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?
I don’t know if there’s any legal implications, but morally it’s pretty abhorrent. The question I’d be asking is would you even want to work for a company that engages in that type of tactic, especially since they’re likely to repeat that kind of nonsense after you’ve started the job.
I mean if it was after I started the job that would make sense. You have to know the product you’re working on.
But it seems like a power asymmetry that they have dedicated 1 hour of their time to the interview and I am expected to spend money and more research time, in addition to all the usual interview preparation.