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?

  • clif
    14•9 months ago

    Not exactly to your question, but a company I used to work for would ask for experience in internal only tools on job reqs.

    Sure, hopefully it’s for people making role changes internally, but it seems a bit weird to ask for experience in <custom internal tool it is literally impossible to see, use, or hear about without working there> for an entry level job.