Made to exhaust you
Today I've stumbled upon two job descriptions that stated their hiring process. These are startups, where I thought speed of hiring and getting things done was a given. Below there's one example, both are very similar:
First interview with
- 30 mins - This step is aimed at getting to know each other, telling you more about the position, and aligning expectations.
Second interview with Co-founder & CTO - 1.5 hours - This step is aimed at understanding your past experience and diving deeper into some technical aspects. It will cover some behavioral questions and gauge culture fit as well.
Third interview with Founding Engineer - 1 hour - Live technical task
Fourth interview with an Engineer - 1 hour - Live technical task
Fifth interview with Co-founder & CTO - 1 hour - Systems Design
Offer (30 minutes) with CEO
Reference checks
I don't know whether to be angry or very scared. By now, we all know that interviewing is broken but I didn't quite fathom to what extent.
The job offer was not for a senior or management position but for a regular IC as a software developer. In my own experience as one, the time taken to schedule each interview while the candidate is waiting for the startup to answer and provide time slots ranges between 1-2 weeks. That's if you're lucky.
With that in mind, it is safe to assume the whole interview process will take any time ranging from 2 to 3 (or even 4) months. That's assuming you're lucky enough to check all the boxes, don't say anything or make any gesture the personnel involved in hiring might misinterpret or dislike, and have all your technical abilities that are completely unrelated to the job description up to date, keep your analytical and theoretical skills sharp and remember how to implement a genetic algorithm or a breadth-first search in a tree, you'll be fine.
Otherwise, sashay, away. There is no other reason in my mind for this gruesome process to exist other than to exhaust the interviewee so much that when the 🦄 mythical offer arrives 🦄, they are more prone to accepting a lowball one because they've burned through enough time, economic and cognitive resources to reject the carrot in front of them. The cake is a lie.
🕊 There is a better alternative 🕊: as someone who has done interviews in the past for software developers, any decent interviewer can have a good grasp of your technical skills in a one-on-one interview. Coupled with a cultural-fit and soft skills interview, you can grok a good amount of the potential person's skills and cultural match. One hour each should suffice to account for 75% of the information about this person that you need. Fine-tuning for the remaining 15% is going to be a waste of time for both parties.
Hire fast, and fire fast if there's no match! Shorten the length of the interview process, propose a two-week very narrow project to work on, and see how the new hire deals with it and communicates around it.
Making a person who is looking for a job go through countless interviews is putting a huge strain on their mind and body.
I would also legally limit the amount of interviews that tech companies can do to a maximum of three, and they can structure them as they want. Otherwise, they can and will abuse their position.
Let's make it better for everyone!