How can anyone expect a candidate to burn 3 vacation days to work for a company they are unfamiliar with? For people who only get 10 vacation days a year that's almost 1/3. The money you get may not even be enough to compensate for the money you lose by using that vacation (since accrued vacation is paid to you when you leave your job). This is a huge risk for an already employed candidate. Why take that risk when there are plenty of interesting job opportunities?
Even if the compensation is reasonable, I don't think its reasonable to ask the person to put their existing job on hold for three days while they fill out your glorified job application. The way I see it, you shouldn't ask the person to do anything you wouldn't be comfortable having them do while they work for you. As a manager, would you be comfortable with one of your employees taking three days off to work on a project for another company?
The author says the person is paid "a reasonable contractor fee for the work", which I would hope is equal to or greater than the current salary. If not, it really doesn't make sense, as you say.
I would be curious to know what happens before this 5 day test. Do people just walk in with resume in hand and sit down to work for 5 days? Probably not. There would have to be some sort of discussions-that-aren't-an-interview which would lead to a yea-nay decision on the work term. What sort of funnel is there?
I agree there is a big commitment on both sides to do this 1-2 week work stage. There has to be more to the events leading up to the stage than what's in the article.
I see it like this, if you are using paid vacation days for this, then you are in a way on your current employers payroll, I think it is a bit dishonest to the current employer who pays you to rest/recover from a years worth of work. If you take unpaid leave then it would be more reasonable, but then the fee for the work done during the leave should be generous.
As it is with my current employer, it would be very hard to just take 5 days or even 3 days of for something like this, paid or not. If it was with a couple of months notice then I would think it wouldn't be a problem, but with shorter notice than that it would be hard.
What I was saying is that a 'reasonable contractor fee' would have to be about double your current hourly wage, since the first half would only compensate the cost of burning the vacation day.
I got my current job by doing a 3 day consulting for my boss over the weekend. I took 1 day off work on a Friday and we worked on Saturday and Sunday too. At the end of the day on Sunday he made me a job offer (note: I was not looking for a FT job, I was about to leave my previous job because of an upcoming move and hoped I would be regularly consulting for him afterwards).3 days, if you think the investment can be worth it, is doable, 3 weeks...well, that's a whole different matter.
