One reason why finding a job is such a hassle. So many employers just want to interview people to hit a quota of “candidates reviewed” without taking any given candidate seriously.
You get a bunch of false positives in the search and waste time going through the motions with people who aren’t actually in charge of anything.
Straight out of college I had an eight hour interview process once, for an IT job that paid $25k starting. Round after round of quizes and queries that ate up my whole day.
Then I got picked up by a boutique medical IT firm a few weeks later after two calls and a 30 minute walk in, for nearly twice the salary. When I got the rejection letter from the first people six months later all I could do was laugh.
I had a place tell me I wasn’t selected almost exactly a year after I had spoken with them. I set a timer for as long as they had waited to send me that, and replied to it myself a year later.
Probably no one saw it or understood, but it made me chuckle.
My experience in engineering on both sides of the table is similar. As a hiring manager, my goal is to move as fast as possible because talented folks are going to be looking at lots of places and I need present the best option to them very quickly so I don’t lose them. I don’t fuck around with haggling or candidate pools; two, maybe three max interviews depending on the role and we’re rejecting or making the best possible offer we can. I picked this up from companies I have preferred to work at. I think massive enterprises get bogged down in their internal processes and procedures and red tape while forgetting the employee experience begins during the candidate experience. If I have to go through many rounds of interviews I can only assume working there will be miles of bureaucracy before I can do anything more than sneeze.
I am personally fine with the old onsite process where you’d go to the company and have a day or half a day of interviews with not only the team but the stakeholders as well. Post-COVID that turned into a remote onsite and slowly turned into weeks of interviews which I don’t like but is more flexible for serious candidates. When I was running those, each group had specific areas to cover so we got a good sense of the boundaries of your skills. You got to meet many people you’d work with and get a sense of how things run. Always practical, though, never any of that leetcode bullshit. Also always two way. You don’t just stare at a candidate; they need to understand you to make a good decision. And, most importantly, the scale is based on seniority/pay. I’m not going to spend more than an hour or two with a junior interview because it’s a fucking junior interview.
One reason why finding a job is such a hassle. So many employers just want to interview people to hit a quota of “candidates reviewed” without taking any given candidate seriously.
You get a bunch of false positives in the search and waste time going through the motions with people who aren’t actually in charge of anything.
Straight out of college I had an eight hour interview process once, for an IT job that paid $25k starting. Round after round of quizes and queries that ate up my whole day.
Then I got picked up by a boutique medical IT firm a few weeks later after two calls and a 30 minute walk in, for nearly twice the salary. When I got the rejection letter from the first people six months later all I could do was laugh.
I had a place tell me I wasn’t selected almost exactly a year after I had spoken with them. I set a timer for as long as they had waited to send me that, and replied to it myself a year later.
Probably no one saw it or understood, but it made me chuckle.
My experience in engineering on both sides of the table is similar. As a hiring manager, my goal is to move as fast as possible because talented folks are going to be looking at lots of places and I need present the best option to them very quickly so I don’t lose them. I don’t fuck around with haggling or candidate pools; two, maybe three max interviews depending on the role and we’re rejecting or making the best possible offer we can. I picked this up from companies I have preferred to work at. I think massive enterprises get bogged down in their internal processes and procedures and red tape while forgetting the employee experience begins during the candidate experience. If I have to go through many rounds of interviews I can only assume working there will be miles of bureaucracy before I can do anything more than sneeze.
I am personally fine with the old onsite process where you’d go to the company and have a day or half a day of interviews with not only the team but the stakeholders as well. Post-COVID that turned into a remote onsite and slowly turned into weeks of interviews which I don’t like but is more flexible for serious candidates. When I was running those, each group had specific areas to cover so we got a good sense of the boundaries of your skills. You got to meet many people you’d work with and get a sense of how things run. Always practical, though, never any of that leetcode bullshit. Also always two way. You don’t just stare at a candidate; they need to understand you to make a good decision. And, most importantly, the scale is based on seniority/pay. I’m not going to spend more than an hour or two with a junior interview because it’s a fucking junior interview.