Ryan Golden: As an employer, you (hopefully) know about your obligations to pay employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act and applicable state and local laws. After all, it's common sense to pay employees for the time they spend at your worksite doing work for your business, right?

Yet, the application process also involves a great deal of work on the part of candidates, from putting together a resume to contacting old colleagues for references to travel on the day of the interview, and everything in between. Should that work be compensable?

Kathryn Moody: The notion of fairness at the heart of that question is one reason why Racquel Coral's tweet and subsequent blog post went viral at the end of September. Coral was paid $150 for her time spent on her application and the interview process, including a "final project," for a job she ultimately did not land.

It's one of those moves that makes you think "oh wait, yeah … it would be nice to be paid for that, wouldn't it?" Because interviews (at least in the pre-COVID market) have only gotten longer, with zero guarantee of the outcome — and sometimes with zero guarantee you'll even know your status with the company at the end of it, as Coral wrote in her blog post.