I truly felt this way after sinking a month into a company with multiple phone interviews, a HackerRank challenge, full on-site day with more interviews (all an in-person repeat of the phone ones) and a case study. All for a no after the in-person day.
This is an interesting idea. However, I see a couple of major problems:
1. It strongly incentivizes bad behavior for bad hires. A completely unqualified candidate would be extremely motivated to obtain an interview, since even getting to do a first round of screening might result in them being paid $100 or more.
2. It doesn't sufficiently disincentivize bad behavior for employers. Companies like Google spend A LOT on interviews. A few hundred bucks more per candidate is not going to significantly burden them enough to change any practices, especially when the cost of hiring a bad engineer is so high.
Most people that apply to a job (in tech) aren't qualified for that position. At my previous company, 99% of applicants didn't make it through hiring.
Yes, the candidate is taking a risk by interviewing. But the company is also taking a risk, and spending considerable engineering/recruiting time on a candidate that most likely isn't qualified. They're also footing the bill for travel, if needed. And because most don't make it, they end up investing 100 times over, for every candidate that they actually hire.
Employers should be required, by law, to compensate interviewees for their time at a rate equivalent to the job for which they are interviewing.
(Macdonald’s, Goldman Sachs, line cook, VP legal, same law, everyone, everywhere)