Why you should do trials with candidates

The Trial Week is arguably the most important part of the hiring process at TopHire. It gives us unparalleled insight into whether a candidate will do well with us.

What is a Trial?
At TopHire, we have candidates do a trial with us in order to give both them and ourselves a chance to see what it's like to work with one another. We pay candidates for their time. As of May 2023, we've done close to 500 trials.

From the candidate's point of view, they get to experience the culture of the company, what the work itself looks like, what it's like to interact with their potential future manager, their potential future peers, Sameer and myself. This allows the candidate to make an informed decision when it comes whether they see themselves working with us for the long term.

From our (company's) point of view, we get to see whether the candidate fits in well with us and our culture, whether they match our pace and other expectations.

At the end of the trial period, which is typically 2 weeks long, both sides mutually decide whether they want to continue working together. If it's a yes, we roll out the offer.

What makes for a successful trial period?
If a candidate drops out midway through the trial after realising that our field or sector is not for them, I'd consider that to be a successful outcome.  Because if we hadn't done a trial and instead directly rolled out an offer, it would have been more frustrating for both sides had they quit 2 months into the role.

And well if the trial goes well and we roll out an offer at the end of it, that's obviously a successful outcome too. Or if we conclude that the candidate isn't a good fit for us and we don't end up rolling out an offer, that's a success too.

What do I look out for in trials?
During a trial, your'e seeing the best version of someone when it comes to the candidate's sincerity, hard work and the softer aspects like not needing followups, clear communication and so on. If a trial candidate has misses in these “softer” aspects during their trial, it doesn't really get better, it either stays the same or gets worse.

Whereas “harder” aspects like intelligence or knowledge, those can be improved with training and guidance.

In other words, I'd be okay with a trial candidate who is relatively slowly to understand concepts but then comes across as sincere and hardworking. But I would not be okay with someone who was very smart  and "gets things" but lacked in seriousness or sincerity. The first person would do well with us. Whereas the 2nd person mostly wouldn't do well.

As soon as we realise it's not going to work out, we let them know that we'd like to end the trial and that we won't be rolling out an offer.

When does it make sense to do a trial?
We roll out trials to candidates when we are already fairly confident about the candidate but not exactly a 100% sure.

Ideally they aren't holding any other offers and obviously they can't exactly be working elsewhere. Though in both these cases, we sometimes ask the candidate if they can still manage a trial somehow. For example they work with us for a couple of hours in the evenings or work on saturdays or sundays with us.

We discourage people from resigning from their jobs to do trials with us. Because they would understandably be very unhappy if we don't end up rolling out an offer after the trial. Since they've now unnecessarily lost their current job and they wouldn't have an offer from us either.

Campus freshers are ideal to do trials with, cause we tend to hire from all sorts of non HR backgrounds and sometimes the candidates themselves genuinely don't know what its like to work in HR/Recruitment/Sales. And since most fresh graduates know that their first job is critical to get right, they are more often than not excited about the trial concept in our company and gladly take it up.

Pitching the trial to a candidate
Have a trial page containing testimonials from others who have done a trial. This is what ours looks like.

Whatever I've written in the "What is a trial?" and "What makes for a successful trial period?" is something our internal hiring would cover over a call when pitching the trial. And on top of that, we'd cover stats on how many trials we've done and how it's quite useful because a lot of times candidates themselves figure that we aren't a good fit for them whatever reason - the usual reason though is they recruitment isn't for them. Related note: We do a lot of campus placement drives where freshers are just starting out.

Have a structured trial programme
We have a set of specific reading and tasks that we have our trial candidates do. Our managers are also constantly in touch with trial candidates so they don't feel disconnected.

We push our managers to take copious amounts of notes on every little positive or negative thing that the candidate does during the course of their trial. And at the end of it, all of us managers review the trial feedback notes to decide the outcome.