Imagine a high school lacrosse or football player interviewing with a college coach. The program has a great reputation and the head coach and recruit have a terrific rapport. The recruit joins the team but then discovers the trainers’ methods are outdated, the practices are too rigid, and the offensive coach can’t appreciate his strengths. He quits the team and never realizes his athletic potential, and the team lost the opportunity to recruit an athlete who represents a better “fit” for a critical position.
You are considering a golf league, community theatre, or a book club. The members seem great and you join. Thereafter the interpersonal drama and politics are exhausting. You say to yourself, “What I am doing here?”
… I often hear candidates (and sometimes hiring managers) express their frustration with 5+ candidate interviews per employer.
I get it, the employer may lose the candidate before the process is completed. Sometimes the employer’s interview teams ask redundant questions and are ill-prepared.
No doubt, it is tiresome and may interfere with the candidate and hiring manager’s desire to immediately leverage their obvious chemistry and get started.
However, my recent observation is candidates benefit from seeing how the employer orchestrates the process, including timeliness, follow-up, and transparency. They also see the interpersonal communication styles within and across the different employer functions, i.e., within sales, sales to marketing, sales to sales engineering, sales to CS, etc. This is illustrative of their culture and the future employment experience. Invaluable.
Employers can identify and assess the candidate’s resiliency, communication style, timeliness, habits, organizational skills, and relationship building qualities. This can’t be accomplished in just a few meetings, including in-person meetings.
Today’s work remote culture can foster latency in follow up, misinterpretation of communication, lack of visibility/accountability, and less of a team orientation. Companies’ internal and external communications may have increased touches as compared to the past, when a 1/2 day meeting accomplished what today requires 3 separate virtual sessions. This requires an adjustment in best practices.
Multiple interviews across several employees and hiring managers can help decipher whether the candidate will fit into the employer’s standards for timeliness, follow-up, feedback, and proactive communication.
Candidates who are eliminated from consideration for not meeting these expectations may benefit from dissatisfaction if they joined the company.
You may want to embrace the rigor and be comfortable with the outcome. It will help ensure you longer term satisfaction and productivity as a hiring manager or a candidate.