Why the Best Hiring Teams Pay for Interview Projects

You found a great new hire. The portfolio held up, the interview clicked, and for the first time in weeks the search feels like it might actually be over. Then someone on the team says the sensible thing: "Let's just have them do a quick assignment first, to be sure."

At first it sounds reasonable.

But then they give the details: Unpaid, due in less than 48 hours.

Not one person, in the history of job hunting, has finished an unpaid take-home assignment and thought, "Wow, what a delightful use of my Wednesday night!"

The candidate you like also has a full-time job, or a kid, or three other companies circling. A "quick" unpaid take-home leads to that amazing candidate doing the math on whether you're worth it. Sometimes they decide you're not. And the person most likely to walk is the one with options, which is exactly the person you wanted.

We're not here to tell you skills assessments are evil. Some of them are genuinely useful for both sides. But there's a wide, well-lit line between a reasonable test of ability and free labor with extra steps, and way too many companies are camping out on the wrong side of it.

So let's talk about when unpaid actually makes sense, when it definitely doesn't, and why paying candidates for their time might be the cheapest reputation insurance your hiring process will ever buy.

The Data on Unpaid Assignments Points One Direction

This isn't just a vibes-based complaint. A Forbes analysis of the practice put it bluntly: Behind the promise of "assessing competency," a lot of these assignments amount to "essentially free consultancy work, exploiting hopeful applicants" under the banner of a potential job.

And the burden doesn't land evenly.

Coverage of the 2023 tech layoffs found that women made up roughly 45 percent of laid-off tech workers despite holding only about a third of tech jobs overall, one of several data points showing that recent downturns have hit women and workers of color hardest.

Layer unpaid, multi-day assignments on top of an already unequal job market, and you're effectively telling anyone without slack in their schedule or a financial cushion to sit this one out.

Translation: If your interview process requires unpaid days of work, you are quietly filtering for people who can afford to work for free. And that's not a talent pipeline. That's a wealth test wearing a talent test's clothes.

Skills Assessment vs. Working Interview

Before deciding whether to pay for an interview task, get clear on what you’re actually asking for.

A skills assessment evaluates whether someone can do the job using a hypothetical scenario, not your real work. Examples of this might include a sample brief, a mock campaign for a fictional client, or a short, timed writing prompt.

A working interview, on the other hand, asks the candidate to do actual work for your business on real accounts, with output you could potentially use. Examples include tasks like “Redesign our homepage,” “Write next week’s newsletter,” or “Build our Q3 content calendar.”

Here’s the line that matters: A skills assessment might be unpaid, whereas a working interview is a job. And jobs should be paid. Full stop.

When Unpaid Can Still Make Sense

There genuinely are cases where skipping payment isn't a red flag:

• Short. Twenty to thirty minutes, not twenty to thirty hours.
• Generic. A hypothetical brand, not your real client's real launch.
• About thinking, not producing. You're evaluating how someone approaches a problem, not walking away with a finished, usable deliverable.
• And just as important, candidates should know exactly what they're being evaluated on. Experienced hiring managers interviewed by NBCU Academy recommend setting clear expectations about how long the assignment should take, what skills are being assessed, and providing any resources or style guides needed to complete it. Transparency helps ensure you're measuring ability and not who is best at deciphering vague instructions.

If your assessment checks all three boxes, you're probably fine. The trouble is, most unpaid assessments don't check any of them; they just borrow the "it's just a quick test" framing to justify asking for a lot more.

A Week of Unpaid Work Is a Project, Not a Test

A recent viral LinkedIn post from a design candidate summed up the other end of the spectrum. After progressing through a positive interview process, she was told the next step would take five to seven days, part-time.

Her response: "5-7 days is not an assessment. That's a project."

She's right. At any professional day rate, a week of work is thousands of dollars of value extracted from someone who, by definition, doesn't have the job yet. As one negotiation coach put it in Fast Company's coverage of the trend, candidates rarely push back because "it doesn't occur to us that saying 'no' can actually increase our value." That instinct to just comply is exactly what companies with bloated "assessments" are counting on.

Even hiring managers who use interview assignments acknowledge the imbalance. Emmy Award-Winning Editor Lawrence Yee, who shared with NBCU Academy, said he intentionally weighs unpaid tests less heavily in the hiring process because he knows candidates are often juggling full-time jobs, caregiving responsibilities, and other obligations.

That perspective also informs where he draws the line, stating that a straightforward editing or writing test shouldn't take much more than about 90 minutes. But when a creative role requires candidates to generate original ideas, he argues, "it should be paid or compensated." After all, as he puts it, "Your ideas are worth money."

Creative industries have been grappling with this issue for years.

Whether it's a designer asked to mock up a campaign, a copywriter asked to draft messaging, a strategist asked to develop a go-to-market plan, or a journalist asked to pitch original stories, the principle is the same: If an interview task requires candidates to create work that draws on their professional expertise and could benefit the company, it's no longer just an assessment. It's labor.

The Gut Check: When an Assessment Should Be Paid

Before you send that assessment, run it through this:

If you're not sure which column you're in, that uncertainty is itself the answer. When in doubt, pay.

Candidates Can Ask Why an Assignment Is Unpaid 

Employers aren't the only ones who get a say here. If you're the one staring down an unpaid assignment, the call is ultimately yours to make, and that's worth remembering when a recruiter's tone starts to feel like pressure.

Read the ask carefully. Weigh the time it'll cost against how badly you want this specific job, and don't be afraid to ask the employer directly why the assignment is unpaid, how long it should take, and whether it'll be used for anything beyond evaluating you. A reasonable employer will answer those questions without flinching. One that gets defensive just told you something useful about what it'd be like to work there.

Of course, fair hiring isn't just the candidate's responsibility to navigate. Employers have just as much influence over whether the process feels transparent, respectful, and equitable from start to finish. Paying for substantial interview work is an important part of that equation, but it's far from the only one.

Fair Hiring Goes Beyond The Assessment

Paying for skills tests is one piece of a bigger picture. A handful of other habits go a long way toward a fairer process, with or without a test involved:

• Standardize the process. Same job description, same core interview questions, same evaluation criteria for every candidate in the running.
• Score on skills, not gut feel. Lean on defined qualifications and experience instead of vibes, "culture fit," or who reminds you of you.
• Widen the funnel. Job boards alone tend to reach the same pool. Community groups, schools, and professional networks bring in candidates you'd otherwise miss.
• Try blind review where it makes sense. Stripping names and other identifying details from early-stage applications can cut down on unconscious bias before anyone's even talked to the candidate.
• Train the people doing the hiring. Interviewers who know what bias looks like and how to run a consistent interview make better calls.

None of these practices replaces a fair, well-scoped, paid skills assessment.

Together, though, they create something more meaningful in the form of a hiring process that treats candidates with respect, helps employers make better decisions, and lays the foundation for the kind of workplace people actually want to join.

Candidates Remember How You Treat Them Long After the Job Posting

Here's the part hiring teams underestimate: Candidates remember how they're treated during a hiring process a lot longer than they remember the job posting.

An organization that pays for substantial assessments isn't just avoiding a legal gray area but signaling that it values expertise before someone's even on the payroll.

That reputation follows you.

Word travels fast in creative circles, and someone saying, "They made me do a week of free work" is the kind of story that gets repeated at every industry happy hour for years. Meanwhile, "They paid me for my time even though I didn't get the role" is the kind of story that gets you the next great referral.

The bottom line: If an assessment creates real value for your company or asks for real effort from the candidate, it should be paid. Everything else is just a nicer way of asking for free work.

Ready to fix your assessment process before it costs you your next great hire? A staffing partner who's run a thousand hiring processes can help you build one that's fair, fast, and actually gets you signal instead of quietly driving good candidates away. Let's talk.