A cool guide for red flags during job interviews.
A cool guide for red flags during job interviews.
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Anything more than two interview rounds for anything below a C-level position is just nuts and an abuse of the candidate's time. You can never cover all bases in the interview process, that's what probation is for.
3-5 rounds is not at all uncommon in tech, but tech is also known for having completely deranged interview processes.
The jobs are unfortunately very much worth it.
I once had to do three rounds of interviews for a level 1 tech position. I got the job and the company was mostly fine with no major weirdness, but unnecessarily drawn out interview process for a simple job.
The issue was they have a had of doing interviews and that template was used for all interviews and they're were not prepared to change it based on logic or reason. Independent thought was not encouraged at that company.
I'd expand it to director plus or similar, i.e. for people who lead other people with personell responsibilities it starts making sense to have three rounds imo.
That said I share your gist!
Yup, any leadership role is not a single or two interviews. You interview usually with HR, then C levels, then peers, then you're team usually. It's not unusual. Myself and I'm sure plenty others here have had the same experience.
At my current and previous job (IT) we do 3 rounds, team (most important), technical and management. I find that this works pretty well to hire people that really dit both the team and know how to do the job. Each last 40-60 minutes.
The first is where most candidates fail, it's an interview with your future peers with little technical content. Mainly talking about interests, work style, how you interact with team mates, etc.
The second is with senior team members and is mostly technical.
The third is management rubber stamping the teams choice and you have to fuck up pretty badly to fail.
I should add that we hire many candidates from abroad, and having people fail probation after moving their families across the globe would be a really shitty move.
I'm in IT and this was what happened with me. I did my first round with the hiring guy, then for my team/technical, I had one with the manager who oversaw the team (who became my manager), then one with the owners of the company (it's a fairly small company).
I landed the role and it pays more than my last job, plus the team is great, management is reasonable and understanding, consisting of people who try to work with me rather than hammer me into what they think I should do, and I'm just much happier with the job as a result.
I'd question any more than three though, that seems unnecessary.
I'm in a higher level position, but not lead of anything (just on a higher skilled position compared to others... Think escalation), anything less and three would be a bit much. If it's entry level skilled labor, one or two would be plenty, and anything they call "unskilled" even two seems like a lot. Upper management/C-level, probably would need more interviews, but IDK, I don't work in that type of job, nor do I have any desire to.
Three rounds seems to be common in Australia (only been here a year though). In the UK it was basically phone interview and then an in-person/zoom interview with a short tech test, but seeing absolutely no improvement in the proportion of candidates who don’t make it through probation (from either side) from the three interview system. It’s almost as though interviews are a really imperfect tool for determining who’ll best fit in the team culture.