At some companies, the hiring process has become an exercise in endurance

By Howard Levitt and Charles Millar

Not long ago, getting a job required little more than an ironed shirt, a firm handshake and the ability to make a good impression.

We have evolved.

Employers now understand that hiring is a serious decision. Experience matters. Skills matter. References matter. A candidate’s ability to work with others matters. A bad hire can cost an organization months of management time, disrupt a team, waste time and resources rehiring and, in some cases, create significant financial and legal exposure.

And yet, something has gone badly wrong with the modern hiring process.

We recently read about a non-profit position with a seven-stage interview process, including two separate four-hour work trials.

Two four-hour work trials!

Another position at a well-regarded bank required candidates, at the second stage of a five-stage process, to prepare presentations on major marketing initiatives and strategic programs.

At some point, an employer needs to ask itself a rather obvious question: Are we hiring this person, or are we trying to make them earn the right to be considered?

After weeks of interviews, testing, presentations, meetings and, in some cases, performing work for free (at least until the employment standards claim), a “successful” candidate may finally be considered for selection. And even then, the offer can depend on a parade of stakeholders reaching consensus.

Meanwhile, numerous qualified candidates have spent weeks pursuing a job they likely had no prospect of ever obtaining.

This is not always careful hiring. Increasingly, it is management indecision masquerading as rigour.

Employers have become so terrified of making the wrong hiring decision that they are trying to eliminate the need to make a decision at all.

Instead of giving a capable manager the authority to gather the relevant information, exercise judgment and make a call, companies create elaborate processes involving interview panels, assessments, presentations, scoring systems and multiple layers of approval.

The responsibility becomes everyone’s. Which means it is ultimately no one’s.

There is nothing wrong with a rigorous hiring process. An employer should understand a candidate’s experience. It should test important skills where necessary. It should check references. It should provide the candidate with an opportunity to meet the people with whom they will work.

But the purpose is to enable a decision — not become a substitute for one.

By the second four-hour work trial, what did the first four-hour work trial fail to establish?

If the hiring manager, after a substantive interview and focused assessment, still cannot determine whether the candidate meets the stated requirements, another meeting is unlikely to produce divine intervention.

There is also a practical consequence. Strong candidates leave.

Good candidates often have options. If one employer requires six interviews, multiple presentations and weeks of waiting while another employer is capable of making a decision after a sensible process, the first employer should not be shocked when its preferred candidate accepts a position somewhere else.

The process itself also tells candidates something about the company. Imagine joining an organization after six interviews, only to discover that every decision requires another meeting, another stakeholder and another layer of approval.

The hiring process is the candidate’s first glimpse of the company’s culture. If it suggests bureaucracy and an inability to trust managers to exercise judgment, candidates are apt to wonder whether that is what awaits them.

There is another issue employers should consider. Not everyone has the luxury of unlimited flexibility. A candidate working full-time cannot necessarily take multiple afternoons off for interviews. A parent may have to arrange childcare. Someone caring for a family member may have difficulty accommodating an unpredictable schedule.

Then they are asked to do it again. And again. The hiring process itself becomes a barrier.

Employers should therefore ask a question they rarely ask: Who are we screening out with this process?

If highly qualified candidates with demanding schedules or competing offers withdraw, while candidates who can devote weeks to an uncertain process remain, the employer may be selecting for availability not competence.

There can be legitimate reasons to ask a candidate to demonstrate a skill. A programmer may be asked to solve a focused technical problem. A salesperson may be asked to demonstrate how they would approach a client. A senior executive may be asked to discuss a hypothetical strategic problem.

But there is a difference between assessing someone’s ability and obtaining work from someone who has not been hired. The closer an exercise gets to producing something the company can actually use, the more questionable the exercise becomes. And the more likely it is that the candidate is legally entitled to be paid for their time.

Employers should not convince themselves that calling something a “work trial” transforms productive work into an interview. If you need four hours of someone’s labour to decide whether they can do a job, perhaps you should first ask whether you have adequately evaluated their experience and skills.

Managers spend hours interviewing candidates who have already been interviewed by other managers. Human resources departments spend time coordinating calendars and administering stages. Departments that are already short-staffed absorb additional work while the position remains vacant.

And the organization congratulates itself for being selective.

There is no cogent evidence that multiplying interviews produces superior judgment. Often it produces something else: exhausted candidates, duplicated assessments and a false sense of certainty.

None of this means employers should return to hiring people because they have a pleasant personality and a firm handshake. That would be equally lazy. The answer is proportion.

Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, argued that virtue generally lies between two extremes. Courage sits between cowardice and recklessness. Generosity lies between stinginess and wastefulness.

Hiring requires the same judgment. Too little scrutiny is reckless. Too much scrutiny is paralysis.

The objective is not to find the mathematical midpoint. It is to apply the appropriate amount of scrutiny for the job and the risks involved.

A senior executive entrusted with millions of dollars warrants considerably more scrutiny than an entry-level employee. A safety-sensitive position warrants more verification than a routine administrative role. A technical position may reasonably require a skills assessment where a resumé cannot establish competence.

But once the employer has the information it actually needs, somebody has to make a decision. That is what management is for.

Employers need to accept an uncomfortable truth: they will never eliminate all uncertainty from a hiring decision.

The objective is not to prove beyond all conceivable doubt that this person will succeed for the next 10 years. It is to determine whether, based on the information reasonably available, the candidate is capable of performing the job and is an appropriate fit for the organization. That inevitably involves judgment. And judgment involves risk.

The better question for every stage of the hiring process is straightforward:

What do we need to learn, and why can’t we learn it another way? If the answer is clear, conduct the assessment. If the answer is not clear, eliminate the stage. And once the material questions have been answered, make the decision.

There is nothing wrong with due diligence. There is everything wrong with using due diligence as an excuse not to make a decision.

Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. He practises employment law in all provinces and is the author of six books, including the Law of Dismissal in Canada. Charles Millar is an associate at Levitt LLP.