A friend of mine went through 7 rounds of interviews for a senior position in a tech company.
The sixth round was actual work, coming up with a preliminary plan for their first 90 days at the company in the position. It took them about a week to pull together and finalize.
The last round was a 15 minute discussion with one of the founders (who has since moved to the board and isn't involved in the day-to-day any more).
About 30 minutes later they got a call from the recruiter saying they "weren't a good personality fit with the founder" and they offered the role to somebody else.
And so they took that plan they made, locked it away, and never implemented any of it since that would be stealing, right? They definitely didn’t just take it and use it for free, right?
Wow, that is pretty annoying. It might have been something minor in the end because they couldn't decide between the two top candidates, but still ...
Yeah something minor like the candidate wasn't the nephew of the CEO.
Yup - but still. That should have happened before the big final "show us how you work" interview.
If not, then the founder should have been in those interviews.
I worked for a place where the CEO had a big hard on for saying we were "data driven". He also rejected my friend as a candidate in the final round based on vibes (as far as we could tell)
7 rounds is way beyond insane. I've done 3 and 4 only to lose out to "a better fit."
I just accepted an offer after a referral and a 30min interview with the hiring manager. That's it.
It's not with a VC funded company, which I count as a plus. Fewer circlejerking bike shedders.
7 rounds is way beyond insane. I’ve done 3 and 4 only to lose out to “a better fit.”
Way it works where I live is they had a relative in mind the whole time but still had to pretend to go through the motions of hiring.
Let me guess... they took the plan implemented it and 90 days later do the whole process again with someone else. Basically, they never hire anyone and get free work.
Sounds like the HR department needs to be locked together in a room with nothing to eat but bread and water.
This is always the case
Why HR and not the hiring managers?
Depends on how hiring works at your job
Promoting within the company is always faster…
Why are people comparing this to a new hire? Apples and oranges people.
And even outside of the company, I bet it would be significantly faster to hire someone if all the candidates were locked in a office room with the interviewers until a candidate was picked.
Interestingly, this is one way people would be chosen for promotion in a worker co-op. The Catholic Church has been syndicalist this whole time.
Edit: let me clarify that. The Papal Conclave gets all the cardinals together to decide on the next Pope. Usually, they choose someone from the cardinals (though not always). So typically, all the candidates for promotion are right there in the room and part of the decision making process.
Well, that moves the question. How come so many companies refuse to promote within?
They would need to hire to fill that old position anyways, or double up someone else’s workload.
And the unfortunate reality, hiring new is cheaper promotion usually implies a pay raise, and if the position you’ve held has already had a few promotions… you usually want to move with some esteem. Not at the very bottom again.
Training everyone for each step up is costly, while training one single person is trivial.
Except that current pope has been working with that org for a number of years and is a known quantity vs. some outside guy you're bringing in from the cold. A nice try at an analogy, but it doesn't quite stack up.
Nah, my place still requires you to apply as to not to be unfair. It still takes weeks.
Oh man story time, I just went through this yesterday.
I applied for a government job posting. I have 8-years experience in this particular role, and I've trained hundreds of coworkers for the job — I'm a dream applicant. They request in the posting that I read through their department's rubric on their values and cater my cover letter to it (e.g., demonstrate examples of showing service excellence, sound judgment, creative problem solving, yadda yadda yadda). Takes me an hour or two of what feels Iike writing a college thesis.
I get an offer to advance in the interview. I book off an hour of work for the first round of the interview, lying that it was a Doctor's appointment; then, I come to find it was actually a mandatory presentation asking people to not apply for the job unless they "really want it" because it's emotionally difficult. I consider it a waste of MY time.
Second round they offer me to take their '2-hour virtual exam', only offering it during business hours. I lie to my boss again and attend the session. After showing up on time, waiting for the Microsoft teams invite and getting nothing, I email the talent acquisition person: they are out of office.
The following Monday the lady is back in office, emails me, and offers me another virtual exam slot: 4 hours from now, again during work hours, and again requiring me to request time off from my current job.
Wtf? Is there another stage after the exam? An interview? How ridiculous have job searches gotten where we are expected to jump through endless hoops to satisfy prospective employers. Nobody has time to do this for every single frigging job they apply for.
I'll note as well this makes it really obvious to your current employer and co-workers that you are applying for other jobs.
For sure, and even though I know that I have to put myself first I still hate lying and I feel like im being forced to. This is apparently what is expected of us for certain jobs now. It's quite aggravating!
The only circumstances where I'd consider entertaining such ridiculous processes is: 1. If I was unemployed with nothing better to do, or 2. If it was a bonafide fact that the job was excellent (eg, if someone I trusted said it was a good place to work, outlining the benefits and drawbacks of working there).
Otherwise, if I'm working and you're asking for multiple hours of my work day, multiple times for interview things just so I can have a chance at getting the job? No thanks. I'm going to value a paycheque that I'm currently earning over one I could maybe have the opportunity to earn.
But I'm also not new to my chosen career path as a systems administrator (among so many other titles/hats that I wear). Bluntly, if you want me, make me an offer. I'll entertain a normal conversation about what I'm bringing to the table and vice versa, but beyond that, if you're on the fence about whether I'm worthwhile, then I'm in the wind. 🖕
I once applied for a government position. Entry level admin. I had been working admin for 7+yrs plus various volunteer positions since I was 18.
It was about 2hrs to fill out the form and answer all their questions.
I didn't hear anything back after a couple of weeks and was like, 'Ok. I should have heard back by now, I didn't get picked for an interview, whatever.'
ONE YEAR LATER I got an e-mail telling me that they weren't going ahead with my application.
If it's been a year and you're reaching out then it had better say that a new position has opened up and would like to talk to me about it, not 'We're going ahead with other candidates.' Also, if that's when you're getting an answer then it kinda looks like, 'We finally saw your application.' The slow turning wheels of bureaucracy...
It's fuckin' ridiculous.
The cardinals didn't have to weed through 1000's of AI generated resumes of people who don't really exist. Lol
I'm thinking if corporations started taking our applications seriously and didn't put up fake offers to abuse quotas then maybe people would also be less inclined to cheat the system by spamming resumes. It won't stop the bots, but it'd lighten the burden on whoever is looking at the candidates because it's real fuckin easy to filter fake resumes.
Sadly, neither side would stop abusing the system in my opinion. Besides, a lot of the resume spammers are doing it as a business for others.
Harvard(?) has done studies that the odds of successfully choosing a candidate via the standard interview process is no better than picking names out of a hat.
It's the illusion of control that matters the most, not that the process is actually effective.
Excellent point.
Though you can definitely make it worse with a crappy process.
I had 5 rounds of interviews for a Tier 1 IT job.
To be fair, the Pope candidates aren't random interested people, I don't pretend to know how it works but there's some long process to get to that point for sure
Tbf the reason why they locked everyone up to elect a new pope is bc one time it took months to do so they made the rule to lock everyone in a room from then on until they selected someone
Legit worked for a place that could never seem to land a new hire because they would take forever to decide on someone and when they finally went "okay" they'd have taken another job in the meantime.
They even went so far as to build a spreadsheet showing the direct correlation of that chronic indecision and it's propensity to miss out on hires and it didn't help.
How did you get a job there?
By not taking any other jobs in the meantime I guess
I think because I went through a placement agency that was pushier. Or maybe because the SVP that started up the office was more hands on then.
I had a place I applied for contact me 6 months later to ask if I was still interested in the position. I had been hired elsewhere and already promoted by the time they got back to me. I did not return their call.
From my experience it’s usually because management doesn’t want to meet the applicants until person A, B, and C have all individually thought the candidate is worth the upper management team’s time.
Corporations don’t care unless they are regulated to care, but it’s also mixed with some corporations getting lots of flakes for the interviews. A hour wasted of upper management time spent studying up on someone that doesn’t show up for the interview could be a few hundred or a thousand dollars down the drain in “missed productivity”. Still, if they cared about the candidates they would do a team interview, and bring the executive team in right after if they thought the candidate was solid.
If somebody would do that do me I would very likely not show up after the third round because I would think they're crazy. (Am in Austria though so results might differ) But seriously after a second interview I would feel like they are trolling me and chances of me not showing up would be high... Is that really normal in the USA?
I believe the job market dictates some of it. It depends a lot on your company’s structure here in the USA for if this is the standard or not as well. Plus different states have more protections for hired on workers which could further complicate how picky organizations get.
If it’s a mid to large size employer this becomes more common practice to do multiple interviews, I believe.
There could be time conflicts for organizing an interview, such as the need to hire someone during a busy season vs slow season, or when different key decision makers are out on PTO. The company could also be having a difficult time making a final choice between two or more candidates so they are trying to find anything to help weed some of them out. I think that last one is pretty pathetic though since it is wasting everyone’s time if can’t make that determination from the initial interview.
Ooh that's a good tip. When my time is disrespected at a job interview, I'll go ahead and book the next round and then ghost them.
Of course! Most companies deserve to ghosted imo. It should not take weeks for them to assess if a candidate could be a good fit, and they should be prepared to discuss your starting salary then and there.
Many companies will not pay you what you’re worth initially and still won’t after you negotiate for more, as they don’t really fully commit themselves to a candidate until they’ve proved themselves a little over the first 90 days. If you’re blowing their expectations out of the water, you can usually negotiate for more after the 90 day starting period.
Technology increasing the ability to advertise the position to a wider pool of candidates has accomplished nothing but to make companies paranoid about hiring nobody but the absolute most perfect one worldwide, instead of just picking somebody "good enough" from the smaller local pool of candidates and moving on.
Depends on if I have the upper hand. market is not great for dev right now.
Plus this is the dumbest meme ever. Ya pope took 2 days to get the job, same with internal transfer hires.
All those interviews, and they just end up hiring North Korean tech workers anyway, Give 'em a break man, things are hard enough over there already!
Never do free work! Fucking never! If they ask you to do that kind of thing take the amount of time you think it'll take to complete, and take the offered salary for that position to find out how much they need to pay you before hand. No exceptions!!
That's not the best argument, since historically some popes took many years to select. Like, so long it was a major problem and they had to make reforms that included locking the cardinals in a room and taking away everything but bread and water at times.
Good details about the insanity in this Tasting History episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZCs9aMkzBQ
The hiring manager and maybe a couple team members are the only ones that need to talk to anyone for an interview for 90% of jobs. 1 interview. If you can't get a measure of the person you're talking to during that then you're not fit to be doing interviews. No reason for all these fucking hoops wasting peoples time.
The quickness of the current pope being selected makes me wonder why it took so damn long last time.
Internal prejudice against Jesuits, if I had to guess.
Ha! I like this
