Question to those who are hiring in your startup: should Test Tasks be Free or Paid?

Lisa Dziuba
7 replies
Hello PH community! If you hire a team for your startup, you probably have your own HR process. Part of this process could be a test task (home assignment) to see the real skills of the candidate. Do you think such test tasks should be free or paid?

Replies

Manoj Ranaweera
Good idea. Maybe we could deploy something similar with our Volunteers at https://skilledup.life (free talent for tech startups). Are you building a product to do this @lisadziuba ?
Sachin Sinha
It can be paid for tests/mini-projects which the startup is going to use for their business but paying every candidate for the home assignment is not feasible I guess. Or maybe paid for the top 3-5 and not every one. Would be interesting to under your thoughts / perspective and the community.
Andrii Kpyto
Well... As I see, on market test task mostly free
Anastasiia Holiachenko 🇺🇦
Hi! Thank you for raising this topic. This question is in the air every time the Middle/Senior developer/specialist gets the unpaid test task. In my opinion, the test task should be free and close to the startup product field/techniques. But it should not be a part of its development; otherwise, you have to pay for it. And, of course, it should take not more than a couple of hours to execute :)
Iván Fanego
Mixed feelings with this. From my perspective as a candidate who has been asked about "doing stuff" it depends a lot on the position and the step you are in. I would not like to create anything for the first part of the process, it feels like a free job for a low chance (if there are still more than 5 people doing the process, for example). For a good position I can see the idea and I think it is not bad. Something not too long, something that the startup / company is not going to use to make money (in that case, I would want to be paid)
Katie
Interesting question! It could be based on the size of the task/amount of time taken. From what I have seen, most of the assessments are for free.
Vladyslav Siriniok
Paid tasks are a good idea, but as I have to pay taxes for that, it's probably just not worth the effort. What I'd really prefer is an interesting take-home assignment for up to 6 hours of work with no deadline. It has to be relevant to what I will do at work and I should understand your expectations and what you want to assess clearly.