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It’s appalling how one-sided many orgs see the interview process. Instead of treating the candidate as a partner - someone to work together in making a decision - the candidate might as well be a box of staplers to them.

The candidate is barely a human being to these mega corps. They freely dispose of the candidates time without any consideration beyond what the hiring team needs.

An interview CAN be as much about helping the candidate find what’s best for them. Heck where I work we actively talk and promote other options where someone might be happier. We make referrals for people. When it’s not a good fit we try to give them feedback and genuinely want them to succeed.

Ugh

4 comments

> It’s appalling how one-sided many orgs see the interview process. Instead of treating the candidate as a partner - someone to work together in making a decision - the candidate might as well be a box of staplers to them

With maybe 1 in 5 on-site interview candidates making it, and the amount of interviewing individuals at Amazon do, it can often get to the point where it's really hard to see interviewees as people. I tried really hard, especially as one of the more limited-pool of systems engineers (I specifically put myself out there for other teams to leverage, so that systems engineers didn't end up with a full dev loop). The number of interview loops done is only exasperated by Amazon's inability to hold on to engineers for more than a few years. One team I dealt with regularly would lose a sizeable chunk of their syseng staff every 9 months or so.

I can't even begin to imagine how hard it gets for the bar-raisers, who might interview 4-5 candidates a week or more.

I've found it actually works to throw a little temper tantrum, Go right to the most senior person and just lay into them in a manner they cannot defend, because they are clearly treating people unfairly, taking advantage of the unbalanced recruiting situation. That's how I got my first C-Suite (reporting to the board, not the CEO) Senior Director position.

Any company that interviews as much as these do is going to have a process that resembles sausage making, and the candidates are the ingredients. It's all about volume, not quality.

The candidate is barely a human being to these mega corps. They freely dispose of the candidates time without any consideration

There is a reason companies refer to employees as “resources” these days. Well at least they’re honest.

They have started to call people "resources" at my company since the last one or two years. It feels so dehumanizing.

That's the entire point. My suggestion is move on.

And for every dignified refusal to take that abuse of an interview, 100 spineless moluscs will happily suck up to it.

You can't beat the corporate system because the corporations are not the cause, only the effect of the slime that gets in and raises to the top.