Commentary: Why do employers make job candidates suffer endless rounds of interviews?
SINGAPORE: When Kath* interviewed at a tech visitor some fourth dimension back, she would not accept guessed her journeying would take her through six rounds of interviews over three months.
She was optimistic given the positive signs she picked upwardly, but things went quiet subsequently round 6. When she called to ask, the visitor told her they needed more fourth dimension. A calendar month and a half later on, she was told she didn't get the task considering she wasn't a good fit.
Kath isn't an exception.
Software engineering director Mike Conley posted on LinkedIn his experience going for 3 rounds and beingness told at that place would be another six.
His mail about his experience has since been viewed 2.half dozen million times with iv,000 public comments of back up. There'due south also a happy ending: Mike was later on offered a job by a company who saw the mail.
THE INTERVIEW MARATHON
Why are companies putting candidates through seemingly countless rounds of interviews?
Veteran r ecruiter James Lodder offers a few reasons. First, the company may be looking for a specific person with the feel to handle a critical but tricky project. For instance, getting a project manager for a multi-one thousand thousand-dollar project can exist disastrous if the wrong candidate was picked.
So, there's the nature of piece of work - if it is highly specialised, time is needed to filter out candidates who seem to have the requisite technical skills on paper but might not fit the culture, hours or other requirements.
TalentKraft co-founder Eugene Goh says a typical consulting firm puts applicants through up to four rounds of example study interviews.
Lasting no more 45 minutes, each asks applicants to review an ambiguous problem statement and come up upwards with best-example solutions.
This mirrors real-life scenarios where solutions are not binary or clear. The test can bear witness an bidder's thought process, logic and communications skills when they nowadays to senior directors.
Other roles like software developers besides require technical coding tests.
But barring these exceptions, in that location are no compelling reasons why an interview must become on longer than necessary. And even so, many practice. Why?
Commencement, in that location may be a lack of alignment inside the hiring team usually fabricated up of the recruiter from an agency, a Hour representative and hiring manager, especially when it is a new role with few precedents.
As a former recruiter, I had a poor experience with a small engineering company that best illustrates this.
Each time they finished interviewing a candidate, they would revise the chore scope and description. Because information technology was a new office and they were not certain what exactly was needed, they kept iterating with new insights from every applicant. And that lengthened the interview process unnecessarily.
Marathon interviews can besides be prevalent in big companies where roles are matrixed and in that location are multiple stakeholders. Someone I know interviewed at a technology behemothic recently. Just at circular five was he told he was too expensive.
But salary expectations are laid out in the application process and then in this case, it may accept been a lack of communication betwixt 60 minutes and the hiring team. For instance, the hiring manager may feel the office is a inferior one (often after feedback from an earlier phase) just this data is non filtered downwards until much later in the procedure.
Finally, it can come down to the inability of staff to interview well. Most hiring managers are not trained to acquit job interviews. They may simply plough the interview into a coffee chat to gauge if they like the person and can be comfy working with them.
This affliction happens to the top also. When I interviewed at an oil trading visitor many years back, my conversation with the managing director focused on what I idea of the painting hanging behind him.
THE MAGIC NUMBER
So, what'due south an ideal number of interviews? Information scientist Andrew Liew'southward assay of Singapore HR data institute virtually companies comport between one and three interviews for junior roles and between ii and 6 for senior roles.
Anything more means there'south a high likelihood the job description is poorly fix.
Lodder agrees, saying three is an optimal number for nigh roles, maybe up to five for a very senior role.
Whatever more suggests a failure in the recruitment process and results in a waste product of the candidate and company's time, he says.
Then there are companies who drill information technology down to a science. In 2017, Google decided to streamline their hiring process.
Their staffing team examined past interview information and ended that 4 interviews were enough to make a reliable hiring decision. The team's statistical modelling found that 4 interviews could predict a good hire with 86 per cent confidence. Any other more rounds gave diminishing returns.
This scientific approach was also used by Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist and Nobel laureate. As a young officer, he was asked to better the Israeli army's haphazard procedure of assessing capabilities among combat-fit recruits.
Armed with a psychology caste and infantry experience, he brashly made upwards some criteria, developed questions to elicit relevant facts, and insisted interviewers ask but what he specified.
Each recruit would be given a score on each criterion, and the overall "Kahneman score" would be used in deciding a candidate's fit for a role.
This resulted in better assignments. Kahneman reported the interviewers getting increasingly meliorate at predicting success. The key was to ask the same questions of every applicant so a common benchmark could be developed for comparison.
GENERIC ROLES
With hundreds of generic roles, finding a suitable candidate shouldn't be rocket scientific discipline. Lengthy scenario-based assessments cannot be the main tool to assess candidates.
Paul Endacott, the founder and CEO of recruitment tech firm Grit says technology tin can help.
For loftier book and perhaps less front-facing roles, AI-powered conversational bots similar print.ai and Paradox can funnel out applicants at the earlier stages by asking questions you would in a face-to-face interview.
Despite these tools, information technology does come downward to taking a risk. CEO of Vervoe, Omer Molad says interviews favour candidates good at performing during interviews but in that location'southward no guarantee this will translate into doing well at the job.
To him, the about reliable way to assess a potential employee is to give them an opportunity to do chore-specific tasks. In other words, interview people by seeing for yourself whether they can practice the task.
The fundamental withal, is in picking the correct tool. Many companies use a personality test. It works as an instrument to illicit things like values or attitudes and less well-nigh skills or bent, says Colin Yeow from Emergenetics Asia Pacific, simply can be useful to see if the candidate fits the squad and culture.
The search for an ideal candidate is of import and hirers cannot rush the process. But hiring managers should conduct in mind that in that location are no perfect candidates.
If companies have a clear idea of what they want, implement efficient tools to sieve out people with the right skills and then see if they are a fit in terms of civilisation, they tin can discover good people.
It just shouldn't require seven rounds of interviews.
Adrian Tan is the Future of Work Strategist at the Constitute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP ) which aims to professionalise and strengthen the Hr practice in Singapore.
* A pseudonym was used in this commentary.
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/job-interview-marathon-tests-talent-workplace-hiring-284576
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