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

Question

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?

Sachin Sinha · Accepted Answer

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.

Katie · Answer

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.

Anastasiia Holiachenko 🇺🇦 · Answer

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 :)

Vladyslav Siriniok · Answer

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.

Andrii Kpyto · Answer

Well... As I see, on market test task mostly free

Iván Fanego · Answer

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)

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

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