Is It Time for Job Seekers to Get Paid for Going on a Job Interview?

The job market is hot. Businesses—everything from mom-and-pop shops to mammoth global companies—are desperately trying to find workers. Managers also fear losing their best and brightest to their competitors.

You’d think in this war for talent, business leaders would bend over backward to attract and retain talent. Yet, job hunters are still being treated poorly. They often endure a gauntlet of job interviews, which can take up to six months or more. In between meetings, there may be no communication or feedback.

Given all this fact, shouldn’t companies start paying candidates for their time? Here’s why job seekers should get paid for participating in a job interview.

Companies need to have skin in the game.

Consider this—if a company pays an applicant for each interview, even if it’s a token amount, they’ll have skin in the game, especially if the firm has many employees and interviews a significant number of job seekers. All of a sudden, the CEO and leadership team will pay close attention to the job interview process, as it’s costing them money.

When an executive knows that candidates will be paid, the number of interviews will be scrutinized. The CFO will question the necessity of paying a candidate to go on nine interviews instead of wrapping up the process in one day with maybe two interviewers.

Companies will be more practical with time.

When you multiply out all of the job interviews that companies force an applicant to undergo, by the amount of interviews that take place on a weekly or monthly, the costs will be substantive.

In a belt-tightening measure, management will quickly issue an edict to slash down the number of interviews, whenever practical.

The pay-for-job-interview policy will push hiring managers, recruiters and human resources teams to pay close attention to how many interviews are really necessary. Furthermore, hiring personnel will have to be taught how to render a decision on their own without relying upon a consensus from other people.

It could widen the talent pool.

For people who are happy where they are, but curious what jobs are available, a small financial incentive may make them decide to take up a job interview. The result could be more candidates for a company’s talent pipeline.

The bottom line

A job interview might be the job of the recruiter and human resources professional, but for everyone else, it’s a time-consuming chore. Think about all of the tangential people who are dragged into the process. These people have their own jobs to do, but are tasked with meeting candidates, sometimes because a hiring manager is too afraid to make their own decision.

Paying everyone involved for participating in a job interview could vastly improve the current situation and enable companies to be more competitive in attracting and hiring mission-critical employees.

This article was written by Jack Kelly for Forbes and was lightly edited and published with permission.