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
1) Phone Screens
2) Interview responses (moving to next interview?)
3) Final decisions
4) Negotiation/confirmations of receiving a response to an offer
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?
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.
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.
But people would do well to get over discrimination. (in the silicon valley software engineering job market. im not talking about minorities in poor neighborhoods having literally no chance of living the american dream. ok? thank you)
Maybe its illegal, but if you're a 45 year old professional with a family seeking a job where you can be highly effective for 8 hours and then go home and play with your kids, do you really want to join a startup that asks you to be in the office for 12 hours so you can play foosball for 6 and do stupid shit for the other 6?
Maybe at some point you have to somewhat appreciate being discriminated against. As silly as that may sound (because they are helping you stay away from pointless drama)
People who discriminate against "the old" in jobs where experience clearly enables you to do your job 10x better are just nuts. Don't sue them. Pity them. And then move on.
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.
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.