Job Applicants, Prepare to Be Probed, Tested, and Ghosted!
Has interviewing for jobs become a full-time job?
Job applicants continue to be dissatisfied with their job interview experiences, reversing a mild bettering in this trend during the pandemic.
Much of the discontent is related to increasing time demands of interviews for white-collar jobs.
Job applicants’ interview experiences vary significantly across companies. About 9 out of 10 interviewees with Bain or McKinsey report positive or neutral experiences, whereas only about a third do so with DocuSign or BetterUp.
The beginning of the new year rings in peak recruiting season. If you have a job interview coming up, you might want to brace yourself for a lengthy process. While securing that interview is much of the battle in the first place, slowed hiring for many professional roles (like those in Finance and Consulting) has coincided with a more difficult and frustrating road to an offer letter. How do interviewees perceive the interview process and what do they complain about the most?
Revelio Labs labor market analytics show that interviewees have been dissatisfied with their experiences for a while now. Though the mid-pandemic labor market ushered in some improvement, the trend of dissatisfaction with the interview process resumed through 2022 and 2023. Irrespective of the interview outcome (e.g. offer vs. no offer), 32% of interviewees rated their experience as negative in 2023, compared to 29% in 2022 and 25% in 2021.
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What is going wrong in the interviews?
One issue that is reportedly especially bad in interviews for white-collar jobs is length. Compared to 2018, hiring processes for Production Operator and Machine Operator roles currently take 15 and 10 fewer days, respectively. However, interviews for roles in Test Engineering and Corporate Strategy take more than one week longer than they did in 2018.
Time-related complaints are present in many interviewee comments on companies’ interview processes, but other facets also play a substantial role in the increasingly negative sentiment around interviews. Among reviews of interviews that did not result in a job offer, mentions of “ghosting” and unprofessionalism increased by about 24% and 10%, respectively, relative to 2021.
Our labor market analytics also show that sentiment around job interviews varies significantly across companies. About 9 out of 10 candidates for jobs at Jane Street and Bain & Company rate their experience as positive or neutral, whereas more than half of the interviewees at BetterUp and DocuSign label their interview experience as negative.
