Investment First: Why ROI in Hiring Demands an Act of Faith

By Christopher Schneider, Director, Strategic Partnerships
Published June 30, 2026

As a salesperson, it’s common when pitching HR Source membership or sponsorship to hear the phrase, “We want to know the ROI before we commit.” ROI is an accounting term that has been swept up into the ever-expanding business vernacular to mean, “we want to know the value before we experience the value.” It’s ironic because the accounting term requires time to have passed, a reckoning of the principal investment of an asset, coupled with an analysis of the increase of value over time. It is not a predictive term; it measures past performance. Without a past, there can be no ROI.

At HR Source, this member prospect request is often assuaged by a free trial call to our HR Hotline. For sponsor relationships, an invitation to a member event allows them to assess our member population as potential clients. We may be more generous than other groups even within our own sector of the market. For instance, a well-known HR professional association would laugh me out of the room if I proposed wanting to “try” an exhibit opportunity at their national conference without paying the $7400 exhibitor fee. Try this at McDonald’s by asking if you can have a bite of the Big Mac before you commit to the whole sandwich. You’ll go hungry.

In the HR realm, I think about the ROI-focused practice of assigning unpaid work assignments to candidates. The Fair Labor Standards Act is a bit jittery about compensable work disguised as an unpaid pre-employment assessment. If you want to assess a candidate’s bona fides, the task should be brief (1-2 hours), exist hypothetically, and not actually produce usable work for the organization. A long assignment that results in material benefit for the hiring organization, while probably not illegal, speaks to a questionable employment practice at best, and what looks like unpaid labor at worst.

While I understand the hesitancy of employers to make a commitment to an unproven applicant, think about what you are asking a candidate to commit to without being compensated. Despite your best efforts, your organization is a “known unknown” to a candidate, and they won’t really understand your culture until they’re part of it. It’s an act of faith to start a new job, just as it is to hire an unproven applicant. The point of the exercise is to assess a person’s knowledge and skills, not to have them do the job before they have the job. 

So, while you may be afraid that your investment won’t pay off, you can’t spell “ROI” without the “I”. After all, you’re making an investment in your people and by extension, your business, and with all investments, there are inherent risks. The ROI will have to be assessed later, and that’s fair. It’s the first word in FLSA.