5 ms·
Ask HN: Do you do all day interviews for 'free' or do you invoice the company?
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoI mean, if you invoice the company they won't pay it, so why does it matter? An all-day interview is okay in my books, it's like an open house in a way.
- ericmay 6y agoSurprising a company with an invoice is immature, waste of your time, certainly not going to get you the job, and will burn bridges. I answered your question. Expect an invoice at my hourly rate.
- smt88 6y agoA whole day of interviews is very abnormally long. I've interviewed for CTO roles at SMEs and never spent more than 3 hours. Companies will usually break it up into rounds. That said, interviews serve both parties to some extent. You want to know if you like the company, too. If the company is inconsiderate enough to demand a whole day of unpaid time, perhaps the culture is a bad fit to begin with.
- ThePadawan 6y agoSecond anecdata point: Interviewed multiple times for 5-6h in one day, for a medium level Software Engineering role. Either in 4-5 hour-long, mostly technical sessions + lunch, or just in "meeting all your potential colleagues, the CEO, COO, etc." for 45min-1h each.
- Jugurtha 6y ago>A whole day of interviews is very abnormally long. It's common in some sectors, such as oilfield services, for example. About twelve hours with some breaks. I remember going through that with Schlumberger. The last step was getting called into an office, being asked to sit down, and told to assemble a set of mechanical pieces of some proprietary equipment you've never seen on the table. No blueprint. No context. You have five minutes. Go. The interviewer tries to build up pressure calling the time every thirty seconds or so. Yes, I assembled the pieces with time to spare. The only one who did in that batch, actually. Woohoo. They want to see how you handle pressure and they left that exercise when we were all tired at the end of the interview. "Jobs" on oil rigs are chaotic: everything can go wrong, hazardous material, lack of sleep, coordination with people you can't hear, company person on your case, tool strings getting stuck, gas kicks, blow ups, etc. You really need to keep cool and be deliberate under pressure and maintain a high level of attention and focus for extended periods of time.
- cauliflower2718 6y agoI've had what added up to a full day of interviews (and meals) on several occasions. In some cases there were many interviews since I was meeting many people on the team, which I would think is a good sign of culture, as opposed to one manager who makes hiring decisions by themself.
- mathattack 6y agoWhy kill your job opportunity by doing that? Might as well stay home.
- sharemywin 6y agoSecond this if it annoys you to the point you wouldn't take the job then why waste your time and theirs.
- jschveibinz 6y agoFunny. But seriously, the way you manage this is to build marketing and sales into your rates. Your rate should built bottom-up: direct cost + indirect cost. The indirect costs include time off, marketing/sales, benefits, admin, a little profit, etc. Grab a book on consulting for an explanation of how to do this. Good luck.
- tanelpoder 6y agoA job interview is a (2-way) sales call, you'd do it as an investment. The better your product, the less of these sales calls you have to make with different "customers", to land a deal.
- jt2190 6y agoIndeed! Looked at another way: A company seeking to sell a customer an automatically-renewing subscription to its services, that grosses n 000 USD per period, that comes with considerable legal protections against non-payment, might spend a considerable amount of time and money to close the deal. Edit: I’m assuming full-time employment. (The term “interview” pushed my thinking that way. IMHO freelancers should avoid presenting themselves the same way employees would.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- peanut_worm 6y agoThat’s the most insane thing i’ve ever heard. They’ll often offer the pay you but demanding money for an interview is crazy.
- mancerayder 6y agoI don't know, maybe if you are a rocket scientist and one of one million in your speciality. The rest of us can refuse the interview, demand an invoice or whatever, but there are others to take our place without those headaches. I understand the pain as I was a consultant and got upset at losing a day's wages on nit-picky and uncertain interviewers (especially for a contract), but there's not much to do about it.
- joshribakoff 6y agoNo that’s dumb Interview at a company that pays for it if you want to be paid. Airflow offered me $500 upon acceptance of their coding challenge. I would never ask, that’s dumb. If in the 0.001% chance they do pay, you will cost yourself the job.
- iamhamm 6y agoIf someone comes interview with me and it turns out their resume is “padded a bit”, I don’t invoice them for wasting my time. Think of it more like a first date and you each pay for your own meal.
- collyw 6y ago>Think of it more like a first date and you each pay for your own meal. Reasonable point, but many companies expect you do to a reasonably substantial technical test (minimum half a days work, often more) after a quick chat with their HR people. I usually refuse unless they have managed to convince me that I really want the job and I am not competing with ten others for the job.
- kwdc 6y agoI usually interview them. Asking a lot of questions during the interview. The bad employers/HR often get frustrated because they see interviews as some wacky control/power thing where they expect your questions only at the end. In reality I see it as a way to find out their views on what they see as just one of many employment situations. After all, they're trying to sell their workplace as being good to operate in. If they're unwilling to answer basic questions about it then they're suspicious. This has become a good filter.
- jspiral 6y agohiring manager here, this is advice that everyone should take. looking back at hires that didn't work out through my career, unsurfaced expectations mismatches are the main root cause. even if both parties are reasonable and "good".
- jenkstom 6y agoThis reminds me of a quote I heard during the dot.com bubble. "If I can't expect 1000% return I'm not investing in a company". It's such a high level of expectation that you just know a correction is coming.
- ThrowawayR2 6y agoThe company would just send back an invoice for the cost of recruiting, HR, background checking, etc. and the prep and interview time of the engineers interviewing the candidate, who would definitely come out on the losing end of that deal.
- noworld 6y agoMy company takes people out for lunch as part of the interview.
- karmakaze 6y agoI like the idea. The caveat is that if at the end of the day the output isn't usable, there's no payout. Seriously though, I've only done even a half-day interview if there was at least a 50% chance I'd want to work for the company at the end of the day. I'm about 5 for 7. One that fell through, I wanted to work at but their HR went into freeze and I ended up working for a spin-off company. Another I spent way too long on an obvious recruiting open coding contest so counted it.
- sloaken 6y agoBy the same token, if they interview you, offer you a job and you turn it down, do you owe them the wages of people who spent time interviewing you? I do like the idea of them paying you for your time. I dislike sending a thank you letter, I always think they owe me a thank you letter.