Should employers pay to interview you?

If employers fail to get back to you within a certain agreed upon time, should you be able to bill them for your time? This is an interesting theory which has been running the mill on job forums recently. The theory is even starting to catch on with well regarded headhunters as people become disgruntled with recruitment firms and employers for taking them for granted and wasting their time.



I'm sure most people have been in this position and can agree there is something particularly nasty in waiting for news after an interview. It gets even more horrific when the specified date for news passes and when the employer never gets back to you it becomes infuriating.

So why not bill them? As a job applicant, you potentially put hours into researching the company, hours preparing yourself for questions and hours going over the exact details of your transportation to ensure you're on time. You're expected to put this level of effort and time into a job application to show your desire for the job, but for this amount of effort a company should be held to its own timelines for feedback and if it doesn't hold itself to this timeline, maybe you should be able to bill them. It would be a bold strategy for ensuring your time is treated as well as it should be, but, one things for sure, if it happened often enough it could kick employers into shape.

This isn't advocating suing a company when they don't give you a job but maybe it's time companies realize the expense someone (most probably someone without a job) puts into finding a job and thus a level of respect and courtesy has to come with that. From my experience the costs can get quite high when you add in things like dry cleaning for a suit, printer ink for numerous examples of work to show a strong portfolio and transportation costs. Obviously billing them for all these things may seem trivial but would perhaps 2 or 3 hours, based on the hourly rate of the job you applied for, be out of order? Why not add in your transportation costs?

Most likely, your letter would be thrown into a giant bin along with your chance at any further employment with that company or maybe the HR department would take a few laughs first but could you imagine if 50 or 60 people started sending invoices every week. A recruitment revolution, where the applicant holds the upper hand?
The example invoice from the article linked at the beginning will give you a draft.

Dear [name]:

My time for our first interview was free, as it was an exploratory meeting. You requested more time for the second round of meetings, which I provided at no cost, contingent on your company fulfilling its commitment to respond with a decision by the date you chose, April 1. My calls, emails, and your own agreed feedback deadline, went without notice or even the courtesy of a response.

I am thus billing you for the eight hours of my professional time spent in the second round of meetings with your team. As a professional, I would never dream of being irresponsible with the time of my clients, my vendors, or my employer. Time is money. I live by the deadlines I commit to, and I expect others to do the same. Anything less would be irresponsible to our industry and to our profession. None of us could operate with integrity if we ignored our commitments. This is not a joke. I expect payment within 10 days.

Yours truly,