[erroneousfunk]

"After selecting a winner in the challenge phase, try to work with the candidate in a small project before hiring him. Pay for the hours spent on the project, of course!"

It would be difficult to find a winning candidate who is unemployed, or who is employed and has the bandwidth to come in during office hours and work on a project with your team. That being said, performance on a paid "evening hours" consulting project would be a very good hiring metric that I think more companies should use.

[nadams]

> It would be difficult to find a winning candidate who is unemployed, or who is employed and has the bandwidth to come in during office hours and work on a project with your team.

Yes - please stop asking candidates to do this. I mean it's great that this particular company will offer to pay you for your time - but I've seen some companies require a candidate to come in and work for free for a day.

The last job application I was asked to take a 3 hour phone interview back-to-back (remote job). It just seems disrespectful that you would ask someone to be on the phone for half the day just for the possibility that they might get the job. I don't know about you guys - but if I disappeared for 3 hours from my job someone might be a little annoyed. I'm not saying to interview people - but break it out into smaller chunks throughout the week. Could I have asked this company to do that? Probably - but there were other red flags that suggested I stay away.

[ghaff]

> It just seems disrespectful that you would ask someone to be on the phone for half the day just for the possibility that they might get the job.

The vast majority of jobs require coming in for a half-day or day of interviews for the possibility of getting a job. I agree with your point about doing projects for free but a block of interviews is pretty normal. If they're by phone anyway, sure they could be spread out but most companies will have at least some interviews in-person.