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According to this article, "Interviewers are increasingly making absurd demands on applicants’ time..."
As time goes on, hiring practices are only going to get worse. It's hard to imagine what the future in 'human procurement' (talent "acquisition, they call their trade) will look like.
Even now, the combination of these things has made things much more difficult than it was 20 years ago:
* Technology - ATSs and online application processes that enforce responses
* Job boards that give employers increasingly powerful tools to weed the crop of candidates
* Irrational, unjust, entrenched primitive biases that have become best practices
* Virtual networking and sharing intelligence on applicants between recruiters
* Increasing use of personality tests that alienate intelligent, insightful candidates.
(There is an example of one large employer in my city forcing applicants to take their test within the online application under the guise of assessing candidate's values to theirs, but the test is really a risk assessment tool to identify applicants who are more likely to file discrimination complaints)
* Miscellaneous other onerous processes
...But I haven't heard about an emerging practice of giving candidates actual work to do as part of the selection process. So some of them must be getting burned by their presumptions of competence for certain applicants, presumptions of incompetence for "diverse" candidates, over-confidence in interviewing, hiring by referrals, gut checks for "cultural fit", etc. So now this lunacy:
There were Dilbert cartoons about getting work product from applicants some 20 years ago.
When my father applied for a welding job at Coors long ago, they had him take an all-day welding test. But, he said, they paid you for the day if you passed the test, regardless of whether you were hired.
I can see why employers have applicants take tests. I've had applicants tell me they were perfect for a job requiring college-level English skills when they couldn't spell three-letter words. But having someone spend hours on a test (without paying them for their work) is a bit much.
The one time I was asked to write sample copy as part of an interview, I was given a real client page and paid a decent hourly rate for the three items I wrote.
This has been going on in the consulting business for years. 25 years ago when my business was new, I had a guy at Banco Popular string me along. He made a big deal of putting my business card with the IBM reps card, like that was supposed to show how highly he thought of me.
After a couple of sales calls, I felt it was time to get a committment, I'd shared enough. I sent him a proposal. Once $$ were put down on paper, I never heard from him again. There are sleaze balls all over.
I was recently asked to write 5 different types of social media posts for an interview. Took me about 2 hours to make it perfect, and I didn't get paid for that. It did land me an interview but I didn't get the job either. Honestly was a blessing in disguise from what I've heard and the commute would have been awful anyway, but it annoyed me at the time. I don't think I'd do it again.
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