To pay or not. Product Manager told about a case where a candidate passed the test with 3 out of 5 and he wants money for the revision. And what do the IT community think?

Victoria Bordiug, Lead Software Engineer

I wanted to do it quickly, but it didn’t work out.) He doesn’t want to do it any further. The candidate doesn’t really need your offer.

If the candidate is interesting, pay for the continuation of the test task. Because who knows how many and what improvements the company will want, and this is all time and it is not infinite. If the company is sorry for the money for a few hours of work and does not appreciate the speed with which the candidate got down to work, then let them look further. The fact that it is «about 1 hour of work» here — well, of course, we all immediately believed it very willingly. That’s what they always write.

Konstantin Zorin, Lead ML Engineer

The candidate is always right. What can we think? He said that it is paid — you have to pay or say goodbye.

Oleksiy Stepanenko, Software Engineer

100% should be paid, and in general the test will not show anything, correctly asked questions are more important than the test, because you immediately see the person’s reaction, emotions say a lot

Oleksandra Sobko, Co-founder of -ation

On the one hand, the first thought was immediately «let’s turn the page and go to the next candidate». But I would still start from what kind of vacancy is being filled. Perhaps such self-confidence, lack of fear, courage are also necessary qualities. And it is worth negotiating (I’m not saying pay, but negotiate). Or find a compromise. Like «ok, we’ll pay, but on two conditions:

1) only 50%, because it is a test paper,

2) only if it is done without any errors (or something like that).

Oleksandr Garan, FullStack Developer

It’s cool when they give a detailed answer, but unfortunately this is a rarity and an exception to the rule. As for the refusal: either they don’t know, or they don’t want to, and it’s better to look further. Because the test is to show all the skills of the developer.

Andriy Furmanets, Full Stack Developer

Personally, I think that most of the tests are just prompts for ChatGPT. Even if a person honestly writes himself, it is difficult to assess his real skills. It is much more effective to conduct live coding — even if everything does not turn out perfectly, you can see the train of thought, logic, approach to solving problems. The market has changed — approaches to selection must also change.

Andriy Lobanov, Fullstack developer at AWS

Based on the quotes: «the volume of the test takes about 1 hour of work», «3 days were allocated for the work.»

Thoughts:

• This is clearly not 1 hour of work.
• In my opinion, it makes sense to either pay for the test, or, if it really is one hour, to do it live (this way you will be able to understand what the candidate did during the test and understand his train of thought).

Olga Shmygol, Technical Recruiter

Thoughts on the recruiter’s work — it’s great that you suggested refining it! Thoughts on the candidate — maybe he wasn’t very interested in the company.

Valentina Voloshyna, graphic designer

When they offer me to make changes to the test, I always agree. For me, it means that they liked my work and that they are interested in me as a specialist, so they want to continue communication. Maybe when they offer to make changes, they want to see how you react to feedback and understand what needs to be changed. Being a cool specialist is good, but in teamwork you need to be able to interact and understand each other.

Pavlo Kravchuk, Business Analyst

So this candidate doesn’t really need the job if he’s not willing to put in a little effort to get it. The same would be true for the job itself after the offer: anything a little extra from the responsibilities directly related to the position or an extra 15 minutes of work would cause problems.

Olena Sevruk, Senior Product Designer

My thoughts: testing should really be paid, especially if it takes more than an hour to complete.

If you are «confused» that the candidate did not spend 3 days on it, then perhaps the test itself is not designed for one hour, as you write about it?

Because I have a dissonance, you contradict yourself: on the one hand you say that the test takes an hour, on the other hand you are surprised that the candidate sent the result after a few hours.

Oleksandr Viter, Senior Python Developer at SoftServe

These phrases don’t fit together:

1) «The candidate completed the test in a few hours, in a very hurry, although 3 days were allotted for the work.»

2) «The test volume itself takes about 1 hour of work for an experienced specialist.»

If the volume of the test normally takes 1 hour of work, then if the candidate was in a hurry, he would complete it in 20-30 minutes, and not in several hours. So in reality, at a normal pace of work, the test could take somewhere around 4-6, or maybe all 8 hours — 1 working day, in fact. For experienced specialists, 1 full day of work is $100-200 depending on the specialty and level.

Asking a person to «make corrections» to a test that they have already spent several hours of intensive work on really feels like full-time work, not testing.

If the hiring party is not satisfied with how the candidate performed on the test and they are not willing to pay for the corrections, just say goodbye to the candidate.

Maria Onufriychuk, Java backend developer

If you have other potential candidates, what’s the problem? Just take the person who scored 5 out of 5. If the candidate doesn’t want to take the 3-day free trial, they have the right not to. This is a characteristic of the candidate’s values, and it seems that their values ​​don’t match the company’s values.

Oleksandr Antonenko, Senior Node.js Developer

I was once hired for a test. They gave me 3 days. I did it in a day. I sent it to a friend of mine for a review, then spent 2 days rewriting it and it turned out okay. I wasted 3 days, got an offer.