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Comment by roel_v | Hacker News Reader

Right, that's because no sane prospect (or rather, a prospect you'd want to hire) would go along with it. A reasonably competent developer has several options to choose from - it's just not rational to spend 10+ hours on each job opening; you wouldn't be able to coordinate and assess 5 or so offers in a reasonable time (when looking for a new job, people will apply at various places, compare the offers and take the best one).

Most competent people would scoff at a suggestion like this, and I suspect that competent employers know it.

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As a SCREENING mechanism 10 hours might be too much for the candidate to spend. But once past the initial screening, if there is serious consideration of an actual job offer, it is quite reasonable. The company will spend a good deal more than that on every candidate brought in for interviews (if you add up the time of everyone at the company). If the applicant is considering tens of different offers then they're Doing It Wrong(TM) -- they should pick the 4 best and choose amongst those. If they're considering 4 offers and can't spend 10 hrs on each, then why on earth not?

Asking someone to spend 10 unpaid hours on a test is a great filter - for developers to see that a company doesn't value their time.

Because it's 40 hours wasted. 40 hours = one full working week = for (I think) the type of professional we're talking about $2000.

I guess we can differ in opinion on what is 'reasonable' but I say that requiring what you're proposing is too much for me personally to take any such employer serious.

(on the part of the 'past initial screening', the employee can't know or verify this. If there are 50 applicants, and there are 15 selected in the 'initial screening', is it reasonable to ask for 150 hours of unpaid labor from these people? I posit it's not.)

$2k to find a good hire is nothing. Signing bonuses, referral bonuses, and interview related expenses (air travel, taxis, hotels) are often on that scale or larger. Also, your numbers are way off the mark, you're not going to bring in 15 people for such an interview, you'd be extraordinarily lucky if you even managed to have 15 people that looked good enough to go that far, but even if you did you'd screen it down to a lower number to make it more feasible.

Uh, what? I was talking about a $2000 cost to the job seeker. It may not be that much for professional, but it's nothing to sneeze at either (I've seen people making a multiple of 120k fret over much less than 2k).

The GP was talking about doing the 'screening test' for everybody who passed a first qualification stage. I don't know where you work, but having 15 'might qualified from a cursory glance at CV' applicants is very normal. Basically it's everybody who can use a computer and format a CV without using Comic Sans, and is smart enough to phrase his work experience or degree so that it sounds like it might have something to do with the advertised job offer.

Agree with roel_v. There is no way I'm going to spend a week working on a screening project unless I'm extremely confident in my chances. And usually when you're really confident you already have a friend in the company. If the company paid for the effort that would be a different story, but advertising that could cost them quite a lot.

What about candidates who are currently working (for a competitor)? Taking a day off to interview is bad enough.

> 10 hours ... is quite reasonable.

How many good candidates have been willing to do it?

That's the fact that matters, not an argument about what people "should" do.

> If they're considering 4 offers and can't spend 10 hrs on each, then why on earth not?

Suppose that I'm considering two offers. One wants 10 hours and the other doesn't. Are you seriously suggesting that I shouldn't take that into account?

The answer to "why not" is "because even if getting a job is my only priority, paying extra for a chance at given job isn't".

We did this for our most recent front-end hire, actually.

We gave him a two-day project to complete for us, and compensated him with what we thought to be a fair stipend for his time. He completed the project, we hired him, he cleaned up the project, and we actually put it into production a week after his hiring date.

Everything worked out fine, and the developer in question is quite competent, sane, and rational.

It makes sense if you basically call it a freelancing job with an option to hire. If it's an unpaid interview, though, it just seems unfair and likely to turn away some of the best candidates.

Yeah but you paid him for it, that's a different situation.

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