\n<\/p>\n
A reader writes:<\/p>\n
\nI saw an ad for a job at a company that said they ask candidates to spend 3-5 paid days working with them before offering them a job. Their ads read, “Spending 3-5 days working together in person on a real problem is a much better sign than interviews.” They also say that almost every candidate they hire says they liked the experience and would not want to take a job without a work test in the future because they learned a lot about how the organization operates.<\/p>\n
I am curious to know your thoughts on this. Does this seem like a great way to screen desperate people without current jobs? Or is this just obvious anger-fodder?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Well, on the one hand, Absolutely<\/i> You learn more about candidates (and they learn more about you) by working with them for five days than in an interview. In a vacuum, this makes perfect sense! Some people interview really well but when you see them at work they are not so good. And from the candidate’s perspective, some managers seem great in interviews and become a nightmare when you’re on the job.<\/p>\n
However, the problem is that our system is not prepared for this. It is not realistic for most people to be able to take three to five days off from their job (with whatever limited vacation time they have for the year), and possibly on short notice, to do so. If one is unemployed, it becomes easier – but a lot of candidates have to get jobs, and it is not fair to expect this from them.<\/p>\n
Also, imagine that a lot of companies have started doing this, and you have to do a lot of work testing before a proposal is finalized. You can easily use up your entire vacation time for the year, or even more, just by taking a work test.<\/p>\n
I think that for some jobs, it’s a good idea to ask finalists to complete a sample work project at the very end of the process. and pay them for it<\/i>. I’ve done this before, and you learn a lot that you didn’t necessarily see in the interview and that can really set your best candidates apart. But it’s a lot less of a burden than asking someone to spend a week with you.<\/p>\n
Interviewing is not a perfect system \u2013 far from it. But week-long work tests aren’t a reasonable solution for most people.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A reader writes: I saw an ad for a job at a company that said they ask candidates to spend 3-5 paid days working with them before offering them a job. Their ads read, “Spending 3-5 days working together in person on a real problem is a much better sign than interviews.” They also say<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[858,1095,28567,515,704,89],"class_list":["post-120567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-daily-bread","tag-job","tag-offering","tag-oneweek","tag-people","tag-trial","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120582,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120567\/revisions\/120582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}