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How much does an outsourced background check? Running an interview pool on someone using a bunch of skilled employees costs probably $4K or so. Figure 7 intervi

How much does an outsourced background check? Running an interview pool on someone using a bunch of skilled employees costs probably $4K or so. Figure 7 interviews, 3 hrs each (prep, interview, feedback, hiring meeting) plus someone to arrange the onsite. If those are $150K employees, the fully-loaded cost of 20 hrs of work is going to be over $4K.

paulddraper 8y ago
Interview prep for one candidate is 10 minutes, plus 20 minutes for postinterview discussion. Subjecting someone to 17 hours of interviews borders on the inhumane. Plus, interviews are done iteratively; you don't run the whole process for every candidate. Moreover, background checks are the least likely to actually disqualify candidates, so they are always done last.
- tomkarlo 8y ago
  I've done 150+ interviews for Google. A single candidate will do 1-2 screens (this changes over time / role), plus at least 4-5 on-site interviews. That's about 7-8 hours of meetings, minimum. Having interviewed at a number of other SF tech startups, almost all of them had about the same # of interviews. Once you're past the screen interview, you'll almost always get all 5 interviews in the pool unless you're terrible - it's more efficient to just have the candidate come in once. Google recommends a 1:1 ratio of prep/feedback time to interview time, so it's ~2 hrs per interview even if you're not involved in the hire / no hire discussion. The discussion here was specifically that it was likely that background checks would start disqualifying candidates, so maybe it's better to do them up front as that's cheaper than having the interviews done first... I'd say that still makes sense, at least before the pool, if you think there's a reasonable chance they'll get punted.
jimmywanger 8y ago
Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn all have roughly the same interview process. One hour phone screen, 5 hour on-site interviews, then a decision. I have never encountered a situation with 7 interviews. Bear in mind that many wash out during the phone screen, so no, a fully loaded interview schedule is not that sort of commitment at all.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  I think he means 7H of interviews in total in order to find the right candidate for the position.
  - jimmywanger 8y ago
    In that case, it's not an amortized cost of the time it takes to interview each person that comes in the door.
  - tomkarlo 8y ago
    Lol, no. It's higher than that because 70% of screener interviews end up not resulting in a hire, and probably 50-70% of on-sites don't. I think the last estimate I saw was about 50 hrs of interviewing total per hired candidate, and that feels about right to me. 7 interviews just for the hired candidate (1-2 screeners, 5-6 on-site pool interviews.) Maybe less than 7 hrs if they're cut to 45 mins each.

paulddraper 8y ago

Interview prep for one candidate is 10 minutes, plus 20 minutes for postinterview discussion. Subjecting someone to 17 hours of interviews borders on the inhumane. Plus, interviews are done iteratively; you don't run the whole process for every candidate. Moreover, background checks are the least likely to actually disqualify candidates, so they are always done last.

tomkarlo 8y ago
I've done 150+ interviews for Google. A single candidate will do 1-2 screens (this changes over time / role), plus at least 4-5 on-site interviews. That's about 7-8 hours of meetings, minimum. Having interviewed at a number of other SF tech startups, almost all of them had about the same # of interviews. Once you're past the screen interview, you'll almost always get all 5 interviews in the pool unless you're terrible - it's more efficient to just have the candidate come in once. Google recommends a 1:1 ratio of prep/feedback time to interview time, so it's ~2 hrs per interview even if you're not involved in the hire / no hire discussion. The discussion here was specifically that it was likely that background checks would start disqualifying candidates, so maybe it's better to do them up front as that's cheaper than having the interviews done first... I'd say that still makes sense, at least before the pool, if you think there's a reasonable chance they'll get punted.

jimmywanger 8y ago

Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn all have roughly the same interview process. One hour phone screen, 5 hour on-site interviews, then a decision. I have never encountered a situation with 7 interviews. Bear in mind that many wash out during the phone screen, so no, a fully loaded interview schedule is not that sort of commitment at all.

jobigoud 8y ago
I think he means 7H of interviews in total in order to find the right candidate for the position.
- jimmywanger 8y ago
  In that case, it's not an amortized cost of the time it takes to interview each person that comes in the door.
- tomkarlo 8y ago
  Lol, no. It's higher than that because 70% of screener interviews end up not resulting in a hire, and probably 50-70% of on-sites don't. I think the last estimate I saw was about 50 hrs of interviewing total per hired candidate, and that feels about right to me. 7 interviews just for the hired candidate (1-2 screeners, 5-6 on-site pool interviews.) Maybe less than 7 hrs if they're cut to 45 mins each.