Job auditions are a relatively new approach that is getting more and more popular when it comes to hiring. Basically, how it works is that you let a candidate kind of trial on the job. So potential new hires are going to work for the hiring manager on a trial basis which could be a quick piece of work or even a few weeks trial period. The objective of using auditions is to make a really well-informed decision for hiring a candidate or not. If you are wondering whether job auditions are right for your next vacancies, here is an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of this hiring approach.
Pros of job auditions
The biggest advantage of job auditions is obviously that they allow the hiring manager to really assess a candidate before committing to a final hiring decision. Although interviewing and assessments can be very thorough, it can never really replicate the actual job. Basically, with a job audition, you avoid people selling you one version of themselves before finding out in the actual job that they don’t have the qualities they claimed they have to do a good job. This kind of bad hiring decisions can actually be avoided altogether when actually seeing someone on the job for a few days or even a few hours.
However, it´s not just the hiring manager who has the opportunity to really assess the candidate. This also goes for the candidates, a job audition allows them to see whether the job is what they expect it to be. If you can give the job a little trial-out, you have a much better idea of what you are in for.
Finally, using job auditions gives many candidates the idea of a more serious approach to hiring. If the auditions are arranged well, it shows that your company cares a lot about hiring the right people, which is a massive job attraction factor. Also, by paying people for the trial, you show that you value their time even if the result might not be the desired one for both of you.
Cons of job auditions
One of the most heard criticisms of job auditions is that they are very time-consuming to organize and therefore not very practical. And not just time-consuming to organize, also from a candidate´s perspective the time this type of job application process takes might be problematic. For example, those currently working probably won´t be able to take part. And for candidates, it might seem like it´s an easy way for companies to pull back again where a candidate needs to put in quite some effort and needs to disclose personal information. In addition, for executive roles, it might not really be possible to do job auditions because can you really trial a new director when the other one is doing the same job that you want to replace? Some roles may simply not be suitable for job auditions.
Finally, companies could abuse job additions and just “trial” candidates to finish important projects or urgent work with no intention at all to hire them permanently. And this obviously gives job auditions a very bad image.
In summary, there are pros and cons to job auditions when it comes to hiring and it will very much depend on your organization and the role you are looking to hire for if this hiring practice can work for you or not. As mentioned above, job auditions can work great for some roles but not for all.
Did you ever try job auditions when hiring? If so, what was your experience? We would love to read about in the comments section!
