Hello HR, One Interview Only Please

I met a couple friends for lunch a few days ago and we happened to chat about job interviews. One friend mentioned that his wife who’s a C-suite in an MNC has to go through 5 rounds of interviews with a panel for any new significant hire. I related that I know of someone who had to go through 8 or 9 rounds at another firm for job (another he didn’t get the job, boy was he pissed). 

Same friend then told a story where 1) he interviewed with someone who truly wanted him for the role, 2) helped this potential future boss plan out work for the current team and 3) iron out budgets  - all this during the hiring process. Potential future boss then said there was one step left - to meet the CEO. The boss of bosses met my friend for all of ten minutes max and reported to HR that he didn’t like the candidate. My friend said after that the CEO was looking for someone better looking and in a skirt. We all had a chuckle but appreciated how painfully farcical the situation he endured was.

I talked how in my last job I sat in with my then boss to vet through a number of candidates. I felt we had a ‘good enough’ person at interview no1 - good enough experience, knew the landscape, logical thinking, and sounded trainable. The next few people we saw all were oddballs looking for a pedestal or a way out. My boss wanted someone who “had new ideas” on top of managing a team for “excellence”. In the end, we hired no one and lost the headcount. LOL. All that time down the drain. Imagine the manhours. I have another friend who works in one team but gets asked to sit in a panel to interview new hires in another team to assess for “fit”. He rolls his eyes he says each time he gets these invites. If a 5-person panel has to sit through 3 rounds for an hour, that’s 15 x whatever baseline manhour rate each person is worth. Easily thousands of dollars right there with just one candidate! 

We all agreed that all this madness could be better tightened up through the probation period. Get a “good enough” candidate to start, monitor his/her KPIs, check with the team about fit and decide at the end of a month if he/she is the right hire. Simple. Why go through the madness of time wasting with multiple interviews? No one is perfect but let them develop into perfection.