“Job interviews are a nightmare – and they’re only getting worse”

“It often feels like you’re throwing your resume into the abyss and praying to the recruiting gods for a response,” writes Vox.

But then the real test begins:
Companies seem to be inventing new, higher and more difficult hoops to jump through at every turn. This means endless rounds of interviews, various random tests and complex exercises and presentations that require hours of work and preparation. There may be good reasons for companies to do this – they really want to make sure they get the right person and are trying to reduce bias – but it’s hard not to feel like it might be overkill.

“There’s no reason why 10 years ago we were able to hire people in two interviews, and now it takes 20 rounds of interviews,” said Maddy Machado, a career strategist who previously worked as a recruiter at companies such as LinkedIn, Meta and Microsoft . “It’s kind of like dating. When you go on a first date, you need a second date. You don’t need 20 dates to know if you like someone…”

Another man was told to start looking for apartments across the country after being flown in for a final interview, only to follow up a few weeks later to learn that the recruiter had simply forgotten to tell him no got the job. “My experiences with interviews were worse than meetings, with the ghosts and no answers,” he said….

There’s no denying that over the years, the hiring process has become more difficult and complicated in many cases. A 2022 survey by recruiting software company Greenhouse found that 60 percent of job seekers “were not impressed with time-consuming recruitment processes…” The pandemic and current economic conditions may further exacerbate the anxiety of the employers. Sondra Levitt [a leadership and career coach with Korn Ferry, an organizational consulting firm] said he thinks many businesses feel as if they “jumped too quickly” to hire amid the big layoff or major reshuffle, as for much of 2021 and 2022 workers were leaving jobs. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way, with managers being extra careful to do their due diligence, especially when the economy looks shaky.
“Perhaps the simplest answer to why companies make it so difficult is that they can,” the article concludes. Job seekers have faced IQ tests, credit checks and even reviews of their high school grades. (I still remember one employer who asked everyone to take the Myers-Briggs personality test.)

And it’s painfully annoying to do several rounds of interviews – and then get rejected.