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I have a company who needs my help giving technical phone interviews and live coding tests to potential hires. I'm not sure what to quote for this scenario since the "work" is relatively easy - I'm not writing any code.

To give more details/context - the technical interviews I've done in the past typically last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half. And the area of expertise I'd be screening for is front-end web development.

Should I discount my rate or apply normal rate to the client for this work?

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  • Hi Andrew, welcome to Freelancing.SE! This question is quite open ended, and would be too hard to answer as one specific answer (too broad). I'm closing it for now, but please try to edit it to be more on topic and answerable. See How to Ask for more info, or drop by Freelancing Chat or Freelancing Meta to chat more with us
    – Canadian Luke ♦
    Commented Apr 8, 2016 at 17:02
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    Andrew - Your time is valuable. While working for them, you are restricted from taking money from another company. I would charge full rate a discounted rate to encourage the client to call you again at some point in the future while still respecting your time/effort. When you apply a discount, do so (for example) on the provisio that they pay you for 10hours (for example) and have 12hours of your time "in the bank". Put an expiry on the hours (3months?). Time is "spent" in half hour "units". Its a win win both sides, you feel rewarded and customer does not feel robbed.
    – fiprojects
    Commented Apr 8, 2016 at 17:54
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    BTW I've been a contractor/consultant/freelancer since 1994 and learned never to turn work down but instead push the decision to the client. If I really want it, I become less expensive. If I will have discomfort, I get more expensive. If you don't value your time, nobody else will. Best of luck!
    – fiprojects
    Commented Apr 8, 2016 at 17:55
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    @AndrewAponte I reopened the question for you, as it is more clearly within our scope and easily answerable and useful to other users. Good luck!
    – Canadian Luke ♦
    Commented Apr 11, 2016 at 16:50

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I would never discount my rate. Using 'rate' seems to indicate hourly billing (which I'm a huge advocate for, at least in the type of work I've done).

If you're billing hourly, the thing you're charging for is your time not the task. So it doesn't matter if the task requires less of your skill, or seems 'easier' (talking to someone may feel easier than writing code) - the client is paying for the same thing, your time.

So I'd never discount the rate, in fact, because you're billing a small block of time, I might charge a minimum of 2 hours (as it interrupts other work).

That all said, this looks like a great opportunity to take a stab at value based billing. While it's just an hour or so of your time, the money you may be saving the company is significant (hiring costs are high, bad hiring even more so).

Instead of discounting your rate, you could try to get an idea of what savings / value you interviewing a prospective developer gives the company, and charge them a fixed fee derived from that.

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