A slow hiring process According to Mullins, the slowness of comments after interactions with his potential employer and the long time between interviews are warning signs. A slow hiring process can indicate internal problems such as disorganization, lack of staff, or lack of investment in people and culture. In an ideal world, the interview process itself would be efficient and would optimize (rather than maximize) the participation and alignment of stakeholders, and would not take more than a few months. A warning sign arises when the number of interviews becomes excessive and the process drags on for an extended period of time.
Either (or both) of these options can be a sign that the team or organization is too consensus-driven, indecisive, or struggling to bring things to fruition. A company that is slow to respond is another red flag. In the hiring world, 85 percent of applicants don't get a response, Sahni said. Whether the candidate is in the background or someone just didn't like him, it's a great indicator of how that company operates internally.
A hasty interview process would be a red flag, yes. A client of mine, “David”, was hired by his last employer to improve the organization's customer service function. When you hear answers to the same question that are in direct conflict or that are inconsistent with the answers of others, it's a warning sign. Some companies with a tight labor market have learned the hard way that, if they stick with candidates in the interview process, they expect them to find a position in another company in the meantime.
Yes, I think the downside is that a lot of potentially horrible co-workers won't get fired until they're actively seeking lawsuits. This is not to say that you should start the interview process too skeptically or suspiciously, but rather to encourage you to be aware of potential warning signs of the interview process that deserve your attention, as they may indicate more important problems with your potential boss, team or the organization in general. I accepted the job and found that their hiring process was a problem: they weren't bad people, they just weren't right for the job that needed to be done, and that caused staff turnover and frustration for many people. There could be a multitude of reasons why your process doesn't fit what we expected.
I'm in the process of hiring for a government position right now, and in more than two decades of government work, I've never had such a quick hiring process. They weren't very good at hiring and they were making some ambitious hires, hiring developers even though the contract wasn't for development because that's how they wanted it to grow. When the position you're interviewing for starts to sound very different from the initial job description that prompted your application, it's a red flag. The last two hires I've seen (in my current job and in my last job) were disastrous, because the bar is on the floor.
Which I think, as long as the company continues to have sufficient resources to ensure that the onboarding process goes well, is simply good management, good planning and good practice in general. Although it is likely that the number of interviews and the length of the interview process are positively correlated with the level of the position (e.g., in this conversation, he clearly implied that he not only wanted to hire me, but he also told me the exact salary I would offer and made sure that it was 10% higher than what I currently earned).
