This concept is why I have a deep respect for DuckDuckGo as a company. When interviewing there for a SRE position, the round 2 and 3 interviews included coding challenges. They paid (IIRC) $75/hr based on the maximum time they wanted candidates to spend on each assignment. I ended up not getting the position, but they're the only company I made it to the final decision step with that I didn't feel was wasting my time.
That probably helps them waste less of their own time too. When bringing someone in to interview actually costs money, you’re mote careful about it, doing more to vet people in the earlier stages. Less “let’s bring them in and see.”
Yes sure I would love to be interviewed then everywhere everyday
Lmao Have you tried getting an interview lately?
Yeah but I don't know how it is for other industries or fields honestly
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a professional interviewee."
If companies have to pay for every interview, I doubt they'd do as many so you'd have a hard time getting enough interviews to make that viable.
Companies already pay a ton of money to utilize indeed and all those sites. Any cash they'd pay you to interview pales in comparison to what they're already spending on the unfilled job.
I don't think it would cause a declining number of interviews. If anything, it might cause interviews to go up, once employers can see the drop in the bucket of spending the interview represents.
How would it make them go up? It currently costs zero, and adding the cost of that pay doesn't change any other expenses for recruitment contractors. Even if they don't view it as a significant cost relative to the full HR department, they'd still either ignore it and maintain current rates or view it as an avoidable expense and minimise it. I don't see a mechanism for increasing them unless the law gave them some backdoors to, say, pay below standard wages while asking candidates to do work as part of the interview, effectively turning them into sub-minimum wage workers for businesses where that might be useful.
The sad reality
True, then there could be a charge to accepted candidates who then reject the job to block the emergence of such an "occupation" as well. But then if one legitimately declines because of the salary, hmm... idk... Maybe to avoid this, the money should go to some governing board...
I already can't get an interview, this would make it impossible.
I miss hired.com It was a hiring platform that tipped the scales a little in favor of the interviewee. You could take an assessment to prove your basic competence in programming and thereby cut out a round of interviews.
Had an interview at a company. They asked me to do a coding challenge. Solve it without AI. The task was written in AI and requirements all over the place. Took me 6hrs+. I sent it and they wanted to see me in person. Took half a day off to make to the interview. Meeting went well. They call me and tell me my assignment was not what they expected.
There should be a hefty fine for this behavoiur.
What did they mean by not what they expected? Like they didn't expect you to solve it, or didn't expect the AI to give you an assignment?
They mean they are lying to the applicant's face, gaslighting them.
What they did was the equivalent of contracting out a coder to engineer some software for them, without paying them for it.
The job market itself is a fraud, a scam.
Saying 'its not what we expected' is simply what they are legally required to do in order to be able to frame the entire thing such that they can't be sued for getting useful labor while giving no compensation.
Its a framing device, frame it as a job interview. Its 'oh your test performance was not satisfactory', written on some kind of document somewhere. The actual point is to get free software engineering services.
Its a scam.
Think about if you tried to do this with physical, mechanical engineering or architecture: here, draw up some plans for this device or this part of a building... oh, we're sorry, that's not satisfactory... but anything you submitted during the job interview, thats the intellectual property of the company now.
You can also scam the job market itself by simply coordinating with a market research firm, have a set of companies issue an array of 'job openings' that are not real job openings, what they actually are is a way to do a survey of the job market itself.
Its all a complete fucking joke at this point.
Also, a metric companies report on, and then those reports get amalgamated into broad economic data... is just literally 'how many job openings did we post'.
So, if you wanna look like you are a growing company, for extremely little cost... just post fake job openings, that you'll never hire for.
Have 1/3 or so of all job openings by all companies look like this, idiot 'economists' who can't figure out what is actually going on, look at the aggregate numbers and conclude the economy is growing 1/3 faster than it is.
And there's also the classic 'we want to do an internal promotion, but for legal reasons we need to pretend its a competetive search through the whole job market, so here's a bunch of fake job openings where everyone other than our internal person will be unsatisfactory'.
Recruiters and HR know all this shit, they do it regularly, and they're usually not very keen to tell you about it.
They're all scum, as low and contemptible as a scammy car loan/lease salesman, or a 'date the rate marry the home' used house salesman.
Kinda reminds me of a course that I took from Google, regarding IT. To earn my certification, I had to complete assorted challenges...but the assignments had broken links, or not compatible with my browser (Firefox). Sure, I am supposedly certified, but I was doing weird workarounds to earn it, which sometimes allowed me to skip parts of the online testing.
It is stupid, and I refuse to believe that I am actually qualified to be "Google IT Support".
I would say that solving the problem in the way you did makes you well or over qualified, lol.
'Wait, all of this is stupid!'
That guy/gal. You want them, that one, the one with the capacity to think outside of the box, within the specific technical realm of the job.
But, we live in a world run by MBA's with extremely fragile egos, so, we get insane nonsense instead, where every business process is basically built around making incompetent idiots feel smart.
Interviews actually cost the company. They have to pay those people interviewing you, and not working for clients at that time. That's why I don't see many applications going to interview phase at all. Most applications are just filtered by AI, or some HR and it never goes to the actual hiring manager. And they don't interview unless they are pretty sure about wanting to hire the candidate. At least the companies without ghost jobs do that.
But HR only interviews are probably different, they might do interviews to justify their job.
OK, but who does it cost more? The person being interviewed is also burning opportunity and time but we assume it's free because no one is paying them?
Sounds like it wastes both sides' time and money, but measuring up to determine who is wasting the most time and money doesn't really help anything other than furthering Whataboutisms.
Ideally, we change to a system that doesn't do that (nearly as much).
It makes me wonder why companies chose to waste to many people's time then if it costs them money too. Perhaps that cost hurts them less than the interviewees?
The world of business is FILLED with people more interested in their own leisure than the company's benefit at every level. Everyone knows about the slackers making minimum wage but every time you hear a company has hired a contractor, that's a manager looking at the choice between A) putting in the time and effort to hire an employee, train them, integrate them into the team, and manage and support them as they do necessary work, or B) just writing a check from company funds to the contracting company and taking off early to get a few beers with their buddies, and wouldn't you know it, somehow it seems like the answer is always to spend the company's money.
Dang, hiring feels like the last thing I'd want to outsource. Don't they literally need to know what the job entails to be able to hire correctly? Maybe I'm overestimating the effectivity of corpos
The point is the difference between the slacker on the shop floor and the slacker in the back office is just the job title, not the approach. If you can let other people do all the work while you collect a paycheck, you're winning as a slacker.
Now, you might think, 'but won't they just get fired once their direct report gets wind of what they're doing?' The answer is yes, but if their direct report is also slacking, when would they see the employee's work to know they need to be fired?
And if they're a good liar, the slacker can say 'Oops, yeah, I fucked up by trusting Soandso with that. I've fired them now so it won't be a problem anymore.' Then they burn that employee/contractor and keep collecting a paycheck. Depending on how lazy/stupid/gullible their management is, this can be repeated for years.
What a sad life. I could not live with that damocles sword over my head
So start a company and pay for candidates. What's stopping you? If it's the best business model you'll make millions or billions
A great many things that would be good for society are not feasible to be the first/only one to do. The world would be vastly safer if there were no nuclear weapons, but in a world where other nations have them it becomes self-negating to not have them. The only way to get the social benefit of all companies doing something is to legally mandate it so there is no disadvantage.
Collective action problem:
A collective action problem or social dilemma is a situation in which all individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because of conflicting interests between individuals that discourage joint action. The collective action problem has been addressed in political philosophy for centuries, but was more famously interpreted in 1965 in Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action.
The hiring process has moved further and further from the company and is controlled by a bunch of middle-man companies who found a niche and made an industry out of it. No wonder hiring has become more expensive and riskier for a corp.
That middle man dynamic sounds strikingly like enshittification
So then a person could make his living by interviewing for jobs he's not qualified for and could never get? I guess that probably wouldn't happen.
I didn't used to hate the long interview process until I applied for a job that had me fill out like a hundred questions for background information. It was like, "Have you ever been convicted of embezzlement for an amount greater than $500?" No. "Have you ever been convicted of embezzlement for an amount less than $500?" No... "Have you ever been convicted of embezzlement for exactly $500?"
Did you know that if they can guess your crime with enough specificity, legally you have to admit to it? At least that's what I assume, based on the questionnaire. Like, "Have you ever been convicted of violating the endangered species act while crossing state lines in a class C vehicle on a Sunday?" And I'm like, "No, but you're so close!"
Anyway, I got the offer, but then they rescinded it when I asked for more money.
If you aren't qualified and they have to pay for every interview, either you are being honest on your application and they aren't interviewing you or you're lying and you open yourself up to charges of fraud because you took money under false pretenses.
So then a person could make his living by interviewing for jobs he’s not qualified for and could never get?
That's already a flaw of the current system, so no change means no new downside. People receiving unemployment usually have to prove they're looking for work, but there's not usually a requirement that you're applying to things you're likely to get.
If you call unemployment "pay" - it's such a small amount compared to a real job it's ridiculous, but on the other hand: you've got no other sources of income so: jumping their hoops is the best way to get some money coming in.
It's weird. I was applying for an engineering tech job and they asked if I've ever knowingly violated the second law of thermodynamics, but wouldn't tell me if it was a deal breaker if I had. Anyway that place burned to the ground before I heard back on my interview anyway.
They should also be forced to pay a year's salary to everyone who applied to a ghost job. (That's a job that's not real and they have no intention of filling)
I guess there is a selection bias on internet comments, but as someone that has been on the interviewer side several times now, I have to say: the interview process is not even remotely cheap for companies. At least the companies I worked for take them seriously and the time investment of senior professionals is huge, which is not cheap at all.
On top of that, there is always pressure for hiring quick, so I don't know which companies you guys are interviewing, but I don't know any company that just likes "fooling around".
Maybe you are not choosing the correct companies on your applications? or maybe you are applying to meat grinder companies such as Meta or Amazon?
As interviewer you would be surprised how many people apply to "senior embedded C developer" without much idea of how to even program, even with theoretical experience on the CV.
This is a 2 sided problem, and I understand it might look one sided sometimes, but it is a very complex problem to solve. Believe me, no one wants to be "hiring manager", but also, no one wants to deal with a bad team member.
Paying interviewes directly would not help at all, as it would create a new level of mistrust for people trying to gamify the process. And this will end up being paid by honest job seekers and interviewers.
Just a side note: I live in EU, not the corporate American dystopia, so my argument might not apply to the USA. For example, an error on hiring here becomes a huge problem lasting months, in USA I believe you can just fire people at will without prior notice, so you can be more reckless with the interviews.
Love it.
Unfortunately, then there would be professional candidates who just never accept a job.
Edit: I've had a lot of great replies pointing out that it likely wouldn't be a big deal anyway. I'm just used to finding fault in anything that sounds good lately.
There’s no way that would be a viable career.
Your argument sounds similar to anti-welfare arguments. Sure, some people may abuse the system, but it wouldn’t pay that well, and the positives to society would greatly outweigh any abuse.
Exactly, for every one person who abuses the rule to get 10 hours of labor paid to them in exchange for doing no work, you'll have 999 people that are actually using the system as intended.
Are you really the kind of person that'll fuck over 999 people just to make sure that one person doesn't get ahead in a sneaky way?
Wouldn't limiting the interview pay to be below minimum wage/below the hourly salary of the job alleviate this?
It should be outlawed to have more than two interview round. Just fuck off with that dehumanizing ratrace bullshit
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.