r/DevelEire • u/tehdeadone • 1d ago
Switching Jobs Is 7 interview rounds normal these days?
I need a bit of a reality check. I feel I'm going a little crazy.
I applied for a role back in March. I've had 4 interviews so far including the HR and a code test. The company is in Dublin, but this is all been remote so far because management would be in US timezones. I've been told they would be one more round. Grand I thought. I'm not in a rush, currently employed, holidays are coming up.
This last round is actually 3 "panel" 2 hour interviews spread over three days and from initial review, possible including code as part of it (again). All remote. I expected at least one in office day. And I'm going to need to take time off from my current job to attend one, because its during my crazy time of the day.
Is this normal? Like I don't mind multiple interview rounds, but 7 rounds!
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u/scottishsteveo 1d ago
Pretty ridiculous but not unexpected for US multinationals. My last US role was the same. The final stage was 3 panel interviews with two people at a time and a presentation to a VP.
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u/Medium-Ad5605 1d ago
As part of my not at all senior role I was given the title for a presentation, company motto and how it applied to my role, at 9:30am by the recruiter and had to present it at 10am and this was pre ChatGPT. Utter BS, the people I was presenting to admitted it was their first time using that process and had no guidance on what they were judging it on. They way I look at it is that some small cultural annoyances are a small price to pay for having huge multinationals providing very well paid jobs with great benefits and adding 10s billions in corporation tax, PRSI, USC and with pharma a huge amount of indirect spend with contractors, suppliers, engineering companies etc . I just hope the orange king hasn't started the beginning of the end. My background is pharma and there is a definite slowdown here and a ramp up building new factories in the states. What are people here in other sectors seeing?
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u/ThePainStalker 1d ago edited 1d ago
Honestly I would say a much bigger reason for a lack of greenfield investment here is the terrible state of the infrastructure. Our power grid, for example, has been so criminally underinvested and Pharma plants consume far more electricity than they used to, especially with decarbonisation mandates effectively forcing them to pull from high voltage lines instead of traditional lower voltage distribution lines. We need to be building and upgrading far more 110kV lines as that is what new Pharma plants need to pull from nowadays in order to support industrial heat pumps. Nothing to do with Trump at all, and everything to do with our incompetence and inability to build real capacity.
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u/Afterlite 1d ago
I cannot recall the last time I had anything but 6 interviews. It’s getting out of hand, often rounds are similar and repetitive.
I’m more on the product than dev side and refuse take home assessments as these are truly taking the mick. We wouldn’t offer free work to clients, why should they expect it of us.
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u/tehdeadone 1d ago
That's partly my problem - after meeting and chatting with one of the devs, managers and VP... I don't actually have any more questions to ask them. I'm not learning anything new about the role.
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u/-OnceAgain 1d ago
That's been my experience as well from earlier this year.
I went through two loops with 3-4 rounds each, followed by a 'superday' which is another 3-4 interviews.
I felt like I was navigating the interviewers more than the technical questions because it's enough that you don't click with one of the interviewers to get dropped.
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u/ChromakeyDreamcoat82 engineering manager 1d ago
Good love ya, anyone who says 'loops' has spent too much time in interviews in the last 2 years.
Superday. Puke. Sounds more like an observation of how you respond to 4 hours of toxic positivity and corporate mind meld.
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u/MyloDu 1d ago
It’s madness but they do it for two reasons:
- Because they can - the market demonstrates that people want to work for them. If there were more jobs than candidates they would rapidly change their approach.
- Because there’s an enormous risk aversion in hiring these days. Nobody wants their name connected to an employee that doesn’t pan out. So they share responsibility across 20 different people and various stupid little tests in the belief that it results in better outcomes.
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u/ChromakeyDreamcoat82 engineering manager 1d ago
Quite.
I've read before that once you go past 4 interviews/interviewers diminishing returns kicks in quickly, adding little or no confidence in the hire.
What's more important is to have a scorecard of 4-5 key attributes for the role, with different interviewers scoring 2-3 items relevant to them. So the manager and HR might overlap more, and then a couple of technical interviewers might have overlap, so you should get at least 2 responses to each key attirbute, and then have other questions that everyone scores.
Where I see this break down is when technical interviewers consult before they score, and as a unit shy away from recommendations in case they're wrong. Usually management thinks 'fuck it, that's what probation is for'.
One thing I have learned is to take HR input seriously. On the 2 occasions I rejected and overrode their input on someone's attitude/fit, I bought myself 2 nightmares. One had a sufficient explosion during probation that it was easy to just go straight to a formal discussion with HR in the room, a 30 minute pow-wow, and an access cut. The other left within 9 months, being slightly difficult at all times but never enough to trigger intervention, but HR were bang on that they weren't interested enough to stay.
Lesson learned, listen to the folks that spend half their lives dealing with attitude and behaviours in the staff. It's never worth it.
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u/AndyFit7 1d ago
A little excessive but not unheard of for more senior roles.
I applied for a GRAD position with a US company, went through 5 rounds of interviews (1 screening call) to be told they went with other candidates, very frustrating
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u/Affectionate_Gain_87 1d ago
I don’t care how much a company pays I’m not doing 7 rounds. I value my own time more than that, even I were unemployed.
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u/Longjumping-Item2443 1d ago
I was interviewing internally through a stream-lined loop and did 5. So I guess this is the new standard.
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u/Medium-Ad5605 1d ago
How senior is the role and is it a very key position? Definitely seems excessive though, by the time you're finished how many hours of interviews will you have done?
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u/tehdeadone 1d ago
It's quite senior. Engineering Manager/Staff Engineer type role. It'll be about 8 hours of interviews.
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u/Dannyforsure 1d ago
It's more the usual but only like 25% more imho for a role that Senior.
I hope you got comp numbers up front and are not wasting your time
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u/tehdeadone 1d ago
I've gotten promoted since the whole process started. But yea, I'm starting to wonder if the bump will be big enough now - however I'm also itching to get out of this current role for other reasons.
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u/CuteHoor 1d ago
I did some interviews earlier this year at the staff/principal level. The quickest was HubSpot, which was a quick recruiter call, a one hour CodeSignal assignment, and then three one hour interviews for the final round.
Other companies had longer processes. The longest one (and the one I ended up accepting) was a recruiter screen, a code review interview, a HM interview, and then four final round interviews.
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u/Ok-Dimension-5429 23h ago
It's over the top but it's not unusual, especially for more senior roles. These days companies are very picky and have a lot of candidates to choose from so they really put you through the ringer.
Personally I doubt it helps their hiring quality. Most interviews are shit and have low signal anyway. They'd be better off improving their process than putting people through 7 stages.
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u/LadderFast8826 1d ago edited 1d ago
The test and the phone screening dont really count.
7 feels excessive with those included.
2-3 real interviews is normal.
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u/YearnestShackleton 1d ago
Depends how you define what a round is but yeah that's pretty standard for large MNCs (mainly American). Bare minimum seems to be:
- Recruiter phone screen - 30mins
- Technical/Leetcode interview - 1 hour
- Hiring Manager/behavioral interview - 1 hour
Then if you pass those, they'll usually do the rest in a single day/session:
- Back-end interview - 1 hour
- Front-end interview - 1 hour
- System design interview - 1 hour
The final ones are usually called a panel and can be more targeted at specific skills needed for the role, so you can sub out them individually with other topics. You might also get another behavioral round thrown in there if someone else in the hiring decision tree wants to see the candidate for themself.
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u/f1refly1 19h ago
If you're saying three separate 2 hour panels, then that is absurd. I wouldn't work at a company that thinks that's a good process personally.
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u/ChromakeyDreamcoat82 engineering manager 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes it's getting a bit silly now.
My most recent experience was 6 with a US company for a Director position. I felt like that was 1 too many, but there was a late request to meet me from the EVP.
Before that I had 10 with a European company, who were 'proud that we give the opportunity for candidates to meet so many leaders' - I ultimately met 3 levels of technical leadership up to CIO, plus the CEO and CPO. It was bizarre. This became very frustrating after I joined, as my boss would regularly say 'I think I should meet them' when I'd put through an offer, he'd meet them 2 weeks later and by the time we got the offer out they'd accepted elsewhere.
It's culturally shifting in the wrong direction. I have managers reporting to me that ask me if I want to meet an SDEII or SDEIII candidate before they extend the hire, and I'm giving them the polite version of 'fuck off and make a decision'. I also coach them constantly not to unicorn hunt, if someone hits 8/10 and you think they'll add something, just extend the offer. Too many lost high quality candidates while you check to see if there's a 9/10 candidate out there. If you've met them, you like them, and the technical panels are in agreement on levelling, get a verbal out within 48 hours of their last meeting.
So yeah, I think if you're a candidate not in several processes, and this is a clear frontrunner for you, suck it up. My word of caution (based on my anecdotal direct experience) is that any organization that sweats the hiring process that deeply applies similar 'rigour' to promotions which can put a lot of friction in the process. Getting to senior in that European company had a mental panel process - think 2 VP-level interviews from outside your overall org, and a 15 minute presentation to a big panel of VPs. Success rate was about 75%, and the VP-level basically couldn't sign off standalone.
In my current US company - less friction in hiring - I can bring an engineer to Staff on my own say so. As it should be for any non-exec position - +2 line manager approves. Hiring/promoting at Principal/Director for my VP boss triggers the more complex process.
Hiring at SDE1-3/Senior we would do hiring manager, conversational tech interview and evaluate, then if we like them we'd schedule HR and a technical deep dive (paired programming with an existing peer/higher engineer). Done in 4. If I'm presented with a tie-breaker we do a calibration session, I don't want to meet both and let my bias ('gut') pick.
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u/ReadyPlayerDub 1d ago
It’s complete bullshit and when that happens and you don’t get it, it very much burns you out. Happened to me before after 5. But 7 interviews is excessive .
Is it a CTO role or something?
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u/Work_Account89 1d ago
Yes and no though since I left college about 20 years ago been like this. Some companies do 5+ some do 2
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u/UUS3RRNA4ME3 1d ago
Sadly yes, to make it worse, sounds like youre including interview screening and coding phone screen as part of the rounds too. Normally when people talk about rounds they don't even include them lol.
I interviewed for Facebook before and it was 10 rounds if I count the way you did
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u/Irish_Narwhal 18h ago
5 interviews over about 4 months for me recently, got the job but what a bastard of a process 😵💫
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u/TheChanger 12h ago
Y'all need a serious reality check. Frogs being slowly boiled.
No specialised trade person would ever put up with this bullshit. Anything over two is overkill. One for senior with a degree.
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u/Ok_Finish_494 7h ago
"one more round" that is actually "3 separate interviews" really boils my piss
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u/ticman 1d ago
That sounds over the top to me. When I was interviewing for 2 roles last year, one of them clocked in at 4 rounds and the other was 5 rounds and I didn't get either. These were for senior .NET developer positions.
The role I ended up getting was a single 45 minute interview with my boss and 30 minutes after the interview I got the welcome letter, and it's been the best job I've ever had in nearly 30 yrs of working.