We should all be able to agree that it’s hard­er to get a job than ever before.

Out are the days of being able to land a job the same day by walk­ing into a work­place with a firm hand­shake and paper copy of our resumes, and in are the days of too many appli­cants, too few posi­tions, and far too high of stan­dards and degree require­ments for entry-lev­el jobs. *Le sigh*

But while we might con­cur that it’s hard to land a job, we can’t seem to come to an agree­ment about what is accept­able to expect in a job inter­view or sam­ple work.

In what is now a viral thread on X (Twit­ter) about sam­ple work and know­ing our worth, a recruiter issued a com­plaint.

The X user had recent­ly con­duct­ed an inter­view that pre­sum­ably went very well—well enough for them to reach out to the appli­cant to say as much, and to also request that they com­plete a sam­ple test for the job.

But the appli­cant, who they clar­i­fied was Gen Z, did not see this as a valu­able use of their time, since they weren’t sure they’d get the job.

The employ­er post­ed:

“Me: Real­ly enjoyed the call. Please see attached finan­cial mod­el­ing test.”

“Gen Z appli­cant: This looks like a lot of work. With­out know­ing where I stand in the process, I’m not com­fort­able spend­ing 90 min­utes in Excel.”

“Me: …Well…I can tell you where you stand now.”

As the respons­es poured in, the employ­er spec­i­fied that their issue was the lack of will­ing­ness to com­mu­ni­cate what the appli­cant need­ed, and instead jump­ing straight to an “I’m unwill­ing to do this” atti­tude.

If the appli­cant had, for instance, asked to be paid for the sam­ple test, the employ­er would have been hap­py to pay them, and more than like­ly would have offered them the job.

The employ­er spec­i­fied:

“A response I would have actu­al­ly enjoyed would have been, ‘I’m good at this and [don’t] work for free. Give me $1000, and I’ll break this deal down in amaz­ing detail.’ ”

“Would have glad­ly paid and prob­a­bly hired.”

Despite the employ­er’s pre­sumed will­ing­ness to dis­cuss pay­ment, many X users under­stood the appli­can­t’s reser­va­tions.

But oth­er X users who also had hir­ing expe­ri­ence sided with the employ­er’s con­cerns.

While it might be dis­heart­en­ing for employ­ers to see more reluc­tance from younger poten­tial hires to invest time before get­ting hired or to per­form free labor, the job mar­ket is so over-sat­u­rat­ed, it’s hard to guess what will be a valu­able invest­ment of time and what won’t be.

While some of these invest­ments will lead to being hired or at least mak­ing a real­ly good con­nec­tion, most of these will lead to anoth­er can­di­date being cho­sen, being ghost­ed, or even hav­ing ideas repur­posed by the team’s staff, so it’s sort of no won­der that poten­tial can­di­dates are get­ting shy about shar­ing their ideas and offer­ing up their time with no guar­an­tees of rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion.