Processes with a ridiculous number of stages

I did 8 rounds for my last job each with multiple people....

It's a pain in the arse but I guess it's important sometimes if you're going to have to influence multiple stakeholders..
 
I interviewed at a US company recently with a bit of a strange process, it was:

Brief discussion over video chat, just introducing the role: 30 mins
Take home exercise to write a report: ~3 hours, paid $150
Take home exercise to write a different kind of report: ~8-12 hours, paid $500
Take home technical exercise: ~8-12 hours, paid $500
Technical video interview: ~1.5 hours
No-technical video interview: ~45 mins

I didn't end up getting the job and I can't decide if it's a good process or not, very time consuming that's for sure! But at least it's paid so not a waste of your time if you don't get it.
 
At a previous employer, the process I went through was:
  • Multiple screening calls with the agent
  • F2F meeting with the agent
  • Phone interview with hiring manager
  • F2F interview with hiring manager and a senior peer
  • Online 60min test
  • F2F interview with hiring manager's boss and a senior peer
  • F2F interview with a senior peer and HR
This was for a role that at the time had no management responsibilities. The only saving grace was the booked the final two interviews on the same day so I didn't have to make separate journeys into London for them.


Then about 15 months ago I interviewed at a company where the process was:
  • Video interview with their internal recruiter
  • Video interview with Director
  • Video Panel interview with 3 people in NA who clearly hadn't had done any prep
  • Video Panel interview with another 3 people in NA
The next stage was to be an interview with the hiring manager. This was getting delayed. By this point it was over a month after my first interview so I enquired about if there would be any more stages in the process, as I had an offer from elsewhere (they'd already inserted a second panel interview that wasn't outlined in my original chat with the recruiter). I was told there would likely be one more stage after that and it could be a "couple of weeks" to reach a decision!
So basically, after a month of interviews, they said it would still be a couple more weeks. This was for a job with a fancy title in an interesting field but wasn't anything THAT senior. I withdrew from the process despite it being a job that on paper was potentially more appealing to me than the other offer.

Key lessons learned for hiring I would say are try to be quicker, get interview slots prebooked in manager's diaries, and be up front from the start about elongated processes. Ultimately they wasted their own time as well as mine.
 
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dowie said:
That's a bad process on thier part, usually, this is asked about at the start of a process by the external recruiter/head hunter or in-house recruiter/HR person you're dealing with and you have the dilemma of what to reveal, what sort of range to give or whether you're going to push them for a range first etc. Regardless it shouldn't be the case that you get through a process and the offer is a total surprise to you or indeed for them that you turn it down because you're so far apart, if they've not established a range then you can push for it else why waste your time in the first place.
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Was a startup with a few people. No hr. They were the ones to initiate it all by messaging me on LinkedIn. Given I was working remotely for a different place I thought it would be nice to be working at a place in my city. Glad I turned it down even if the money had been right. Shortly after I fell into much more interesting things.
 
I've interviewed for three roles over the last three years. I didn't apply for any of these, in each case I was approached.

Position 1 - UK based Senior Consultant with management responsibilities, £70k
  • Initial informal chat with internal recruiter - 30m
  • Peer to peer interview with someone in the same role I was applying for - 30m
  • Interview with the delivery lead for the UK, again felt a peer to peer chat more than an "interview" - 30m
All positioned as "chats", done in the space of a week, and offer received the following day. I declined the position as they couldn't offer me the working conditions I needed.

Position 2 - German based "We'll make up a role for you if you are the right person", €70-100k
  • Initial informal chat with the founder and the sales director - 30m
They were happy to create a role for me on the spot but would want me in the office 3 days a week in Cologne, I would have stretched to Munich a couple of times a week but not Cologne.

Position 3 - Austrian based Senior Consultant but with no management responsibilities €90k
  • Initial informal chat with internal recruiter - 45m
  • Interview with the director (this was more like a sales pitch from her to be honest) - 30m
  • Interview with the Technical Lead (unpleasant technical grilling on stuff that is not really my job role and not expected to be either) - 60m
All positioned as "chats", done in around 10 days, offer made, counter requested, counter responded to in under 24 hours, job accepted.

I think for the vast majority of positions, if you haven't got a damn good feel for the candidate after 3 interviews then you might, as a company, need to look at your processes and decision making capabilities.
 
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I think this problem is mostly down to the fact that previously you'd just go on-site and see all the people you needed to see in a day, now you just get slotted in with video calls spread over days.
 
It's not just VC slowing down the process, my first example above with 4 interviews (excluding recruiter) and test had no video calls. Checking my inbox I first spoke to the agent on the 13th of June, with the interviews taking place on 4th, 11th and 22nd of July. So about 2.5 weeks to get the first interview and then another 2.5 weeks to complete the steps.

If anything VC should make it easier, as candidates often have a lot more flexibility to attend VC interviews compared to face to face. I'd say the issue is more bad organisation on getting the interview slots locked into diaries early enough. When I was a hiring manager the recruitment team would sometimes find it challenging to penetrate my calendar so in the end I suggested booking in placeholder slots that they could then fill (or not).

My wife works for the NHS who are pretty horrific with some admin stuff but one thing they seem to do reasonably well is interview logistics, she'll basically go to a specific site and interview multiple candidates and typically make decisions on the day about who to make offers to.
 
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HangTime said:
It's not just VC slowing down the process, my first example above with 4 interviews (excluding recruiter) and test had no video calls. Checking my inbox I first spoke to the agent on the 13th of June, with the interviews taking place on 4th, 11th and 22nd of July. So about 2.5 weeks to get the first interview and then another 2.5 weeks to complete the steps.
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The agent stuff is third party though and isn't necessarily relevant to the company's processes (another candidate may have been sourced directly or referred by an employee or another agent may have done less screening and taken less time to put a candidate forward).

Essentially you had a phone interview and 3 in-person interviews + an online test across just over 2 weeks which isn't an outrageous amount of time for a recruitment process. Perhaps they could have made it slightly more efficient by cutting one of the in-person interviews and having HR present in the interview with the hiring manager's boss.

Initial phone screen + 1 in-person interview with hiring manager + team member/peer + 2nd in-person interview with 1 up from hiring manager + HR (and maybe some other team member/stakeholder) and the objective assessment bit would seem pretty reasonable.

Companies like Amazon manage to get everything scheduled to within a week but that's a bit of an exception, 2.5 weeks isn't really all that bad.
 
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Amazon was one of the worst recruitment processes I've experienced:

Interview booked for 6th Jan
Interview moved from 6th to 14th
Next interview (VC) scheduled for 26th
Chased them for next steps on 1st Feb
Chased again on 8th Feb via their generic candidate support as had been ghosted by their in house recruiter

Most companies at least have the decency to send a 1 line email (automated or otherwise) saying thanks but no thanks, not completely ghosting you after an unsuccessful interview. Leaving aside the non-existent comms at the tail end, it took basically 3 weeks between 1st and 2nd interviews despite not being in person.
 
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The bigger the company is, the longer and more complex the recruitment process is.

I had this with both Amazon and Microsoft.
 
I'm onto the 2nd of 4/5 stages for a role in tech, it's not only a long process but due to the bureaucracy it's also a long process in between the initial chat, the idiot interview, the tech interview, the team interview and the panel interview.

Second time I have been round the ringer for this company, sadly the first role (pre-sales consultant) didn't pan out as they had a huge recruitment freeze so unlike some of the other big tech firms, haven't made sweeping redundancies - I'd just passed round 3 of 5 when that happened 6 months ago.
 
HangTime said:
Amazon was one of the worst recruitment processes I've experienced:

Interview booked for 6th Jan
Interview moved from 6th to 14th
Next interview (VC) scheduled for 26th
Chased them for next steps on 1st Feb
Chased again on 8th Feb via their generic candidate support as had been ghosted by their in house recruiter

Most companies at least have the decency to send a 1 line email (automated or otherwise) saying thanks but no thanks, not completely ghosting you after an unsuccessful interview. Leaving aside the non-existent comms at the tail end, it took basically 3 weeks between 1st and 2nd interviews despite not being in person.
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This year? Unfortunate, but not surprising given the circumstances. The recruiter and hiring manager probably didn't know what was going on either - if they were still even there.
 
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No, a couple of years ago. I went out with some former colleagues last night one of whom works for Amazon now and she was surprised it was like that.
 
Just had another stage that was meant to be presentation by me, then presentation Q&A, then competency questions.

They asked so many questions about the presentation that there was no time for any competency questions, then we all had meetings to get to and they just said "thank you very much, HR will be in touch with feedback".

So what does that mean, will there be another competency round because you didn't get round to asking me any questions when you were meant to?

"Thanks HR will be in touch" doesn't bode well so maybe it's academic :cry:.
 
That's pretty poor time management on their side, assuming your presentation didn't use more than 40% of the allotted interview time. I've chaired interviews that have overrun before but I've always checked with the candidate beforehand if they have a hard stop or not before it gets close to the finishing time, so I can pace accordingly.
FWIW, I think most/all of the times I've struggled to close an interview on time the candidate has been successful or at least a decent fit, and conversely it's generally been bad when we finish up really early with them having no questions they want to ask.
 
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