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The rise of never-ending job interviews

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Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#2
What’s happening is that companies want to completely remove risk from the hiring process.

In the real world, you cannot remove risk. You can manage it, but you cannot remove it. Asking candidates to go through 6 interviews before making a decision and not telling them when a decision will be made signals a risk adverse culture that cannot make decisions.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#3
People are getting less and less willing to deal with bullshit when they're in massive demand and there is a talent shortage in $x industry. And they're finding out they can move around easily now too in this remote-first world.

Something is going to have to change - really a lot of things. One of them is going to be that companies need to learn to figure out how to hire people without putting them through a grind-fest. Figure out how to deal with bad hires after-the-fact, but don't let yourself get screwed not hiring good talent because you made the interview process a giant pain in the ass to catch the crap.

Oh and compensation needs to go up to make some of these interview grinds worth it.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#4
A big part of what prompted me to become a contractor. When I last did this, everything was at least 3 interviews, + sometimes even the recruiters wanted to meet with you first.

Finding your own clients doesn't start looking as bad, and a discussion to see if you'll work together is much better than an interview.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#5

What’s happening is that companies want to completely remove risk from the hiring process. In the real world, you cannot remove risk. You can manage it, but you cannot remove it. Asking candidates to go through 6 interviews before making a decision and not telling them when a decision will be made signals a risk adverse culture that cannot make decisions.

The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes years to prune bad talent.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#6
> That’s a question Mike Conley, 49, grappled with earlier this year. The software engineer, based in Indiana, US, had been seeking a new role after losing his job during the pandemic

This is ageism. I hope he realized this after 10 6 rounds of interviews.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507732

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#7

What’s happening is that companies want to completely remove risk from the hiring process. In the real world, you cannot remove risk. You can manage it, but you cannot remove it. Asking candidates to go through 6 interviews before making a decision and not telling them when a decision will be made signals a risk adverse culture that cannot make decisions.

The reason they want to remove the risk is because it takes years to prune bad talent.

And they're also in the situation where good talent isn't going to tolerate that rubbish.

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#9
post #4

A big part of what prompted me to become a contractor. When I last did this, everything was at least 3 interviews, + sometimes even the recruiters wanted to meet with you first. Finding your own clients doesn't start looking as bad, and a discussion to see if you'll work together is much better than an interview.

Are you a contractor or consultant? Because SW contractors are just quasi FTEs without health insurance and no termination notice periods

Re: The rise of never-ending job interviews

#10
If your application process starts with a human being—even better a technical human being—reaching out to me, followed by 2-3 interviews, followed by an offer, I am already on your side. If your application process starts with a HackerRank, followed by 2 phone interviews followed by on-site, followed by team matching, I will not be on your side. Oh and if there's random month long gaps in between stages, I will especially be uninterested.

I've noticed though that as I've gotten more specialized to compilers and programming languages, my application experience has improved significantly. It's not a large sample size but the last few processes I've gone through have been fewer interviews that usually involve going over a project of mine or doing a problem that's related to compilers. It's really refreshing to have an interview where I actually learn something about my field of interest during it. I know that doesn't scale because we shouldn't expect compilers knowledge for junior compilers jobs but it's a very nice change of pace for me.

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