Ethical to ask interview candidates to solve your company's toughest problems?

7 points by Katelyn 12 years ago | 9 comments

The company I work at evaluates candidates using problem-solving rounds where the candidate is asked to spend an hour solving a problem, and another hour presenting the solution.<p> The catch is that the questions we ask are directly related to problems our company is facing. Whether we ask about storing data locally vs on the server, or how the candidate would gain exposure for a payments feature, the answer will be valuable to us, whether we hire him or not. Is this unethical or completely reasonable?

staunch 12 years ago |

1. You shouldn't hide that it's a real (valuable) problem they're helping you solve. A lie of omission.

2. You sure as hell better actually be hiring people, not just having people come in to help you for free.

Otherwise, any "work" done in an hour or two is the price of doing an interview. Seems fine to me.

dangerboysteve 12 years ago |

It's unethical if you don't have any intention on hiring anyone. I heard stories like this many years ago on how some individuals would interview candidates for the sole purpose of harvesting ideas.

RougeFemme 12 years ago |

I think it's completely reasonable. It's no different from asking people at conferences, in classes, etc. And I assume the primary purpose is gauge what the candidate actually knows about the domain, how the candidate goes about solving problems, etc., - not to actually get the perfect solution to your problem, though that would be a bonus.

andrew_gardener 12 years ago |

As long as your truthful that these are problems your company's facing and are actually hiring it should be fine. Please do hire the person who's solution your going with and put them on that project though.

If your just scraping ideas/solutions, it is certainly unethical though I don't think it is illegal.

lsiebert 12 years ago |

If you are using actual code they write, there are intellectual property concerns to consider.

I think it would be ethical, if you compensated those you didn't hire but who's works you used.

manishg4 12 years ago | |

In one of the companies that I worked, and used to take interviews, the general practice was to ask questions whose answers would benefit us. Also, in certain cases, when we were starting out work on a different domain, we used to call candidates who were experienced in that domain, and get our initial doubts / understanding issues resolved via interviews!

charlesism 12 years ago |

It's okay only if you carefully explain to the candidate, before the interview, that you may be using his/her ideas (even if you do not hire him/her).

If you do so without consent, you make your company look like dirtbags:

"No, they didn't hire me, they just wasted four hours of my time, and stole all my product ideas. Why pay a consultant when you can interview a sucker..."

jacobquick 12 years ago |

You should pay them $100/hr for the interview if you're having them work. There are some companies that have people come in for half a day or a day as part of their interview (not onboarding) and they cut them a check after.

lostdog 12 years ago |

You may be better off asking them to solve problems you've already solved. It works around the ethical issue, and you have an excellent point of comparison--what you already chose to do.