Unpaid trial task or free work? What to check before you begin

Ask for the assessment contract before doing the assessment

A legitimate hiring task should make its purpose and boundaries understandable. Before starting, ask what skill is being tested, the expected time, the deliverable, the deadline, the evaluation criteria and who will review it. If the task is presented as optional, clarify whether declining changes your application status.

Treat the time estimate as part of the scope, not as a test of how much unpaid effort you are willing to provide. If the instructions describe a small exercise but the requested research, design, code or analysis cannot reasonably fit the estimate, raise that mismatch before you begin.

Separate a simulation from work the business can use

A simulated dataset, fictional client or deliberately limited problem is easier to recognise as an assessment. A request involving a current customer, a live campaign, production code, unpublished strategy or a complete commercial deliverable may create value beyond evaluating your skills. Ask whether the submission will be used operationally and whether candidates are compensated when the task creates usable work.

UK guidance provides one jurisdiction-specific example. Acas says an unpaid trial should be for a reasonable period and should not usually exceed one day. GOV.UK explains that the longer a trial lasts, the more likely minimum-wage entitlement may arise, particularly when the work has value beyond testing ability. The final legal position depends on the facts and the applicable country; those UK examples are not a worldwide rule.

Protect confidential information and ownership

Do not use confidential material from a current or previous employer to make an assignment look more realistic. Remove client names, internal metrics, source code, personal data and non-public processes from portfolio examples. If the employer supplies sensitive data, ask for the approved environment, access method and deletion instructions rather than copying it into personal tools.

Read any terms attached to the task. Clarify whether you retain ownership of the submission, whether the employer receives a licence to review it, and whether it may be kept or reused. Save the instructions, your questions, the final version and the submission confirmation.

Request a proportionate alternative when the format is the problem

The relevant skill may be demonstrable through an existing portfolio sample, a short live exercise, a discussion of past work or a smaller paid project. Suggest an alternative that tests the same capability when the original task is excessively broad, conflicts with confidentiality duties or creates an accessibility barrier.

A request for clarification is also a useful signal about the hiring process. A professional recruiter should be able to explain the scope, reviewer and next step without pressuring you to start immediately or hiding the organisation behind an anonymous file-sharing link.

Use this trial-task checkpoint

• Confirm the employer, role and recruiter before opening files or repositories.
• Get the expected time, output, deadline and scoring criteria in writing.
• Ask whether the task uses live business work and whether any part will be deployed or published.
• Remove third-party confidential information and use only approved data and tools.
• Read ownership, confidentiality, retention and deletion terms before submission.
• Ask about payment or a smaller alternative when the task creates substantial usable value.
• Pause if the task expands repeatedly, requires spending money or asks for credentials unrelated to the assessment.

Verify the hiring route before starting a task →Request an accessible assessment format →Browse current checked roles →