Job Interview Work Assignments

THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.

I am not an attorney. Nothing is this article constitutes legal advice. Employers should contact an employment attorney prior to making any decisions on this matter.

Psychologist Herbert Simon explained: “If we wish to know what form gelatin will take when it solidifies, we do not study the gelatin; we study the shape of the mold in which we are going to pour it."

Quoted by Jonathan Turley, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage (Page 342.)

If you think about it, the Simon quote is relevant for hiring employees. While it is of vital importance to know all that is possible to know about a candidate, at the end of the day, what is important is the type of place - the culture, the atmosphere, it you will, the mold - where they will be working.

Lately a good number of people have been complaining about the interview process. Nothing new there. It happens all too often. But instead of complaining about the number of interviews, being ghosted (both, I hasten to add, by the employer and the candidate), and general rudeness, of late the complaints have been about the assignments given to candidates ostensibly to prove their skills.

On the face of it, it's logical. If you need someone who is proficient in Excel, their saying they can do it all counts for nothing. They have to show you. One of my clients did it the right way. He had a computer set up, not attached to his network, and, basically, gave applicants a test. It was not work for the company, just a test.

Another did something I was not crazy about, but it was their decision. They would have finalists come in for a day and actually do real work. If they proved themselves, obviously, they would continue with the hiring process. But, and this was the key, regardless of whether they "passed" or "failed," they would be paid for the day's work. Again, that's the right way to do things.

But I have experienced myself, and had candidates come to me, with a simple question: The employer wants me to create an actual plan for them. It's a lot of work. They aren't paying. What should I do?

My answer? Do what I did. I told the employer how I would go about preparing the plan, and I did not actually prepare one. And, I never heard from them again. I lost no sleep over it and, in a couple of cases, I discovered that they never filled the position. In other words, they were looking for free consulting services.

However, in some jurisdictions, and for this you need to check with an attorney, anything over and above standard interview tasks (like taking 20 minutes to enter data on an Excel spreadsheet), may require payment. Now to steal from Google, if the interview becomes a "working interview" which benefits the company, the candidate must, according to the Fair Labor Standards Act, affectionately known at FLSA, be paid minimum wage.

In any event, an important, perhaps the most important, component of our aforementioned "mold" is ethics. Do you really want to work for an employer who does not recognize your value before you start working for them? Just imagine how you will be treated if they hire you!

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