Posted on 01/12/2023 5:15:00 AM PST by EBH
In late 2022, Jessica found herself in a predicament that will sound familiar to many job seekers: slogging through an extended interview process with seemingly no end in sight.
She was up for a job as a fundraiser at a major social services organization in New York. Across the span of two months, she took part in six separate interviews with nine people total, multiple of whom she met more than once. She’d pulled one of her first all-nighters in years putting together a dummy presentation on a hypothetical corporate partnership for interview No. 4, which entailed what she describes as a 15-minute “monologue” from her on the matter followed by a 45-minute Q&A with a panel. It wasn’t until the final interview that she got a real one-on-one sit-down with the person who would be her boss.
“Every time I thought, ‘Okay, this is the final hump,’ there was another thing,” said Jessica, which is a pseudonym. Vox granted her anonymity in order to protect her privacy and keep her out of hot water with her current employer. “It just gets really mentally exhausting, and it’s hard to manage your work schedule because obviously you don’t want your employer to know you’re interviewing.”
“There’s no reason why 10 years ago we were able to hire people on two interviews and now it’s taking 20 rounds of interviews,” said Maddie Machado, a career strategist who has previously worked as a recruiter at companies such as LinkedIn, Meta, and Microsoft. “It’s kind of like dating. When you go on a first date, you need a second date. You don’t need 20 dates to know if you like somebody.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
In a nutshell, the process works like this:
Every title has a pay grade and an associated salary range. So for instance, if I want to hire somebody as a "Specialist Level 2" (just a generic title as an example), it might have a pay grade of 240 with a salary range of $55,000 to $74,999.
HR will then compare the salaries of everybody else in the company with that position, compare years of experience, consider the geographical location (New York has a higher COL than Cedar Rapids, Iowa for example) and other factors.
They then come back to me with their suggested salary. It might be $66,500 or it might be $62,000. I either go with their recommendation or I say it needs to be higher because I know the candidate will reject anything under $70k. Since I own the P&L, it's my call on what the offer will be - so long as it is in the pay range of the job title I'm filling. But I find their recommendations to be pretty much spot on.
Most of my former employers have in some way asked me to come back after I left. My current part time employer actually said these words to me recently, “I’m begging you to come back”. I don’t look for work, work finds me. It must suck having to compete for crappy jobs.
I remember a hiring guy "walking me out to my car" after an interview once. No stickers; and no dirt or dents either on my nondescript Ford.
The worst interview I ever had (with a consumer tech company) was when the prospective manager asked me to describe a recent successful project. I did; it was totally non-political and involved a hundred participants and a board approval process—the board said I could do it as proposed, but if if failed, it would be "on me." It had gone off better than even I expected, so I didn't boast when describing the results. The manager's comment, "So, then did they hate you?" meaning the board. Told me everything I needed to know about working for her. Recruiter called me after and I said, "No, thanks."
It's broken even for retired people looking for a local part-time job at a establishment they've been patronizing for years, such as a nearby grocery or retail store. You may know the clerks and managers by name, but you have to submit your resume on the internet, where they use AI to find someone who will commute 15 miles to do a job you could walk to, in a location and clientele you already know. The internet hire may have neck tattoos, be an alcoholic or work nights as a stripper, but AI picked them out! They will often be late due to traffic while commuting, and will quit as soon as they find something closer to them, but "the process" is the only hiring scenario allowed for low-wage post-retirement jobs.
I see — your company is large enough that there is an established scale from which to work. Thanks for your reply! I worked for smaller companies in the “creative” realm, where the backstabbing is legendary, and the work contract includes a non-compete and forbids sharing salary info. When I left one past job, I took my diary of “age and sex discrimination incidents” with me to my exit interview and informed them I would regard the non-compete as without effect. Then continued to free-lance for the clients.
I was in an industry where very few people had expertise.
There was no way to fake it—any candidates who tried gave themselves away immediately.
Why depending too much on referrals from existing employees can get you trouble (so don’t make it obvious that you prefer referrals)
https://njbia.org/hiring-based-solely-on-staff-referrals-can-violate-anti-discrimination-laws/
Employers like word-of-mouth referrals to find new hires because the job candidate recommendations come from a trusted source – their own employees. However, when businesses recruit new employees solely on staff referrals they can run afoul of federal and state anti-discrimination laws.
Why? Hiring based on staff referrals alone tends to produce an applicant pool that reflects the gender, race, and ethnic background of the existing workforce, rather than the community at-large.
A New York bakery found this out the hard way, and recently agreed to pay $850,000 to resolve allegations it discriminated against female, Black and Asian applicants in the recruitment process by relying exclusively on referrals from existing employees to hire cashiers, packers, and bakers.
A lady I know conducts screening interviews for the restaurant/ food service industry. The interviews are done via Zoom. She says sometimes prospects interview while they’re still in bed, or smoking.
I can testify to the 15 years - absolutely started for me then
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