'Job Interviews are a Nightmare - and Only Getting Worse'

"It often feels like you're tossing your resume into the abyss and praying to the recruitment gods for a response," writes Vox. But then the real ordeal begins:Companies are seemingly coming up with new, higher, and harder hoops to jump through at every turn. That translates to endless rounds of interviews, various arbitrary tests, and complex exercises and presentations that entail hours of work and prep. There can be good reasons for firms to do this - they really want to make sure they get the right person, and they're trying to reduce biases - but it's hard not to feel like it can just be too much. "There's no reason why 10 years ago we were able to hire people on two interviews and now it's taking 20 rounds of interviews," said Maddie Machado, a career strategist who has 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 somebody...." Another man was told to start looking for apartments across the country after being flown out for a final interview, only to follow up a couple of weeks later and learn that the recruiter simply forget to tell him he hadn't gotten the job. "My interviewing experiences have been worse than dating, with the ghosting and non-responses," he said.... There's no denying that over the years, in many instances, the hiring process has gotten harder and more convoluted. A 2022 survey from hiring software company Greenhouse found that 60 percent of job seekers were "unimpressed by time-consuming recruitment processes...." The pandemic and current economic conditions may be exacerbating employers' anxiety even more. Sondra Levitt [a leadership and career coach with Korn Ferry, an organizational consulting firm] said she thinks many firms feel like they "jumped too fast" to make hires amid the great resignation or great reshuffle, as for much of 2021 and 2022 workers hopped jobs in droves. The pendulum is swinging the other way now, with managers being extra careful to do their due diligence, especially as the economy looks rocky. "Perhaps the simplest answer to why companies make it so hard is that they can," the article concludes. Job-hunters have faced IQ tests, credit checks, and even reviews of their grades from high school. (I still remember one employer who asked everyone to take the Meyers-Briggs personality test.) And it's painfully annoying to do multiple rounds of interviews - and then be rejected.

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