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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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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.
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.
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.
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.