Okay to be frank, I enjoy interviews. And interviewing for 7 hours isn't a big deal for me with a company at all.
However it just gets tiring.
I'm actually going to be at a 7 hours total of interviewing with one company. 5 hours total with another (in addition to recruiter calls) and possibly even more.
The thing is I know my worth, and this is actually a feeling the market round for me, so I'm not stressed at all. But I have done interviews where I spent 4 hrs writing some mock react app as a take-home, then another 4 hours of interviews, and those really get to me, they killed an evening for me. Those are the worst.
Point is... Interviewing suuuucks when you're some of the highest paid employees in the company.
Some hints I want to give for people interviewing:
1) Start the convo with salary expectations. Otherwise you spend 6 hours and find out its too low. I made this mistake. Don't be me.
2) Level set on seniority level and what would it take for you to leave your current job. If you despise your job, okay I can see this being quick, if you do not you're gonna be looking for potential negotiating power.
3) Enjoy the interview. Literally people want you to blabber on about yourself for 4 hours. Shit I could not think of a better way to get my cabin fever out of the way.
Make this A LOT EASIER ON YOURSELF: make sure you know your talking points. Know your core stories you fall back to for all sort of behavioral questions. I'd say do 10 trial interviews, after about 10 you get REALLY good at this, then interview for the jobs you really really actually care about. If you can, conduct as many interviews as possible at work. Sit in them. Lead them. The more you conduct the easier you can interview for someone else. Its like free practice!!!! Best part, the thing you look for... the other side looks for when they interview you!!!
4) Brush up on a little bit of leet code, but also know how to take your time. Being able to ace the technical interview is a great way to go. Startups tend not to offer leet code because they can't be that picky. The best interviews are things like "did you read the code?!?!?!" "did you read the data structure?" "can you approach a technical problem well or do you get lost?" "can you debug?"
How to ace technical interviews: interview a friend. What would YOU look for from a technical person? What helps you decide "wow this person really knows how to code" from "this person has memorized leet code questions". Then do that exact thing. Show them you understand trade-offs, you don't have to implement them but show you know about them, talk about ways your code could have been better if you had more time, learn to structure / attack problems in a modular way. All that makes you look GOOOOOOOD.
5) Make it a fun convo. Think of the interview as a date. Both of you want different things, but ultimately both of you want to show eachother a good time. So show them a good time, and let them show you a good time. You get people talking about their projects and fun technical challenges (if you ever interview with an architect). Remember, people LOVE TO TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES. If they do, they feel good. Make sure to answer what they need to make a decision and then throw in some happy they talk about their stuff into the mix.
In any case. Make the interview fun, and long interviews turn out to be a fun time to hang out with new people and get cool short conversations going. And make a fuckton of money from it :)