If you think it costs you something to be interviewed (thus your suggestion about an application fee) it certainly costs the company at least that much if not more. They are paying their staff to work with you on something that likely will not produce direct value for the company (usually a throwaway project or trivial task)

Plus they will spend time before and after the interview discussing your qualifications, performance etc. It comes out about even.

The candidate is taking a much bigger risk.

If the job doesn't work out, they lose small% of potential productivity, while you will lose 100% of your income.

Companies have numerous employees, but you only have one employer. You bet everything on your employer, they only bet a small part of their hand on you.

The company is expected to have costs when hiring, it isn't appropriate to push them onto the applicants by having them work it off.

What if a company gave you an itemized bill after your interview? You're still exchanging something of value for their time; is that reasonable or ridiculous?

By this logic the candidate should pay half of travel and hotel too.

Usually the candidate pays all of it.

Really?

Of the three job interviews I've traveled for in the last year, all were paid by the company 100%.

Seconding this; even for internships I've not once paid for travel costs. Everyone from small, YC startups up to MS/Google paid for cab fare, flights, and hotels.

This is highly unusual (if not unheard of).

A company would have to be pretty damn unique in order to justify having candidates pay for their own travel + lodging.

Most jobs are not provided by SV companies or Microsoft. Most prople are not in a career that typically hires from across the country at their own expense. Paid travel is a luxury enjoyed by a small segment of job candidates.

Expanding the scope of discussion to all jobs is disingenuous. It's pretty clear this thread (not to mention this forum) is fairly software centric.

Regardless, companies across just about all industries that hire from remote talent pools will pay for travel (consulting, finance, government, NGOs, banking, accounting, manufacturing, insurance, you-name-it).

Whether or not a given company expands its talent search to include workers in distant locations is bound by several factors, none of which are unique to "SV and Microsoft".

Which is strictly forbidden in most jurisdictions.

It depends on how it is structured.

I doubt there would be anything wrong with saying "we maintain open source project X and we only hire people who have made submissions in this project that we have accepted. If you want to be considered for employment, you must first get involved in the community."