Company offers unpaid one-week trial as a 'generous' opportunity. Candidate's instant reply is the perfect comeback

A candidate (u/individualdoughnut96) seeking work had applied for a job opportunity, which they later declined after the company asked them to work without any compensation. Apparently, the company wanted to test the candidate before hiring, and so offered them an unpaid one-week trial as a "generous" opportunity. The candidate, however, refused to give in to the bizarre request and responded with a savage email. They posted a screenshot of it on Reddit on December 25, where several users joined in to share their own bizarre tales.

Soon after the interview, the candidate wrote back to Shreya, the company's HR representative, and informed her that they wouldn't be pursuing the role further. The candidate explained that a "one-week trial" requiring long hours of commitment to work isn't an assessment but "free labor." They were firm in their decision against working for free, especially for a company that doesn't guarantee a confirmed position after the test. "Wishing you luck in finding no one comfortable with that arrangement," they wrote in their email. Moving on to focus on "better opportunities," the candidate even left a public review of the company to alert potential candidates in the future. Thankfully for them, they "received another much better interview offer with another place" and would be going on to make that company richer.

Asking candidates to complete unfinished projects as part of the hiring process is not very unusual today. In fact, a 2024 survey on LinkedIn found that 41% of job seekers were asked to complete unpaid project work during interviews, according to Stephen Klein, CEO and founder of a USA-based company. He also revealed that 29% of those assigned incomplete project work found it to be excessive or exploitative. Likewise, another LinkedIn poll, as reported by Forbes, found that 85% of respondents in a survey reported encountering requests for unpaid work during job interviews. Among them, 44% reported demands of work ranging between three and five hours. Emphasizing it, people in the comments resonated with the bizarre 'free-labor' demand from employers; for instance, u/qrcode23 commented, "I had an experience like this. I was still a math major, and it was a weird point in my life where I was on autopilot. I was interviewing for a math tutor position at a local shop. She said, 'Come tomorrow for a test run.' I didn’t make the connection that it was unpaid labor. Guess I was too young and ignorant to make that connection."

Similarly, u/hankhillbwhaa said, "I applied at a place as a designer a long time ago, and they sent me a bunch of their unfinished projects, asking me to work on them as a trial. I was like, "Lmao, f**k no." u/-becausereasons- commented, "Trials should always be paid, and in most cases are. This is illegal and can be reported." u/holycityofmecca2020 shared, I would love to accept that role, then file an NLRB claim and alert the IRS. The penalties from both would likely put them out of business and the owners in jail. The tax man takes no bullshit." u/leahcar83 wrote, "'Wishing you luck finding no one comfortable with that arrangement' is such a sick burn and I absolutely love it."

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