The employment market has swung back in favor of employers. That's making it harder for applicants, with some having to go through twelve interviews.
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To Octavius Newman, a string of interviews for a single job had begun to feel like a video game.
"I kept going up — rung after rung after rung — to another person," he said.
Ultimately, Newman made it as far as level 12 — but there was no Final Boss cha-ching.
An email from the company's recruiter revealed that the dozen interviews, both virtual and in-person, had amounted to nothing. Then, when Newman asked for feedback, the answer for why the company chose another candidate stung.
"Their response was, 'Nothing in particular. We just decided to go with someone else,'" he said.
Newman, who's 41, told Business Insider his experience trying to land a job as a creative lead for a social media team in his hometown of Philadelphia was the most exasperating of his career. While the number of interviews might be extreme — even in a job market where power is swinging back toward the boss — Newman isn't alone in feeling fed up with some employers' go-slow approach.
After several years when hiring managers were often focused on simply filling openings, the return to a more normal job market in the US has proven painful for job seekers like Newman.
Employers might be tempted to take their sweet time because of a mix of factors: More workers are staying put, which can reduce the number of jobs that need filling. Plus, overhiring a couple of years ago and concerns about amorphous qualities like "culture fit" can make employers reluctant to make a bad choice.
Allen Johnson
It all means the back-to-normal job market of 2024 can feel pretty lousy for people on the hunt — like going from speed dating to a Victorian courtship.
Indeed, matchmaking is taking longer than several years ago. In 2023, the time it took to get workers in the door was 44.5 days, up from 40 in 2019, according to the most recent figures from HR data firm Josh Bersin Research.
It's no surprise that many job seekers aren't pleased. In an Indeed survey of 2,000 Gen Zers released in 2023, half of respondents said they wouldn't apply for a job that required three separate interviews.
Yet, it's often hard to tell how an interview process might unfold. In Newman's experience, that was the case: He kept expecting the handshakes would end, but then he would learn that there was another person to meet.
Newman said it would be better if applicants had a rough idea of the number of steps they would likely encounter in a hiring process. He compared it to showing up at a busy restaurant and deciding whether it's worth hanging around for a seat.
"You can go, 'Oh, no. I'm not waiting an hour for French toast,'" he said.
J. Raymond Kilgore is an IT project manager near Chandler, Arizona, who's been looking for work for about two years after getting sidelined by a medical problem. He told BI he's done mostly contract work for over a decade. But now, even the interview process for getting something like a six-month assignment has proven difficult, Kilgore said.
When he can get interviews, they can extend to multiple rounds, even though the jobs are short-term roles.
"You're not looking for marriage," Kilgore, 68, said.
He suspects one of the reasons there are so many steps in the process — even for a temporary gig — is because some people involved with hiring aren't necessarily deputized to make an offer.
"People who are in the trenches no longer have authority to make those kinds of decisions. You keep having interviews with higher levels," Kilgore said.
He said he would understand a more drawn-out process if the contract role was one that might be converted to a permanent hire, something Kilgore refers to as "try before you buy."
Social media posts offer their own takes on interview bloat. One Reddit user wrote that years ago, hiring might have unfolded in only a matter of weeks and consisted of one or two in-person interviews.
"Now, there's an assessment or multiple assessments, a self-conducted video interview where you speak to a robot via webcam, then a phone-screening interview, then some kind of in-person interview, and then an interview where you meet the senior management," the person wrote. Then, if applicants are lucky, they'll hear back within a month or two, the writer lamented.
Even when it does work out for job seekers, it's often not easy. In a recent post on Blind, one user wrote about what it took to get a job at Nvidia. "I studied my ass off. Interview prep comprises a whole 35-page document of just my own notes. This was my 94th attempt (93 previous applications all rejected)," the worker wrote.
Employers' take-it-slow approach isn't always helpful, according to Jennifer Schielke, CEO of the staffing firm Summit Group Solutions and author of "Leading for Impact."
She advises clients to be ready to hire when they post a job description. Schielke told BI that because of layoffs and long periods of looking for work, some job seekers have lost a sense of security.
"It's been ripped out from under them. And so trust is an issue as well. So, if you drag your feet, you might lose the person that you actually want," she told BI.
Schielke said, for her, the sweet spot is three — maybe four — interviews. She said some hiring managers could have felt chastened by the red-hot years following the pandemic when attracting workers was difficult, and employees had ample opportunities to hand in their resignation letters. That made some employers cautious about hiring.
"The culture fit — now more than ever — matters to these companies because they want people who are going to stay and not jump ship," Schielke said.
Yet some of what she's seen appears to be an overcorrection. Schielke recounted one interview she participated in where there was the candidate and then 15 people on the other side. That was too many, Schielke said, making it difficult to ask in-depth questions with the candidate.
"If you have your mission and your values and your vision — and you actually live those out — it shouldn't be that hard," she said.
Schielke said that if it's taking many months to make a hire, maybe that role isn't necessary in the first place.
She added that some job seekers need to reset their expectations after several years in which they were calling the shots.
Beyond round after round of interviews, there are other hurdles people looking for work might face. They could encounter fake job listings or recruiters who ghost candidates even after a screening interview — something that Kilgore, the IT project manager, said has happened to him about a half dozen times.
For Newman in Philly, he said he has no choice but to move forward and keep looking for his next job even after going through a dozen interviews in his last attempt.
"You start counting the time. You start counting the months in the interviews and the things you didn't do because you did this instead," he said. "You're kind of left there, like, 'Why did I do that? What was that for?'"
