The interview process is getting longer. Here’s why

In today’s labor market, the interview process can seem like an unending collection of check-ins and tests. Some applicants report that they have been put through hiring processes with eight or more rounds of interviews. Now, many of these applicants are taking to platforms like LinkedIn to express their frustration.

Data also suggests that the hiring process is indeed getting longer. A 2023 Josh Bersin study found that it now takes around 43 days on average to hire an employee, one day longer than how long it took workers the previous year. And a more recent survey by ZipRecruiter in Q1 of 2024 found that just 46% of workers got their job within a month. That’s down from 60% the previous quarter. It’s taking longer for candidates to get placed with the right job. And then there are the candidates who go through this lengthy interview process and never receive an offer.

There are a variety of reasons why the interview process could be getting longer. Some firms are receiving an exorbitant number of applications for just one job posting, and need a way to weed through submissions. Other employers are moving intentionally slowly in order to methodically make sure that new hires are effective. No matter the cause, a longer interview process means more for the applicant to balance.

Fast Company spoke with labor market experts, career coaches, and recent interviewees to determine why the interview process is getting so long—and how the extended interview process impacts workers.

How applicants feel about long interview processes

Back in 2023, Vanessa Vun was looking for a job in front-end engineering. She narrowed in on smaller firms, wanting to avoid the extensive technical questioning of Big Tech. She estimates that she applied to over 500 job postings—and ended up with seven interview offers.

One of the offers included seven rounds of phone interviews and multiple skills assessments. The firm, a startup, also asked Vun to chat with the organization’s leaders, including calls with the CTO and CEO. Vun got the job, to her relief.

“If I went through six plus interviews and then didn’t get it, it would be a real bummer,” Vun says. “It took several weeks, more than a month of interviewing.”

Meanwhile, Vun was going through multi-round interview processes with other employers which often made the process more difficult. “I had to make sure that I remembered who I was talking to and that I was prepared enough for those interviews,” she says. “It was pretty stressful, being able to interview multiple places at the same time.”

Many applicants are not as lucky. Nikita Gupta, cofounder of Careerflow.ai, has seen both sides of the increasingly long interview process. She worked as a recruiter for Uber and Amazon Web Services before founding her own company that offers AI-powered job search tools. During previous job searches, Gupta remembers having gone through multiple rounds of interviews just to be ghosted by the company. She also recalls a hiring manager asking about her citizenship status—but not until after multiple rounds of calls.

“I went through four or five rounds of interviews and then the recruiter is asking me, ‘Do you need sponsorship?’” Gupta remembers. Only then did the recruiter say they couldn’t sponsor a working visa.

But having interviewed candidates herself, Gupta says she now understands the need for a long interview process to get to know a candidate. Multiple rounds of interviews also gives an applicant a chance to learn more about an organization.

“As a job seeker, I used to get annoyed that I had to go through so many rounds of interviews,” says Gupta. “When I became a hiring manager, I felt that it’s needed because now I have a more clear understanding of the company’s role and the team members.”

Why is the interview process getting longer?

When it comes to the number of interviews needed to hire a candidate, some employers say the labor market is to blame. Flush with applicants, many hiring managers say they are trying to weed through a surplus of candidates through extensive screenings.

Ron Hetrick, senior labor economist Lightcast, separates the labor market into two categories of applicants. He says that for those looking for hourly wage work, the market is still wide open, and very few interviews are being required. But, for those with a college degree seeking professional salaried positions the market has dampened.

“Especially since private equity money left the market about two years ago, there’s not a lot of excitement out there,” Hetrick says. “The financial market’s been hit really hard by rising interest rates because they can’t lend anything right now. So these professional jobs, if they put a posting up, are getting hammered [with applications.]”

This surplus of candidates is especially jarring considering the hiring challenges of the past few years. Back in 2021 and 2022, during the immediate recovery from the pandemic shut-down, labor shortages put applicants in the driver’s seat. Firms started offering expansive perks and were quick to get new hires in the door. Now, Hetrick believes, the labor market is back on course.

“​​I tell people all the time, act like ‘21 and ‘22 didn’t exist, because it should have never happened,” Hetrick says. “If we take those years out and the expectations from what was happening, then [the labor market] really isn’t so different now than it was back in 2019.”

Of course, there are some distinct differences across different segments of the labor market. The recent ZipRecruiter survey found that highly technical fields like tech and finance to have the highest number of interview rounds, on average. The business support industry was found to require the highest number of interviews, with an average of 5 interviews in 2023. Meanwhile, jobs in the nonprofit sector often included just one or two interviews.

How to survive an extended hiring process

For applicants who face what can feel like an unending interview process, career experts say there are ways to survive the barrage of interviews.

For instance, career coach and founder of Career Fixer, Dawid Wiacek notes that a multi-round hiring process means there are more opportunities for applicants to show off their background and skills. Candidates should take advantage of that opportunity and show off their professional successes, he proposes.

“Make sure that you have a wealthy, diverse, robust portfolio of examples so that you’re not sounding like a broken record,” Wiacek says. “Offer each interviewer something compelling and unique.”

Long interview processes can also offer a sort of perseverance test, Wiacek says, forcing candidates to show off their commitment and dedication to the role. For this reason, candidates should highlight their soft skills, such as their emotional intelligence and can-do attitude, throughout each and every call.

Lauren Milligan, career coach and owner of ResuMAYDAY, often works with clients who go through extensive interviews and technical screenings, only to get rejected. Some companies are repeat offenders of this, she says. One solution she proposes is to pay close attention to the candidate experiences of others.

“Do a lot of research, whether it’s through Glassdoor, Google News, different chat forums, LinkedIn business pages, or just LinkedIn job seeker groups,” says Milligan. “Do your research on companies and what their interview process actually is.”

Milligan recounts one especially sour story, in which a client completed a “full week’s worth of work” during one interview process only to get rejected. She says leaders need to take responsibility for how they treat candidates.

“No one is going to change that process from the outside,” Milligan says. “Once people are hired, they can commit to using their role to do better for other candidates who are in the position that they were in.”

It can be especially difficult to be rejected from a role after numerous rounds of interviews. HR consultant Kate Walker recently had a client go through several rounds of interviews and give several presentations—only to get ghosted. Walker felt so badly that she ended up sending the client flowers. Still, Walker says it was an important reminder that applicants can also pull out of the hiring process, and should ask for a direct status update on their candidacy.

For instance, candidates could say, “I’m really interested, I’m feeling really invested in the possibility of this. Can you give me a sense of where I’m at?” as a possible way to broach the subject.

Walker says that in general, HR teams today aim to “Hire slow, fire fast.” While the process may be grueling, she says employers are putting candidates through rounds of calls to ensure they’re the perfect fit, and that they won’t have to go through the expensive process of letting them go.