A company I work with is looking at the possible practice of providing 20 hours of unpaid online training to a pool of applicants. The training would be completed by the applicants on their own time and there would be no guarantee of employment at the end of the training - however if the applicant successfully completes the training they would be eligible for hire at that point. This training is for exempt positions.

Has anyone had experience with this type of training practice? If so - what type of training topics were covered, what was the upside and what were the downsides of this type of training? Any other comments?

If I were you I would write up the program and run it by an employemnt attorney before proceeding. I have heard about issues relating to pre-employment screening/training/etc.

About 25 years ago I was a participant in a somewhat similar program. We spent 40 hours apprenticing before being hired.

You might consider creating a certification program and then requiring certification before being considered for employment. Again, run this by the attorney.

What would be the point of this type training? Is it to select/eliminate potential employees? If so, wouldn't there be specific topics already chosen for this training - topics related to the requirements of the job positions?

I can't imagine why anyone would voluntarily take 20 hours of "training" just to be eligible for a position with the company - unless however, the economy sinks even more and people get desparate for a job. Otherwise, I just don't see why a company would waste its time this way. Why not concentrate on training the employees you already have?

To follow up on what John said, I worked with a company to develop their structured OJT program - a training program that involved progressive performance objectives which were associated with attaining various job levels within the company. BUT, they had already hired these people - they were all on a 90 day trial period. If after 90 days, they could not perform the identified tasks to the performance objectives specified, they were out of the company immediately - no second chances. If they made it past 90 days, they then had to pass successive performance measures to advance to the next higher levels. The company said that the program allowed them to routinely eliminate at least 1/3 of every class of new hires. They said that these eliminated employees were the ones who would have become real problems later on.

John has a good point about checking the legal requirements. I would however be surprised if there were any laws preventing companies to follow this type policy. But, you very well might run into problems if you have such a system for people not yet hired.