have experienced first-hand how little control candidates have once their work is sent.
TaskLock is operated by Cleverley Done Technology Ltd. We collect the minimum personal information needed to provide the service, including account details, document metadata, recipient details, access logs, and security event records.
This information is used to authenticate users, process uploads, generate secure viewing links, maintain audit trails, protect the platform from abuse, and support customer enquiries.
Task documents are processed for secure delivery. Source PDFs may be deleted after processing and rendered assets may be retained only for a limited period in line with platform retention rules.
Payment processing is handled by Stripe. We do not store full card details on our own systems.
For privacy enquiries, contact Cleverley Done Technology Ltd on 0333 335 6277.
TaskLock is provided for lawful document sharing and controlled viewing. You are responsible for the content you upload and for ensuring you have the right to share it.
You must not use the service for unlawful activity, malware distribution, unauthorised data collection, or attempts to bypass access controls, session controls, or security features.
We may suspend or restrict access where misuse, abuse, or security risk is identified. Access controls and audit records are provided to reduce casual misuse, but no system can guarantee absolute prevention of copying or capture.
Fees for document uploads are charged as presented at the time of payment. Unless required by law, payments are non-refundable once the upload entitlement has been consumed.
TaskLock is operated by Cleverley Done Technology Ltd, Company Number 16941966.