Is this normal (job interview process)?

[Janie Grace]

My poor dh is going insane. He mentioned to a new VP of his company that he was interested in a posted job. It would be more responsibility, leadership, travel, and money. This was about 8 weeks ago. The VP was VERY encouraging (even though dh has been with the company for less than a year and is relatively new to this field) and set up an interview right away. 

 

Since that time, dh has had 6-7 interviews. This supervisor, that supervisor, this person in HR, this person in a similar position, that person he would be working closely with, etc. He keeps being told he will hear something "this week" or "by Friday" or even "tomorrow." And he never does.

 

The last interview was this past Tuesday. Nothing. 

 

What would you make of this?!?! It has be really hard to not hear anything after he is told he will. He will be happy if he gets it, okay if he doesn't (though we wants to renegotiate compensation). But the hard thing is the series of interviews and still no answer (he was offered his first position in this company on the spot after one interview, so it's quite the contrast). He is so keyed up, he is barely sleeping. 

 

Is this normal? Any tips for weathering this waiting time? Thanks!!!

[Crimson Wife]

Yes, sadly it has become VERY common for the hiring process to drag on and on and on. My DH just got a new job a couple of weeks ago and he started the process back in January or February.

 

One time he got a call 6 months after a "final round" interview offering him the position when the company had never responded to his inquiries. He doesn't know if they hired someone else & it didn't work out or if it took the hiring manager 6 months to actually get approval from sr management to bring someone on board. Either way, he was all, "thanks, but I took a different position months ago."

[DawnM]

DH's work is ridiculous.  DH recommended his friend for the job.  He put in his resume, etc.....after about 6 MONTHS they hired him as a temp of sorts.  That lasted 9 months of them going back and forth about trying to offer him a full time position, and then there was debate about what job they would actually hire him for, and then their bosses had to recommend them to the firm's head guys and wait, and wait, and wait.

 

It was over a year and a half before he got a full time offer.

[SpecialClassical]

I think that is getting to be more normal, unfortunately. My husband's immediate boss resigned and the company took an applicant all the way through the process, offered him the job, and then it was killed when the money for the position wasn't approved. Who know if it ever will be filled.

[imagine.more]

Yes, it is getting to be normal unfortunately. I just interviewed four times for the job I got. With so many interviews I thought for sure I wasn't going to get it. I was frankly very surprised when they offered me the job because in the past I've never interviewed more than once before being offered a job if they liked me. My husband interviewed 2-3 times on average during his year of job-hunting. I wouldn't give up hope despite the lengthy process. It is very frustrating though and can make it hard to plan. 

[ktgrok]

Yup. DH just did all this and then they ended up changing the position and now we are still waiting to hear if he got it.

[Word Nerd]

I had multiple interviews at a company once, and I felt confident that I would get the job, as the person who would have been my boss told me she would hire me on the spot if she could and everything else had seemed like a good fit. After I waited for another week or two for an actual offer or rejection letter, the HR director called to tell me I was their top candidate but management had decided to put a hiring freeze into effect immediately, so the job was no longer open.

 

It's likely there are multiple layers of approval behind the delay that have nothing to do with him personally but with the job itself.

[kewb]

It has become the norm for the round robin interview process. I find it strange. Before my dh became disabled his last job interview took 9 months to complete, he had to take a personality assessment, and submit his SAT scores. It was an interesting process. As bizarre as I found it, the company does have amazing employee retention. People don't leave. It was a great office environment. They catered lunch a few times a week and the expectation was you sat with your coworkers and talked to one another.

[Cinder]

Ds1 recently started his first "real" job after getting his degree. It took three interviews and a skills test before the company offered him a position. This is a fairly small company, so instead of a personality test one of the interviews was to work with a team on a mini project. I think it took about a month for all the interviews to be complete. Prior to this he co-oped at a very large company and his manager was hoping to get him full time. But with the many layers of bureaucracy it just took too long to do anything. (The manager wasn't allowed to offer the job; offers could only come out of HR.) So the offer never materialized in time for him to consider it. Bureaucratic slowness seemed to be the way business was done there.

 

Perhaps your dh is encountering something similar with slowness to finalize decisions? I hope you all hear something soon!

[Garga]

For crying out loud!  That's awful!  So, they just expect people to have time for endless interviews?  I guess you have to be out of work to be looking for a new job, because who could keep taking days off a current job to interview 6 times at a new job?  

 

How frustrating.

[historically accurate]

I went through 3 rounds of personality tests and computer simulations (on helping customers) and never even made it to a face-to-face or even phone interview for a minimum wage job at KMart a couple of years ago. Honestly, I don't even want to think about how many levels there are for a "real job".