I had a job interview with a company recently and one of the negative feedback I got was that I hadn’t tried out their product. Now this might be a valid concern if they had any sort of free trial for it, but the lessons they offer start at 60€ and I didn’t feel comfortable spending that amount just to get a better chance at an interview. They also offered no free credits or anything like that during the interview. I did understand how the product worked by researching it online.
I definitely feel that there’s something wrong in asking for an interviewee to spend money on the product they are interviewing for. For one it’s a great setup for a scam. But is there any regulation that should prevent companies from doing this? I am based in the EU and was interviewing for a Spanish company.
UPDATE: This is definitely not a scam, the company is fairly known. This is more of a question of is it right/legal to expect this?
I don’t know about your field, but that does seem somewhat suspicious to me. I suppose it depends on which company, which product, and which field.
For instance, I could presumably see an argument for turning down a salesperson applicant to Microsoft for not having used Microsoft Office before. ie, if not using a given product demonstrates lack of experience in the field.
Is the product well-known or a standard in the field?
I’ve updated the description to mention that this is definitely not a scam, more like weird and unreasonable behavior.