I have been caught off-guard by coding tasks in the middle of an interview that I thought was more geared for casual conversation, and it's not always a comfortable feeling, but sometimes it can prevent either party from wasting a lot of time.
However, I've also been a few hours into a homework assignment thinking that I could probably go down some rabbit-hole to try to perfect something that I may have been struggling with, and sometimes can't determine the appropriate stopping point.
The "probationary employment" would be more like, I don't know, a gift card, or something, vs. something formal.
That way, if I totally bombed out in some assessment, no big deal, here's something for taking the time to apply, and maybe I could use the card to buy a book.
Now, I get that companies aren't giving gift cards away to all of their interviewees, so this type of thing would only come after at least the first round of interviews, etc.
More often than not, a non-interested company will often not even tell why they didn't pass the assessment, and it generally feels like a waste of time.
The downside to 'probationary period' is that as a candidate you're limited to a single company. If you have to spend a week/month at X, you can't really consider Y, you won't be able to give them the time. Then at the end of the week/month X gives you an offer and you can't even compare it to any other offer, because you didn't have time to get any.
Another thing is, if they let you go after the probationary period, you pretty much start the search anew. If you applied to another company while you were 'employed' by X and you managed to schedule another probationary period with Y right after the end of the trial period with X, you have to refuse them last second in case X wants to hire you. If you didn't search for anything while at X, you're off work for another week/month while you search for another trial.
If X ends up giving you an offer and you want to consider Y, what are you gonna tell them? Please wait a month for me while I work for this other company and see if it's any better than you? This simply doesn't work, for both companies and candidates.
Your proposed solution works, if X is your dream company and you will accept their offer no matter what. That's not how most job searches go though.
Yeah, that is what I mean when I say that either way has problems with them.
I had someone try to implement a whole relational database when the interview task was just to read from a CSV file and provide a REST API to the contents of said file using any tech stack. Impressive for sure, but unnecessary time wasted.
> The "probationary employment" would be more like, I don't know, a gift card, or something, vs. something formal.
We discussed something like that in the company. Mainly because someone asked to be paid for the time spent on the "homework" assignment. We came to the conclusion that there is no real legal way for us to do so. We probably spent more money on discussing the possibility of paying the candidate then what 1 day of work would have cost us, but the cost wasn't even the issue.
With an in person interview there was maybe a chance. Inviting the candidate out to the exchange, giving a tour of the trading floor and then paying for transportation, lunch, dinner and hotel would be no problem.
Though interviews are online now as we are a "remote first" company anyways.
We just can't pay for work without a contract, insurance, tax and background checks in place. We can however ask them to complete a test. Which is what the "homework" assignment is.
> More often than not, a non-interested company will often not even tell why they didn't pass the assessment, and it generally feels like a waste of time.
It sucks. It just is that nothing positive can come from providing feedback and you open yourself up for a lawsuit.
However, I've also been a few hours into a homework assignment thinking that I could probably go down some rabbit-hole to try to perfect something that I may have been struggling with, and sometimes can't determine the appropriate stopping point.
The "probationary employment" would be more like, I don't know, a gift card, or something, vs. something formal.
That way, if I totally bombed out in some assessment, no big deal, here's something for taking the time to apply, and maybe I could use the card to buy a book.
Now, I get that companies aren't giving gift cards away to all of their interviewees, so this type of thing would only come after at least the first round of interviews, etc.
More often than not, a non-interested company will often not even tell why they didn't pass the assessment, and it generally feels like a waste of time.