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Average Duration of Hiring Process For Software Engineers: 35 Days
itwbennett writes: Despite the high demand for tech workers of pretty much all stripes, the hiring process is still rather drawn out, with the average time-to-hire for Software Engineers taking 35 days. That's one of the findings of a new study from career site Glassdoor. The study, led by Glassdoor's Chief Economist Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, analyzed over 340,000 interview reviews, covering 74,000 unique job titles, submitted to the site from February 2009 through February 2015. Glassdoor found that the average time-to-hire for all jobs has increased 80% (from 12.6 days to 22.9 days) since 2010. The biggest reason for this jump: The increased reliance on screening tests of various sorts, from background checks and skills tests to drug tests and personality tests, among others.
Of course hiring process takes time. A friend of mine had to quit smoking weed for like 10 DAYS to get the job.
This is hardly surprising:
- It seems like an unwritten rule that the tools and websites (third-party and homegrown) that business use for hiring are horrible. I have to assume they're designed to be a gauntlet so that only the most stubborn and persistent candidates make it to the end.
- Automated tools that scan resumes looking for specific things have led to people putting all sorts of crap on their resume, just in hopes of getting a foot in the door. This leads to interviews like "So it says you have a lot of experience in SQL. Can you elaborate on that?" Candidate: "Oh, yeah, I took an online class a few years ago and I did some SELECTs!"
- Most recruiters have a clear conflict of interest and some of them take a scattergun approach that interviewers need to filter through.
- Wishy-washy managers always want to wait and put off giving an offer "in case something better comes along" (I've heard that many times in post-interview discussions).
- Internal politics when there's any kind of restriction on how many open seats will be filled leads to infighting between groups, delaying an offer because nobody knows who they'd work for yet.
I could go on and on, but suffice to say that HR at most places is filled with depressing things, but the hiring process is one of the worst.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Brought on three software developers in the last four months. Once the verbal offer is accepted it's about a month for our company. Background checks, references verifications, etc make it a lengthy process indeed. I just agreed to bring on a contractor who already has a background check, and he won't land for three weeks even though he's on the bench.
Brilliant advice. Next you'll tell me to get a larger monitor for the headlines that don't even fit in a maximized window. BTW, some of us like to use our remaining screen real estate for other uses (multitasking, how does it work?). How about instead demanding that they not overlay icons over the headline text any more?
Say you interview at two companies. You're awesome, and they both love you. One gives you a firm offer the next day. The other sends you a firm offer 35 days later, which isn't even slow for the industry.
Are you still waiting on day 35 for that second offer? Probably not.
Nimble companies will score the best employees. The real question: does the slow-as-hell hiring bureaucracy weed out bad employees and help the company overall? If not, they're at a competitive disadvantage.
So the duration is 12 days longer than the average, so what?
The problem is that while you are evaluating the job candidate, the candidate is evaluating your company, looking at other opportunities, and going to other interviews. It is the best candidates that are most likely to get other offers. You might think you are being more selective by dragging out the process, but the actual result is that you are losing the wheat and keeping the chaff.
There is little evidence that dragging out the process helps. Checking references doesn't really help, since you have no idea if you are talking to their ex-boss or their roommate. Even criminal records have been shown to have no correlation with job performance.
When I schedule an interview with a prospective hire, I prepare the paperwork to make a job offer at the end of the interview. If they look solid, and everyone involved gives a thumbs up, I make the offer. More often then not, they accept on the spot. Others sleep on it, and call and accept the following day. But we lose a lot fewer good candidates that way.
HR is Lucy holding the football. Charlie Brown is everyone trying to get work done.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
If you want me to take less money, you need to provide additional value elsewhere. Better environment, equity, bonuses, vacation days, work/life balance, etc. If you don't why should I work for you over taking the money? If you do, you need to sell that.
But having positions open for 2 months, especially if you're looking for experienced developers, isn't uncommon- in fact if you were filling most of your positions in 2 months you'd be amazingly good at recruiting. Good developers are hard to find- that's why they're expensive. Decide what's more important to you- the value that having the role filled will bring the business, or the cost of actually making your offers competitive. If the second brings more value, up your offers.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I had a company drag out an interview for 4 months. Another company swooped in and hired me within a week.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Totally this.
The last time I went through the ordeal of looking for a job (about a year ago), it was pretty common for them to make me come back for a second afternoon of interviews. What balls these people had to make me take a second half day of PTO to interview with them! Pad the schedule for the first round next time, I have better things to do! And I'm not talking about cool companies you'd really want to work for here, not Google or Apple etc, but some pretty mediocre places.
Not really. The prospective employee usually has a job, and is working. You have a vacancy, so you're not really "losing" work. It does however balloon scheduling issues and leaves some low priority work undone. In theory the low priority work is necessary to do, but does not cause anything to explode if it waits a couple weeks. There is certainly some lost work here: people are being rejected, losing some amount of man-hours on each reject in the screening, background checking, profiling and interviewing. I'm not sure it would be millions, but there is a trade off: if its too cheap to throw someone back companies will only hire the 1 in a million applicant that somehow convinces them he's Jesus Christ, but if it's too expensive they will either downsize their projects or hire morons. A certain level of pain is healthy.
The only thing I read from this is employers are feeling there are enough applicants that they can be more selective, which is a sign that the labor pool is adequate.
When I schedule an interview with a prospective hire, I prepare the paperwork to make a job offer at the end of the interview. If they look solid, and everyone involved gives a thumbs up, I make the offer. More often then not, they accept on the spot. Others sleep on it, and call and accept the following day. But we lose a lot fewer good candidates that way.
How does that work if there's multiple candidates? Do you simply hire the first one who passes the "thumbs-up" test or are you flexible enough you'll hire as many good people who shows up at the door? Most places I've worked for you get permission to hire a new person from up high, you get a round of candidates and pick one. If you give the first guy an offer, well you don't really have anything to offer the rest.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You interview the ones who look good enough in descending order of, umm, apparent gooditudenessity. If one is not so good in the interview, or says no, you move on to the next.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We're hiring engineers, not fast food workers who only need to be warm bodies. It takes time to evaluate someone. If you hire the wrong person you waste far more money than if you actually verify if the candidate is a good fit.
Your emphasis on "every single time they change jobs" is a bit bizarre. It would be a good thing if we slowed down the revolving door, get employees who stick around longer. If you want employers to stop treating you like an interchangeable cog, then you need to stop treating your employer like an interchangeable paycheck provider. I can tell you that when we see resumes with lots of short term non-contract jobs that it sends a very negative signal.
How does that work if there's multiple candidates? Do you simply hire the first one who passes the "thumbs-up" test or are you flexible enough you'll hire as many good people who shows up at the door?
The latter. You should always be in "hiring mode". If you hire smart people with a track record of getting stuff done, you can always find a place for them. The criteria I use is that they should be a "top third" prospect, with an expectation that they will be better than 2/3rds of current employees. If I don't have a vacancy, then I fire one of the bottom third people to make room.
I'm in this process right now. It has taken between 3 and 4 months to get to the end of the interview process with each of the big companies in Silicon Valley, depending on the company. Google alone has had me onsite for 8 separate interview days, not counting 3-4 phone screens. I'm highly qualified (PhD in CS from MIT, postdoc at Harvard Medical School, and as a Xoogler, I technically don't even have to interview to return to Google), but that hasn't expedited things. The hiring climate right now is ridiculously stringent. It wasn't this way even 3 years ago, I could walk into almost any job, and go from sending in a resume to getting an offer in a week or less.
The norm for big software companies seems to be: you have some number of open reqs for your team, and you're eager to fill them (both to get the work done, and because the might vanish). So you work your pipeline as best you can, interview anyone who passes a phone screen, and hire anyone who passes the interview. At most places I've worked, we end making an offer to about 1 in 20 people we phone screen (about 1 in 3 who we bring in); where I am now we make an offer to about 1 in 5 we bring in, and they don't always accept of course, so that's maybe 50 people who look good enough to phone screen to hire 1. You're much more likely to have too few qualified candidates than too many. Normally, if you end up with an extra guy you'd like to make an offer to, another team will be delighted to take him.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So how is your hiring record then? How many of those employees that you have hired that way are still with you? How many of them would rate as excellent in job fit? Culture fit?
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
My current job took over 6 months to get me the offer. First they interview me. About a month goes by and I finally hear back that one of the interview committee dropped out so they had to start over again. I was brought back for an interview with the same panel with one different person. They then proceed to ask me the exact same questions they asked me the previous time. I found out later they have a rule that all interview questions are prepared ahead of time, approved, and then must be asked of every candidate. Another 2+ months goes by without any word. I found out later that the department head wanted a diversity hire and all the candidates were males, white, asian, and indian. They kept hoping someone else would apply. Then I hear back that I didn't get the job. About a month later they contact me asking if I was still available. The person they hired took a different job offer 2 days before his start date. Since I was their second choice candidate their rules allowed them to offer me the job without going through the process again. I was interested but they couldn't tell me my offer. It had to get approved by hr first. Finally weeks later I hear the offer. I accepted the job. Then about a month or so later I get the actual offer letter via fedex. It was lower that the emailed offer. I go back to them and they tell me it was a mistake. Weeks later I get the new, correct offer. It was about 6 months total. Amazing.
And yes, this place is as screwed up as you'd imagine. Nobody works more than 30 hours a week and 7 out of 10 in the group do pretty much no work at all. Almost nothing ever gets done and nobody cares. Heaven.
Works both ways man.
Have you considered why applicants have a history or job hopping? Hint: the common factor is the employer not the employee. So, as an employer, be different - stop being 'that guy'. You might be ahead of your competitors by being a more attractive employer.
Is it possible that holding job hopping against a candidate is really a sign that you, as a recruiter, are ignoring the job market? You know, the real job market where there is little to no vertical movement? The one where a person can only be 'promoted' by lateral movement in switching companies... perhaps to a competitor?
You are dealing with an environment you spent decades to create. Now you bitch that it didn't produce voluntary slaves?
Might not have been you personally but fuck yourself. You spent time following along rather than trying to change things for the better.
Life isn't fair is true. So, there are two choices: follow along fucking other people trying to avoid getting fucked yourself (ie - just bend over) -or- try to change things so life is more fair than before. (ie - fix that fucking problem!)
What side are you on?
>> So a job listing website has a "Chief Economist" on staff? What the fuck for?
I'll bite. Back in the back I was an intern for an economist at a huge phone company. We were part of the marketing division, and our job was to parse economic trends to figure out things like which regions were growing fastest (so we could reallocate resources there to capture market share), which seasonal trends were emerging (e.g., non-Christian holidays) and which corporate markets were healthiest based on indicators like sector stock performance. It was never double-digit percentage revenue stuff, but at a very large company it made sense to spend a million on economists to capture a few extra dozen million or so in revenue.
What is the difference between the two? I have yet to hear a good definition of the roles.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
So, how's Oracle as an employer shaping up for you? Do you like working there?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
And which do you think came first, eh? Employers treating developers like interchangeable cogs, or developers treating employers like interchangeable paycheck providers?
There's a reason previous generations stayed in their jobs longer, and it has nothing to do with the current generation's lack of work-ethic/loyalty/etc., and everything to do with the changes employers have been making over the last couple of decades: No more pensions, no more promoting from within the ranks (You're either management caste or you're not), constant cost-cutting (what training budget?), layoffs at the drop of a hat, etc..
Employers have been systematically training any sense of loyalty out of the workforce, don't complain that you've been successful.
If you want employers to stop treating you like an interchangeable cog, then you need to stop treating your employer like an interchangeable paycheck provider.
Did it ever occur to you that many of us have just adapted to the environment that you (the royal you) created?
Let me put it this way: If I remained at the employer I worked at 10 years ago, my salary ($50k/yr at the time) would still most likely be less than 1/2 of what I'm making today, and that's counting the 'OMG we're hurting so bad financially but look - we're still being so generous!' 1-3% annual raises. Nice folks to work with, but yanno? fuck that.
BTW, it's not just money - I left my last non-contract job because the dizzy idiot that I reported to was very friendly and somewhat politically astute, but she had zero sense of mentorship, and decided that I was "too valuable to move into a management slot", in spite of the fact that I was bored out of my fucking mind in the role I did have, but apparently I knew too much to be so easily replaceable. A month later and I was gone.
TL;DR? I'm not there to look out for her career (or yours)... I'm too busy looking out for mine.
If you don't want mercenaries for employees, then pull your heads out of your backsides and stop treating us like chattel.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?