In reply to z31maniac :
Ahh. We don't have that around these parts, hence why people still put wild salary ranges in their postings, if at all.
Hopefully my post didn't look like I was trying to call out the doc, more hoping to give him advice on how to bring in talent. I should have worded that a bit better.
Relevant video I ran across a while ago. It seems that there are 3 factors driving the multi-round interview nonsense: First to diffuse blame within the company in case of a bad hire, second to increase candidate desperation/increase candidate risk so that they'll accept a lower offer, and third as a cargo-cult HR ritual copied from leading tech megacorps.
Wow.
I think there can be a few explanations that are far less insidious. Like, big companies have several people who need to be included in the hiring process, and they can't always be in the same place to interview.
My old company had a hiring round that had 400 people interviewing for only 3 or 4 positions. Several departments had to be involved, and the entire business couldn't be shut down to do interviews.
My current company has 5 offices, but only 1 HR department. HR is gonna have to interview, but so is the local office that is hiring (which might be 6 hrs away).
I know it's inconvenient, but there is not always a corporate boogeyman.
We do multiple interviews also. I am pretty sure it is not insidious. The primary reason I see is that we are very interested in seeing how you fit in with the people you will be working with, since, at least in my areas, it can be a decent variety. This of course includes making sure you have some competence in the areas needed, and that is not always possible with one or two interviews.
I should note that preliminary interviews are singles, it's just once they get filtered out a bit it goes to multiple people. We are also entirely remote, so you cannot just walk someone around and do introductions.
On the other side, for a recent opening, I am guessing because of how things work these day, the openings get BOMBED with candidates. Like hundreds, but I think most are not really qualified, and I am told it's likely the result of some sort of Auto Apply option in LinkedIn. It seems like a bit of hell for recruiting / hiring people.
I also wonder what the affect of AI written resumes is having. I know in the past companies have done automated preliminary scans for key words. With AI, you can likely make sure those are all in there in a reasonable way. Probaly more hell for the recruiters.
I'm just frustrated at the lack of interviews. My job is insanely specific, I'm really good at it, and I'm known in a 100-mile radius to be one of two people proficient in my position. In the past 10 years, there have been exactly three job openings in my field in the area. I applied for all three. The first one, I was the ONLY person who applied. I had three interviews and they decided to try and fill the position with a part-time volunteer. Long story short, that someone caused an accident, someone is permanently confined to a wheelchair, and the business is now dead. The second one, I applied, interviewed twice, and I was offered the position 4 MONTHS LATER after I had given up and negotiated a raise in my current job. The third one they advertised a salary range of $X - $Y depending on experience. They came back with an offer that was less than X, so I started my negotiations at double the value of Y. They never even negotiated back up to X, so I told them to berkeley off. (politely)
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
You are within 100 miles of both Philadelphia and Baltimore, as well as Bethlehem PA and State College. About 175 miles from NYC, and less than that from Washington DC. Seems like there should be a lot more opportunities. Colleges?
I used to live there.
The first 6 women astronauts were selected in 1978 by NASA from a pool of 8000 candidates. How in the world would they have done that without multiple rounds of interviews and testing?
Multiple rounds is not a bad thing. It's a very, very good thing- showing that you are not only qualified, but the best candidate, and the best fit for the corporate culture.
Trust me, being selected in the first round is probably not a good thing... it may mean no one else wanted the job, and that it's a E36 M3ty job that you may not last at, or enjoy.
Having been on the other side of the interview table for two F500's, I still maintain you need 2 interviews, max, to determine if a candidate is a good fit.
Interview 1: Idiot filter with recruiter/HR/etc
Interview 2: With the position's direct supervisor
In most cases, I knew within 10 minutes if I was hiring the candidate or not.
5-6 rounds of interviews are wasteful and absolutely unnecessary.
aircooled said:On the other side, for a recent opening, I am guessing because of how things work these day, the openings get BOMBED with candidates. Like hundreds, but I think most are not really qualified, and I am told it's likely the result of some sort of Auto Apply option in LinkedIn. It seems like a bit of hell for recruiting / hiring people.
I also wonder what the affect of AI written resumes is having. I know in the past companies have done automated preliminary scans for key words. With AI, you can likely make sure those are all in there in a reasonable way. Probaly more hell for the recruiters.
Candidates "growing the haystack" for companies is becoming a major problem in a lot of ways today, if LinkedIn is autonomously applying people for jobs they could soon be seen to be doing more harm than good to employers...
In reply to calteg :
F500 companies process: Ckearly defined, procedural, appropriate lines of authority, each team lead has authority to do their own hiring (after HR)
Ma and Pa companies process: You're kidding, right? Zero procedures, zero clean chain of command, only the boss can make any decision at all, and those decisions are made entirely by the seat of his pants.
Every other company process: Somewhere in-between.
Less than 1% of employees worldwide work for F500 companies.
I hear you, and agree with the theory, but in practice it just doesn't work that way.
calteg said:Having been on the other side of the interview table for two F500's, I still maintain you need 2 interviews, max, to determine if a candidate is a good fit.
Interview 1: Idiot filter with recruiter/HR/etc
Interview 2: With the position's direct supervisor
In most cases, I knew within 10 minutes if I was hiring the candidate or not.
5-6 rounds of interviews are wasteful and absolutely unnecessary.
I would agree 5-6 rounds seems a bit extreme, but it will still depend on the job, and how you count the interviews.
We do 1 and 2 just like you, but if we stopped there, both the new hire and the people that would work with them regularly would have no concept what they are getting into and/or if they can work well together. It also assumes the manager is fully competent in the particular area of work, which in many cases is very much not the case.
We add a 3rd set of (short) interviews, that can involve a number of people in different interviews to cover who this person will regularly work with. Now if you count those by interview, yes you can easily get over 5-6, but if you just count that as round 3, then no.
In our system, although it's a good amount of work / time. I think it is good for both the hiring area as well as the applicant. Hiring the wrong person, or taking a job you will be unhappy with because of the people involved can be very damaging, to the person and everyone involved with that person.
It amazes me that corporate hiring is as AFU as it is, give the resources they put into talent acquisition and retention. HR is frequently outsourced, at least on the front end, and mostly an obstacle to getting things done. When I was in the hiring process we always requested the raw stack of resumes from HR because they have no clue how to screen technical people. On the last hire I was involved in, we pulled the resume of the guy we actually hired out of the discard pile and he turned out to be a great hire. The "preferred" candidates were all pretty weak.
As a hiring manager my process would look like:
I interviewed with Cisco through one of these seven round hiring gauntlets and I wouldn't work for a company with processes that suck that badly. They failed the interview.
/rant off
I had multiple rounds of interviews for my current position. The first few were informational interviews where we discussed the reality of the position, and the keys to success in the role. It was a good opportunity to feel each other out and see if it was a good fit. Then I had an interview with the hiring manager, and we went out to lunch with a few other guys on the team. After that, I met with my manager's manager, and they made an offer.
The process stretched out over several weeks, and it would have been brutal if I didn't have a job already, but I felt I knew exactly what I was getting into and who I'd be working with. I'm guessing they felt they had a good read on me from multiple team members.
I knew the job was going to be a good fit based in my first conversation with the hiring manager. He left the company shortly after I was hired, and at that point I was really glad I had gotten a feel for the rest of the team, because I ended up working with them directly.
In my case, multiple rounds were a little frustrating, but worth it in the end.
jwagner (Forum Supporter) said:It amazes me that corporate hiring is as AFU as it is, give the resources they put into talent acquisition and retention. HR is frequently outsourced, at least on the front end, and mostly an obstacle to getting things done. When I was in the hiring process we always requested the raw stack of resumes from HR because they have no clue how to screen technical people. On the last hire I was involved in, we pulled the resume of the guy we actually hired out of the discard pile and he turned out to be a great hire. The "preferred" candidates were all pretty weak.
I heard of someone at a tech company making the same request, he then tested the process by setting up dummy emails and submitting two resumes, one decent and one really stupid, and when he didn't get the really stupid one he went back to HR to complain...
Peripherally related: reading through the Cover Letter thread, I found this comment to be right on the money. I'm not HR but I do have a hand on candidate reviews and interviews.
Marjorie Suddard said:
Pro: A cover letter shows an amount of giveaE36 M3 that makes me notice an applicant.
Con: Most cover letters suck and actually make it clear to me why I do not want to consider that applicant.
A cover letter can make you stand out, but you need to nail it. Granted, we are a writing-centric company, so bad writing matters even more perhaps to us, but the basics should hold true anywhere: Tell me why you think you can make a difference at my company, and do it in a way that lets me know you have researched said company and understand how the job works; then tell me why you want this particular job. And don't screw it up: It has to be letter perfect, concise, and respectful of my time as a hiring manager. If you can't deliver that, skip the cover letter and hope your résumé can deliver a Hail Mary over anyone who did supply a good one.
Margie
I'm pretty certain that my company's HR department is not helping us.
Our biggest shortage is in skilled on-site supervisory positions. This is a fairly technical role which HR personnel are not skilled at, and can't be easily determined from a resume.
There is a massive industry-wide shortage (I'll give them that), but I'm pretty sure we aren't getting the good resumes.
HR says only 1 out of every 100 applicants are worth looking at. I can't figure out why 99% of the people who apply for a technical role would not have the technical background.
It occurs to me that making hiring a nearly impossible job would make the HR job completely indispensable. Maybe it's just job security?? I don't like thinking that, but I'm not seeing any better explanations.
My experience in my former life with a multi national company was 3-4 layers to hire contract to full time employees. Layer 1 was an external HR or head hunter. The interview was usually by phone or online. Layer 2 was an internal HR interview. This was by phone or in person. Honestly, we probably lost good candidates in the first two layers, but minions had no say in that part of the process. Layer 3 was the internal manager and the some of the technical team. Often Layer 3 was split into two separate interview's depending on the position and everyone's schedules. This was an industrial environment where a plant tour might take 4 hours or more to scratch the surface. The manager may or may not be a technical person. Often it is up to the team to ask the skills questions.
Could all of that happen in a day or two? Yes, if everyone has time in their schedule. The reality is a couple of weeks to make all it happen.
Interviews are a two way street. We don't want to waste time onboarding someone only to find out that they are a bad fit or don't transition well between the office and the industrial space. We also did not want someone to get an incomplete picture of the job and hit eject in six months.
My most crazy Kobayashi Maru question in an interview was this 5 person interview team I faced asked me "If you don't have the authority to make decisions, but you are the only person available to make a decision, that the client says is very urgent and will greatly impact schedule, would you make the decision?"
I flipped it back on them and asked if they have a culture that would award or punish that kind of behavior.
The interview pretty much ended there. I guess because I didn't rise to the bait so they could beat me up. I found out later they had already made a decision to hire a previous interviewee but had some corporate box to check off that they had interviewed 3 candidates. So instead of being honest they went for putting me into the no win situation.
I found this out because the person they hired was a friend of mine but we didn't realize we were both interviewing for the same position.
My current job was 4 rounds of interviews, but since I still lived in Tulsa at the time and the office was in OKC, 3 of the 4 were phone interviews.
Ran across an interesting article regarding applicants "growing the haystack" with automated applications. This guy was able to apply to over 5000 jobs for $250:
https://www.wired.com/story/this-ai-bot-fills-out-job-applications-for-you-while-you-sleep/
Out of those he got 20 interviews, so an 0.5% interview rate. Mine with a probably lowish number of manual applications is probably in the 5-10% range overall, over the last few years I've been a lot more picky and it's probably closer to 30%.
What is it with Zoom interviews where the hiring manager doesn't turn on their camera? Seriously, there is a reason why people don't hire with just a phone interview and that is what you have decided to do here.
Just interviewed for a pretty nice position with one of the EV startups. This is for a very experienced position that pays very nicely. I looked up the hiring manager on Linkedin and see that he managed a coffee shop just six years ago. He is one of the camera-off hiring managers I have had. No offense to coffee shop managers but for the experience they are requiring for the position I applied for, the hiring manager didn't have even 10% of that knowledge/experience/skill.
I heard yesterday that the provincial government is going to require pay ranges to be a part of all wanted ads.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-banning-ndas-1.7019644
Ontario is planning to require employers to include salary ranges in job postings and disclose if artificial intelligence is used during the hiring process.
Not a bad idea, though I hope they don't just become wildly high and low ranges. I hate job postings with no pay, although if they don't post the pay, it's likely too low and they know it
In reply to Peabody :
That's awesome (yeah, with the caveat you mentioned).
I find the failure of employers to define the salary range extremely distasteful. They force job seekers to be talented at negotiations, even if that has nothing to do with their job or skill set. Then they make them face highly skilled professional negotiators, and the job seekers lose every time.
It's a huge contributor to poor job satisfaction. Employees feel like they lost something before they even begin employment.
Face it as time goes on corporations are approaching a care about employees level about the same as the early Industrial Revolution. It shows in the hiring and firing processes too. The good news, at least for technical people, the dynamic is shifting. Companies will soon find themselves needing people more than people need them.
Not a bad idea, though I hope they don't just become wildly high and low ranges. I hate job postings with no pay, although if they don't post the pay, it's likely too low and they know it
They've done this in Colorado for a year or so. And, yes, you routinely see pay ranges listing "$60K - $160K" and other incredibly wide ranges.
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