Unpaid Trial Shift or Working Interview? When a Tryout Must Be Paid

When a Tryout Counts as Work

The Department of Labor overview of the Fair Labor Standards Act requires covered employers to pay at least the federal minimum wage to employees for the time they work. The hours worked fact sheet explains that work the employer suffers or permits is generally time worked. If you wait tables, cut hair, stock shelves or take orders during a tryout and the business benefits, that time can be work that must be paid, even if no one called you an employee.

Shadowing Versus Real Work

• Often not work

  Briefly observing, touring the site or answering questions about your skills, without doing tasks the business relies on.

• Often work

  Serving customers, running a register, cooking, cleaning, handling tools or doing tasks the employer would otherwise pay someone to do.

• Longer tryouts

  A full shift or several days of unpaid tryouts is harder to defend, especially when you work alongside paid staff.

• Tips and sales

  If the business kept your tips or sales from the tryout, save any proof. See our guide to <a href="/blogs/tipped-employee-wages-tip-credit-and-stolen-tips" class="text-primary underline">tipped employee wages and stolen tips</a>.

Is This the Same as an Unpaid Internship?

Not exactly. Internship rules ask who benefits from the arrangement, as our post on unpaid interns and the internship test explains. A trial shift for a business that is open and serving customers is closer to ordinary work. Time spent waiting or in required orientation can also count, as covered in our guide to unpaid training, travel and standby time.

What To Do If You Were Not Paid

Write down the date, start and end times, tasks and who supervised you. Keep the job post, texts that set up the tryout, photos and any proof you were paid in cash or not at all. The recordkeeping fact sheet says employers must keep time and pay records, and if they have none, our post on proving your hours without employer records can help. You can ask the Wage and Hour Division about a claim through its complaint information page. If you were paid less than the minimum wage or paid in cash, read how cash pay does not cancel wage rights.

Free Case Review

If you worked a trial shift or working interview and were never paid, or were turned down and told it was only a tryout, our team can review the facts at no cost, if you are eligible.