Would You Pay $5 to Apply for a Job?

I already pay, usually, north of half a kilobuck in lost wages to interview, so the fiver doesn't matter except as a signal.

That said, I would never apply for a job that asked for cash up front, just because it is a signal that it operates like a mlm or other sales related thing, and that isn't something I have to tolerate.

I would pay if it would speed up the recruitment process, as I hate not having an answer to my applications. The 'We will contact you within 7 working days' or 'If you haven't heard from us in 14 days consider your application unsuccessful' automated responses have to end.

Absolutely NOT.

A better question is whether companies would pay for the time a candidate spends to interview (e.g. an onsite interview takes a whole day requiring the candidate to use up a PTO) or as restitution for the pain caused to the candidate of having to talk to the companies' recruiters before getting to a hiring manager.

No.

The idea is interesting and there are, in fact, many firms I'd gladly pay $20 - $50 for an audience with (often in the form of buying someone lunch to network) but there's far too much potential for fraud and abuse here.

I won't pay someone $5 to add my resume to their database.

$100 for an introduction to a highly qualified prospect for my services is actually a bargain (an obscene, under priced one at that) in the B2B sales arena....

The problem, of course, is it can be hard to tell the difference between the two in advance....

And nobody will sue over $5 (so limited options to control fraud)

Finally, in the company's defense, you need a way to screen out completely unqualified applicants...

I replied to the form, but I think this has to be more transparent than 'some charity'. Also, there is no incentive for the recruiter to put up a quality job posting (aside from hiring a good candidate), but there are recruiting "farms" who will just put anything on the web. The incentive here is for the platform to have as many job postings as possible.

I think a better approach may be charging both the seeker and recruiter the $2.5 fare (recruiters can set a cap, and does not have to be 50/50... could be seeker $2, recruiter $10). But there needs to be painful and incentives on both sides.

Hahaha.

I think you would be selecting the exactly wrong applicant. Why would one pay for a chance to make you money?

Anyone you want to hire probably has enough other places where application is free.

If anything, you should be paying people for the time they spend interviewing. That would 1) make sure you are incentivized to only bring in people who have a good chance, 2) give you a chance to woo great people who might already be happy where they are.

Survey Results: Would You Pay $5 to Apply for a Job?

Sixty people responded to the survey, or left definitively “yes” or “no” comments. As the chart above shows, 40% were yes, 53% were no, and the remaining 7% were either mixed or neutral.

The whole article and maybe 100 comments are here: https://medium.com/@mgav/survey-results-would-you-pay-5-to-a...

Thank you so much to all who participated!

No. presumably they are hiring because they NEED my services. When somebody needs something from you, they pay you, not the other way around.

No.

Even if you could guarantee accurate feedback from the employer (which you likely can't, since companies avoid giving it to avoid things like potential lawsuits), it'd just feel counterproductive to pay money on the off chance I'd get a job afterwards.

It'd also be rather costly (especially if you're not making money as it is) and would screw things up by taking away the mass submitting applications thing. I mean, at the end of the day, job hunting is a numbers game. It's not all about having the first person through the door with the right skillset hired on the spot.

No.

Not the worst idea, but if i want to donate $2.50 to a charity (and who picks the charity?) I'll just do it myself.

The biggest downside I see here is that we already have a huge problem with recruiting agencies blasting job ads all over the place just to collect resumes. Robert Half, for example. Do they ever actually get back to anyone? Seems like all they do is collect resumes. Why would I pay to apply to something like that?

I think that companies should be responding to applicants no matter what. It's just the right thing to do.

No way Jose. You have to ask how we've come to a state where people are bold enough to make suggestions like this and actually expect a level of acceptance. By adding a potential cost of $100s to the average job search (especially for those just starting out in their field) would certainly good for somebody, but certainly not good for the job seeker, society or anyone in a temporary financial rut. i.e. even more distribution of wealth to the wealthy.

I think maybe it should be "pay $5 and you will get a guaranteed response, or don't pay $5 and you can still apply but there's no guarantee you'll get a response". That way I'll pay to be able to hear from the people I know I want feedback from on a case by case basis.

Hell, i might be willing to pay upwards of $20 for a company I really cared about if I was guaranteed detailed, honest feedback.

I'll pay the $5 if I'm paid a living wage for my time spent in the interview process.

Also, I find it amusingly disturbing that the response to such a scheme giving wealthier candidates a disproportionate advantage is "lol tough luck bud".

Yes if I get a guaranteed and timely response from a human with real feedback. Not just a yes/no as described.

I don't care about donating to charity when I'm applying to jobs.

I am already basically already paying with my time and sanity.

No.

Would you pay me $5 per unsolicited recruiting email/message you send?

Interestingly, it's quite expensive to apply to college (where the applicant is hoping to become the customer).

How to create a job board/recruiting firm:

1. Create a website with a simple form 2. Put "NOT a recuriting firm" all over the website 3. Write a controversial blog post about tech interviews/recuriting 4. Submit the blog post to Hacker News 5. Spam the post to anyone on Twitter with a lot of followers

No

Thanks for your responses. I'll summarize all the feedback from the Medium article survey and here into another post and link to it in a comment below.

Nope. Point by point, I have a few comments:

> Two guaranteed responses: (1) confirmation your application is received, and (2) if/when you are no longer a candidate for the job.

This should be common decency.

> Responses might be automated emails from “no reply” addresses.

So I'm paying to apply for a job, and not even guaranteed human contact?

> At least half of the $5 application fee goes to a charity

There's something cringy about this. Something along the lines of knowing that someone is profiting from this, but at the same time they don't want to seem like they're profiting on your unemployment and desperation, so they go for the textbook "oh, (some of) this money will be donated to some charity", treating the "charity" as just a generic economic/marketing tool.

> Even this small fee will cause many job seekers to opt themselves out of applying for jobs they aren’t qualified for, resulting in much fewer unqualified applications for HR to deal with (huge time savings).

Say this is hypothetically in place. You effectively transferring some of the cost of HR from the company to the applicants, now that companies can have smaller HR departments. But who has the upper hand here? Companies that suffer from this "too many applicants" problem aren't your small mom-and-pop shops; they are the big players, everyone wants to work for. It makes sense to assume then that these companies have the resources to hire bigger HR departments and solve their issue. Applicants, they are seeking for job because they NEED a job; morally, doesn't it make sense that the important company takes on the toll of this issue, its recruitment issue, instead of the applicants?

Now, lets think about the applicants. What I see this doing; take two people with the exact same qualifications.

The first one, applicant A, is well-off, will buy himself a better recruiting experience. He will throw his resume everywhere, apply 50 times, cause $250 is like pocket change. In a bigger pool there could well be more hits, so potentially more offers, which not only increases confidence and reduces stress, but also gives the applicant leverage to get even more and better subsequent offers.

The second one, applicant B, has the same qualifications but is not as well off; he thinks twice before throwing each hook. He wants to keep it under $100, so 20 applications theoretically would yield half or less than half the offers applicant A got. This translates to more stress, for there are fewer backup options, less confidence which could yield to even less offers, and much less leverage to get more or better offers.

Is this fair? It just makes the process harder inversely proportional to how big of a deal $5 is to you, and the difficulty of the application process can translate into differing results, even if both applicants have the same qualifications.

Hold that thought, and lets explore another comment I have to make. This one is a bit more speculative, but its worth mentioning too. If none of the money is going to the company, but only half is going to charity, it must be because theres an intermediary who is organizing this whole operation in behalf of the company. This intermediary is arguably another company, a startup, and as it tends to be with things here, for profit.

It needs to grow, so what stops it from changing the $5 tag? What if it's a really desired company we're talking about? Why not $10 or $15? In fact, why a flat rate and not some sort of auction? Surge pricing and all?

Now, go back to that thought you were holding. The unfairness only gets worse as this intermediary becomes more profitable. Suddenly one applicant can still do 50 applications, but the other one is stuck with even fewer shots. Same qualifications, very different opportunities.

Lastly, a closing remark. This is an interesting idea, but it sounds too much like companies selling the opportunity to work for them, which IMO, is just not a good notion. And there's a solution at hand already. As I mentioned before, one can assume that companies have the upper hand and those suffering from this issue have the resources to fix it. If recruiters are suffering at all today, it's because companies would rather save a buck and have an understaffed HR department, or are dumb and overly zealous with their recruitment and spreading the net wider than they can handle.

No.

Yes

No.