Recruiter Veronika Lysak recounted the first time in her career that a candidate demanded payment for an interview. The story sparked a lively discussion on LinkedIn.
Recruiter Veronika Lysak recounted the first time in her career that a candidate demanded payment for an interview. The story sparked a lively discussion on LinkedIn.
“I communicate with the candidate. We discuss the vacancy, terms of cooperation, tasks. At the start, everything looks good: he is interested in the offer, his experience suits us. We move on to the next step - let's arrange an interview. And then I get an answer: “Let's give an advance on the card first, and then we will communicate. I don't want to waste my time,” the recruiter said on LinkedIn.
Immediately after that, the candidate sent the recruiter his card number and indicated that the cost of one interview with him was 500 UAH.
"To be honest, at first I thought it was a joke. But it seems I'm just not keeping up with new trends in the job market," added Veronika.
She also jokingly suggested that in the future the price list for candidates could look like this: 500 UAH for a regular interview, 700 UAH with the camera turned on, an additional 200 UAH for a motivational response, and for an urgent slot within 24 hours - the price is negotiable.
Financial analyst Tetyana Kostyuchenko added to this idea in the comments: "But if the recruiter does not marinate the candidate after the interview and sends feedback, he gets 200 UAH back."
And although this is the first case in Veronika's work, Romana Ohovich noted that she had already encountered something similar: "When I worked in recruiting in Ukraine 5–6 years ago, they already practiced this, but then it concerned more top candidates, and the compensation there was in foreign currency."
In the comments, some IT professionals supported this idea: they say, since candidates take the tests for free, and employers sometimes pay for their travel and accommodation during the interview, paid interviews seem quite logical.
"A paid interview is an analogue of a free internship or a low salary or the absence of KPIs during the probationary period. When the market has such a rare shortage of quality personnel, this game can be played by two people," said Data Analyst and Python Developer Nazar A.
Anastasia Voitenko, founder of an IT recruitment agency, joked: "It's funny, you go to interviews like this - and you have a month's salary in your pocket. Why not a job?"
Commentators on the post drew attention to the double standards of the labor market, where free test tasks are considered the norm for recruiters, while a similar requirement to pay for a candidate's time is perceived as a deviation, although an interview is a mutually beneficial exchange of "goods for money."
In the new reality, when job seekers are forced to spend at least three hours on interviews, their time remains unpaid, while recruiters receive a salary for it.
The introduction of paid interviews could force companies to better calculate their balance sheets and optimize processes, instead of exhausting candidates with endless stages of interviews with a banal ending of "we'll call you back," IT experts believe.
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