5 ms·

What are reasonable time frames for a company then? What should we aim for with: 1) Phone Screens 2) Interview responses (moving to next interview?) 3) Final

What are reasonable time frames for a company then? What should we aim for with: 1) Phone Screens 2) Interview responses (moving to next interview?) 3) Final decisions 4) Negotiation/confirmations of receiving a response to an offer

Harj 10y ago
They key thing is to minimize the amount of time a candidate is waiting back to hear from you on the next step. We see a strong correlation between the companies who have the highest closing rates on candidates (70% or more) and how responsive they are in every interaction. The best companies will respond to a candidate on next steps within 24 hours at every step of the process.
- komali2 10y ago
  The best thing my boss way back when I was a recruiter told me - "Updating someone that there's no update yet is a hell of a lot better than not updating them because there's no update yet." In other words, a simple "the team is still discussing your interview but haven't made a decision yet" email can make all the difference in the world. That being said, and I'm swaying off topic here, candidates should never pause or slow down their job search, no matter how far along they are with a company. A rejection can come in a million forms for a million reasons, and how much would it suck to be back at square one across the board if it happens?
- jdmichal 10y ago
  I suspect this is highly related to the ghosting mentioned in the article and by pjlegato in a top-level comment [0]. This is so much the norm at this point, that no response is typically seen as an implicit rejection and the candidate mentally moves on. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12764521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12764521
  - countingteeth 10y ago
    Agreed; I've futilely tried to mentor a recent grad who is applying to jobs he has no qualification for and then sitting around waiting for them to follow up.
wayn3 10y ago
My opinion: If you do a phone screen with someone in a more or less 1on1 kind of setting and they can't tell you whether you passed that stage within an hour, their organization must be dysfunctional (they have the job of conducting the interview but not the authority to pass/fail you?) and, therefore, absolutely not worth working for. The only lengthy part of the "interviewing" should be the negotiation, and by that point you are actually already kind of hired. Unless you blow it. Things will be longer the bigger the company is because they have to involve legal and all this stupidity, but early stage YC companies don't get the benefit of the doubt here. There's this hubris of cultural fit, which is code for "is this guy conformist enough that we can give him an arms length of desk space next to another 50 developers without him flipping?". Its true, cultural fit is super important. But that's at least in part due to the insanity that is software engineer working conditions. Give your people actual offices to perform actual work in and all your culture issues will vanish.
- jldugger 10y ago
  > If you do a phone screen with someone in a more or less 1on1 kind of setting and they can't tell you whether you passed that stage within an hour, their organization must be dysfunctional (they have the job of conducting the interview but not the authority to pass/fail you?) and, therefore, absolutely not worth working for. The university I work for has a fairly standardized process for full time hires. We schedule and sit in on all phone screens, individually evaluate candidates, and then promote some of them on to the next step. Sometimes we're in a position where more people "pass" the phone screen than we would want to bring in for onsites. There's an anxiety in immediately failing people we don't bring in, in case the batch we bring onsite does poorly.
  - wayn3 10y ago
    So you either tell them that they're on the waiting list or you end up in the dysfunctional basket.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  "cultural fit" is in practice a code word for "illegal discrimination".
kafkaesq 10y ago
The "ghosting" is just something you have to get used to as a candidate? Though the ideal upper bound seems to be about 3 weeks net turnaround (for steps 1-4, altogether) for smaller companies (perhaps longer for monster-sized companies), nearly any time can be "reasonable"... as long as you get back to people by the time you say you will, more or less, at each stage in the process. It's the "by the time you say you will" part that these companies seem to be having inordinate difficulty holding up to. And what people on the receiving end tend to find to be quite grating to be on the receiving end of, over and over and over again.
user5994461 10y ago
What looks like a good, normal, expected pace to me: Day 0 - Candidate apply This week - Phone call Next week - On site interviews Next next week - Offer letter ready to sign Of course, we have to be in touch right away after each step to arrange the details for the next step. That means we're in touch within 24-48 hours after each step.

Harj 10y ago

They key thing is to minimize the amount of time a candidate is waiting back to hear from you on the next step. We see a strong correlation between the companies who have the highest closing rates on candidates (70% or more) and how responsive they are in every interaction. The best companies will respond to a candidate on next steps within 24 hours at every step of the process.

komali2 10y ago
The best thing my boss way back when I was a recruiter told me - "Updating someone that there's no update yet is a hell of a lot better than not updating them because there's no update yet." In other words, a simple "the team is still discussing your interview but haven't made a decision yet" email can make all the difference in the world. That being said, and I'm swaying off topic here, candidates should never pause or slow down their job search, no matter how far along they are with a company. A rejection can come in a million forms for a million reasons, and how much would it suck to be back at square one across the board if it happens?
jdmichal 10y ago
I suspect this is highly related to the ghosting mentioned in the article and by pjlegato in a top-level comment [0]. This is so much the norm at this point, that no response is typically seen as an implicit rejection and the candidate mentally moves on. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12764521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12764521
- countingteeth 10y ago
  Agreed; I've futilely tried to mentor a recent grad who is applying to jobs he has no qualification for and then sitting around waiting for them to follow up.

wayn3 10y ago

My opinion: If you do a phone screen with someone in a more or less 1on1 kind of setting and they can't tell you whether you passed that stage within an hour, their organization must be dysfunctional (they have the job of conducting the interview but not the authority to pass/fail you?) and, therefore, absolutely not worth working for. The only lengthy part of the "interviewing" should be the negotiation, and by that point you are actually already kind of hired. Unless you blow it. Things will be longer the bigger the company is because they have to involve legal and all this stupidity, but early stage YC companies don't get the benefit of the doubt here. There's this hubris of cultural fit, which is code for "is this guy conformist enough that we can give him an arms length of desk space next to another 50 developers without him flipping?". Its true, cultural fit is super important. But that's at least in part due to the insanity that is software engineer working conditions. Give your people actual offices to perform actual work in and all your culture issues will vanish.

jldugger 10y ago
> If you do a phone screen with someone in a more or less 1on1 kind of setting and they can't tell you whether you passed that stage within an hour, their organization must be dysfunctional (they have the job of conducting the interview but not the authority to pass/fail you?) and, therefore, absolutely not worth working for. The university I work for has a fairly standardized process for full time hires. We schedule and sit in on all phone screens, individually evaluate candidates, and then promote some of them on to the next step. Sometimes we're in a position where more people "pass" the phone screen than we would want to bring in for onsites. There's an anxiety in immediately failing people we don't bring in, in case the batch we bring onsite does poorly.
- wayn3 10y ago
  So you either tell them that they're on the waiting list or you end up in the dysfunctional basket.
davidgerard 10y ago
"cultural fit" is in practice a code word for "illegal discrimination".

kafkaesq 10y ago

The "ghosting" is just something you have to get used to as a candidate? Though the ideal upper bound seems to be about 3 weeks net turnaround (for steps 1-4, altogether) for smaller companies (perhaps longer for monster-sized companies), nearly any time can be "reasonable"... as long as you get back to people by the time you say you will, more or less, at each stage in the process. It's the "by the time you say you will" part that these companies seem to be having inordinate difficulty holding up to. And what people on the receiving end tend to find to be quite grating to be on the receiving end of, over and over and over again.

user5994461 10y ago

What looks like a good, normal, expected pace to me: Day 0 - Candidate apply This week - Phone call Next week - On site interviews Next next week - Offer letter ready to sign Of course, we have to be in touch right away after each step to arrange the details for the next step. That means we're in touch within 24-48 hours after each step.