Trend or gimmick? Some recruiters are paying people to interview for jobs

Q: It's not clear whether it's a real trend or just a gimmick. A few recruiting firms are offering to pay people to interview for jobs. Who do you think would sign up to use such a service?

Nick's reply: It's always interesting when someone comes up with a new approach to recruiting. Imagine getting paid to go on a job interview. Clever, eh?

It's something being tried by some recruiting firms.

Help me work through the logic. The idea is that the best workers are so busy at their jobs that they probably don't read job listings or post their resumes online. That makes sense to me. So these recruiting firms are trying to help employers attract such people. Companies would offer money to these "hidden job hunters" to get them into job interviews.

So far, it's interesting. Hard-to-find candidates fill out a form about themselves so the process can get started. But that's where we hit the wall.

If these folks are not out looking for jobs, why would they sign up? To make a few bucks on the chance that a company will invite them for an interview? Well ... you've got to get them to sign up first. The best people, that is.

Here's the first problem. Who is most likely to sign up for such a service? I think it's people whose resumes are already plastered all over the Net. So what does this clever recruiting method accomplish? It makes it easier for busy people in human resources departments to spend more money reviewing applicants whose resumes are already freely available.

It seems to me that all these "pay to interview" firms are doing is creating a new job -- interviewing. A job hunter could earn some nice change doing this, without any intention of accepting a job. The challenge becomes gaming the system, not getting a job. Employers wind up interviewing the wrong people -- not the best ones.

The second problem is that employers will never buy into this on any scale because they're already spending their recruiting budgets on job boards. For a fee, job boards deliver tens of thousands of resumes for human resources departments to process. These applicant-processing systems depend on masses of incoming resumes. No decision has to be made about which resumes to pay for because the employer is buying applicants in bulk. That's an easy decision (even if it's not a smart one). Paying to talk to just one candidate creates pressure that personnel managers are just not accustomed to.

But the main problem with this "pay to interview" model is that it implies something it cannot deliver. The idea that the best candidates are those who will take money to interview just doesn't make any sense.

I'd suggest that companies spend their money another way: Pay managers to find good candidates themselves. Or reward your company's employees to refer great candidates.

Most companies already have such systems in place. They just don't use them effectively. They're called employee referral programs. With these, at least a company knows where the applicants are coming from and a payout is made only if the candidate is actually hired.

Finally, there is an inherent conflict in paying for interviews: a selection bias. Will employers hire candidates they've paid just to rationalize the money they've spent? I'd love to see how "pay to interview" works out -- and whether the quality of interviews goes up. If you've seen a news update, please let me know.

Copyright 2009. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

Nick Corcodilos is author of "Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job" and the host of www.asktheheadhunter.com. He can be reached by e-mail at seattle@asktheheadhunter.com or at North Bridge Group, P.O. Box 600, Lebanon, NJ 08833. Sorry, no personal replies.