Our candidate already had a couple of offers. He says that both of those firms only interviewed him a couple times and then plain old decided. Our client has now interviewed him four times and has asked him to come back for a fifth interview. This has taken almost 2 weeks. And, they still can’t tell us when they will make a decision. He’s getting frustrated and made the statement above. He does have a point, and even after 45 years of doing this I still wonder why so many organizations have to have so many interviews. (I do know the reason. It’s because no one wants to take responsibility for making a decision and by having this many people involved in the process, they can spread the responsibility/blame.)
He was getting so frustrated and plain old pissed off about it, that at one point, he told me to tell them to just forget it, that he was going to take one of the other offers. I had to calm him down at least twice this week. And I had to remind him that this kind of activity and relative inability to decide does not mean that the job is any better or worse than another one. In fact, in spite of what anybody might tell you, my experience has been that the number of interviews that a company may require of a candidate as well as the length of time it takes for them to make a decision has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the job.
So, the job seeker cannot judge the quality of the opportunity based on the number of interviews she/he has to go through. Some companies think that they hire better candidates by requiring more interviews and extending the time of the interviewing process longer. Take it from me, they don’t hire any better or lesser candidates because of it. Nor is the job any better or worse based on the number of interviews.
Make a judgment about the job based on business reasons. Try to take the emotions out of it as best you can.
