The hiring process in my current company was an interview in which the TL and occasionally another engineer talked with the candidates about the company, their expectations, some technical conversation.. and that's it. That was enough to recruit top talent into the company.<p>Now, it has become a nightmare, that even good candidates have decided to bail out for this reason. It's now following something along the lines of: recruiter screening, cognitive test, PM screening, TL technical and team fit interview, not sure if the last one is the offer or there is still one another pointless interview in between.<p>Recently I started to look what other companies are doing and I have to admit I'm amazed with how crazy the hiring process has become, some times even worse than what my company is doing.<p>Checking multiple companies which make public their hiring process in their website, on average the standard is now: First call screening with HR, second call screening with HR manager, first technical interview, technical challenge, second technical interview reviewing the challenge, team-fit interview and final meeting to negotiate.<p>Even startups with just a few people are doing this, which is funny because one ends up interviewing multiple times with the same guys..<p>Are we getting crazy? In my opinion this got out of control.
It is, but the question is why ? Who does all this really serve? I feel that the usual explanation along the lines of "avoid bad engineers at all costs!" is a bit of a smokescreen.
When there are books literally explaining how to pass FAANG tech interviews, people have to get creative with their hiring process.<p>IMHO the interviews are justified.