Employee stands their ground after employer tries for an unpaid trial

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Mar 16, 2023 9:00 AM EDT

Unpaid working trials are a thing of the past—well… they should be according to the labor laws in many states and countries. The unfortunate reality is that this is still a practice that takes place in a lot of industries and in even more organizations. There's nothing like having someone actually do the work to ensure that they can do it… right?

Companies often have other goals in mind with this strategy. Clever-as-they-are-unethical hiring managers will use these "working interviews" to crowd-source resources like sales leads or otherwise snag "example" problem-set solutions from experienced leaders and technical candidates.

In this post, candidate, Redditor u/odway, shared screenshots of what appears to be an exchange between them and a prospective employer (which comments lead us to believe is some kind of horse stable.) The employer is organizing for the candidate to come in for a trial week, and in their first message in the screenshot, they refer to the trial as "unpaid"—the first the candidate seems to have heard about this.

This post generated a lot of discussions and we've been seeing lots of discussion around this topic recently around the wider web; we've shared our experiences on the topic too. Have you ever had an experience with a working interview or an interview where they wanted just way too much of your time, effort, and energy? Let us know in the comments!