Article · Medium read

Adding a work trial to your interview process

Lenny Rachitsky · Lenny's Newsletter Freemium Intermediate

This is the operational how-to behind our short answer: how to run a paid, job-representative trial, drawing on how Linear, Automattic, 37signals, Gumroad, and PostHog actually do it. It answers the questions the shorter essays skip, like how long, paid or not, real task or synthetic, and how to score the output. If you only read one thing on running a trial, make it this.

• Give a paid task that mirrors the real job, then judge the output.
• Trials frequently surprise teams versus their interview read.
• Keep tasks representative but avoid using free production work.