The Endless Interview Process

In my “It’s the Economy“ on Sunday, I mentioned that the job application process has dragged on and on for many Americans. This is a subject I wrote about last year. I’ve heard anecdotes about very long hoop-jumping processes, and so I asked Glassdoor, a site that collects user-submitted information on hiring at different companies, to check for any discernible trends in the duration of the job application gantlet.

The numbers are, again, user-submitted and not from a randomized, scientific survey, so take them with a grain of salt. But Glassdoor generally found that within the universe of their users, the average interview process has risen from 13 days in 2009 in 23 days in 2013.

Glassdoor

The numbers differed substantially by company and by sector (for example, the number of days of the interview process is typically longer for biotech than for retail). Some of these differentials could likely be explained by regulations, culture, market conditions and other factors. Within any given sector, though, the hiring process seems to have become more elongated in recent years.

Average number of days of entire interview process, based on at least 100 interview reviews per year per sector. Source: Glassdoor.

Another chart, last updated about a year ago, shows how long job vacancies across the economy remained unfilled, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It’s not clear why companies are taking so long to hire, given the abundance of available workers; dragging your feet and conducting more interviews is not only frustrating for applicants, but also expensive for employers, who must devote managers’ time and other resources in this vetting process.

Some economists have argued that there is a growing “skills gap” between what workers have and what employees need. If that were true, though, we’d expect to see wages being bid up, and so far wages have remained relatively stagnant across the economy.

Another theory is that in an uncertain economy, companies are really, really worried about making a mistake and do not feel pressure to fill openings right away so long as they can still dump more work onto their existing staff members. As a result, employers exercise more exhaustive screening and vetting processes until they’re confident they’ve found their “purple squirrel,” H.R. jargon for an impossibly perfect, overqualified candidate usually willing to work for peanuts. Meanwhile, the costs that companies incur by making the hiring process more involved remain relatively hidden.