November 4, 2022

How Engineering Leaders Get More Candidates to Complete Their Take-Homes

By Casey Higgins

This playbook shares best practices for implementing an Honorarium.

You need to hire experienced software engineers. But not enough candidates are completing your trial projects, and they’re taking other offers.

At Woven, we believe that real work predicts fit better than credentials and conversations. So we use take-home projects across all of our hiring. How do we compete with other companies who might be asking less in their interview process?

We pay candidates! It’s called an honorarium.

No strings/liability attached. Honorariums help you get what you need to evaluate while showing the candidate you value their time. In a competitive hiring market, this gives a candidate one less reason to disqualify your role in favor of an opportunity that’s asking less of them.

Honorariums are especially useful for senior/exec roles where defining a good project is tough without using something real from your business. And it’s a small expense that pays off when you find the right people for the job.

Our Take-Home Interview Honorarium Guide has templates and contracts your company can use for potential hires.