something for a week, then disappear without paying them. Unfortunately, they deal with this frequently and are understandably skeptical as a result. Sometimes, test tasks are more difficult to come up with. I once needed to hire a web programmer, and it was a bit difficult to design a simple test task for him. I decided to do a paid task instead. I got him to build me a little web program that allowed me to modify my website without using Dreamweaver, WordPress, or any of the higher-end programs. Because I know this, I sometimes decide to pay for a test task, but most of the time, it’s not necessary. However, any time I post a job advertisement for which the test task will produce content that’s useful to me in some way, I make it a point to pay the applicant. Usually, the test task is just something to help me determine their abilities, but on some occasions, I do profit from the work they produce. I’ll also pay an applicant for the test task if I know that completing it will take them considerable time. If I have someone develop software for me as a test task, my primary goal is to see if they can do good work. However, if I know it will take them a great deal of time to complete the task, I might pay them for it if they do a good job or when I eventually hire them. For example, I once gave a couple of applicants a test task to create some posters for a local event. When I gave them the details for the job, I told them we would pay them based on the quality of their work. This helped to assure applicants I wasn’t trying to cheat them out of their time. I had to change that policy when I saw the quality of the posters that some applicants were sending in. There were posters so poorly done that they weren’t even worth a dime. When I saw that trend, I edited the job advertisement to say that I would pay $10 to the applicants who moved on to the interview stage. However, I prefer to design test tasks I don’t have to pay for. To do that, you must ensure that whatever you’re asking them to do won’t take more than half an hour. If the task won’t take long, many people are willing to complete the work (except those who work so slowly that they think it will take six hours to complete the test task). Those people won’t bother to do the task. And that’s a good thing because you don’t want to hire them anyway. That’s my method of qualifying people. A well-structured test task is your best bet for qualifying
people under any circumstances. Background Checks
Should you go to the trouble of completing a background check? Again, it might depend on the candidate and where you found them. A stranger who responded to your ad on Craigslist is clearly
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