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?
It does seem unfair but if I were the interviewer I would take into consideration, among other things, if the candidate cared enough about the position to use the product on their own. If I were someone applying for a job and wasn’t terribly confident in my experience for the position, I’d probably go out of my way to inform myself of the product in a hands-on manner. If it’s a competitive position, you’ve gotta compete.
You would expect the candidate to spend 60€ to try out a niche product? If I were in the position I would definitely expect them to research the product and understand how it works (I did), but not to spend that kind of money to use it.