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?
It sounds somewhat reasonable and you just are not the candidate. From what it sounds like, it would be like applying for a job as a pool lifeguard but your only experience around pools was from YouTube. They want someone who has handled that item before not someone who says “let me take a crack at it”
A lifeguard needs training/certification to do their job, so you wouldn’t just hire anybody.
In OPs case, they are qualified to do the job but the recruiter didn’t like that they hadn’t used their product. That is more like not hiring a qualified lifeguard because they have never gone swimming recreationally at that location.
This seems like a poor analogy.
“I don’t have experience with the ‘Megamart Pool TM’ brand of pools, but I’ve got my Lifeguard certificate through a training program that operated at a nearby lake.” Oh sorry, we want our applicants to be familiar with our specific pool with 50+ hours of paid visits logged. Please come back next year after you’ve gather this.
Exactly, this is a good analogy. I actually got the feedback that I was technically qualified and most of the other feedback was positive.
That’s not the case at all. Where did OP say they had training on the product but not the specific brand? They just said they were familiar with the product but never used it.