Company is asking for unplanned interview stage? Should I accept it?

Regardless of how it's not uncommon these days, and even acceptable to some people, 5 rounds of interviews is insane. One round, possibly with several people, should be enough. If it's not enough, that means the wrong people were doing the interviews.

5 rounds is insane, and to me it's the mark of a severely dysfunctional company.

Don't even get me started on multiple choice personality tests taken by wannabe psychologists in HR, or the general idiocy that is whiteboard coding.

I've seen that happen when they are either

1 - Uncertain about something about you (I imagine technical aptitude), and want to rule out their concern 2 - There are 2 close candidates

Either way you should confirm that it is the final stage, confirm what they'd need to see to hire you and if you are feeling confident maybe use it to negotiate salary!

Sounds like you are close to getting the job though so I wouldn't dismiss it especially if you have no doubts about the company!

If you want the job you should do the interview.

If you don't want the job, don't do the interview.

This is super annoying. It's evidence of an immature hiring process, maybe even an immature hiring culture. That does not mean 'bad company' but it is a sign of internal disorganisation and a lack of external market awareness.

your questions:

- Should I go for it? Up to you obviously

- Are they reliable? No

- Is it acceptable / worth it? Unknown

- What would you do? Depends on whether I have other irons in the fire. If this was my only option and I still like this option, despite being messed around at this stage, then I would stay in process, so long as I could guarantee that I would not hold resentment, as this will come across on coding challenge and further interactions with team.

Good luck, whatever you decide!

Refusing will either get you the job plus some respect for having some boundaries, or will result in them immediately dropping you from consideration because they have deemed this additional testing to be essential to the process.

Side note, if this company can’t pick someone after after interviewing candidates 4x, it seems to me they don’t really understand what they want / fungible requirements are endemic to their culture. That may or may not be a desirable feature in this potential employer.

They may be considering you for a role slightly different. Or they want to like you, but aren’t confident about your technical skills yet. Do you want the job? You can always turn down an offer, you can’t evaluate an offer you don’t get.

How badly do you need the job? How much BS are you willing to put up with once you start?

This is a sign of chaotic internal processes, not to mention a culture of disrespect toward candidates’ time.

If you get the job, expect work to be regularly dropped in your lap on a Friday afternoon to prep for a meeting on Monday with higher-ups. This meeting will be canceled.

Expect pervasive overconfidence and excessive process (who does six rounds of interviews unless they think they “only hire the best”?).

And, when you need some additional headcount on your team, expect it to arrive sometime the quarter after next, too late to be of much help.

But yeah if you need the paycheck, what are you gonna do?

When I encounter this, I will tell them politely that while they were my first choice, I have an offer in hand that I will be pursuing.

This gets them out of their "so many choices" analysis paralysis mode and if they like you enough, into a FOMO mode where they risk losing to to an unnamed competitor. If it doesn't get them into a FOMO mode, then they weren't that into you in the first place and you saved the time waste.

$0.02.

No. 5 interviews is already outrageous enough. Show them you value your time by refusing another interview.

its hard to comment usefully without any context

  - do you want to work with them?
  - do you care, or are you just trying to find anything?
  - are you busy? that's a lot of interviews, but maybe you have the time?
  - how have the interviews been thus far? interesting and high-bandwidth or a confused waste of time

in general through I would be biased pretty strongly against such a company. either they are small and being fussy or huge and don't really have it together. a company is trying to present their best face to candidates - to the point of being actively misleading. if they can't interview candidates without it turning into a shitshow how together do you think they are in general?

That sucks, that they're not communicating their process well, or not following it.

> Should I go for it? Are they reliable, is it acceptable/worth it? What would you do?

Kind of all depends on your situation.

How have the interviews gone, from your perspective? You have been evaluating the company during them, right? (if not, please start, asking your own questions during interviews is _extremely_ important)

At any sane company, them asking for another interview should mean they're serious, they wouldn't want to spend one of their engineer's time otherwise.

I'd probably just do it, but I'd definitely set a limit for myself (communicating that limit may be a mistake). I'd probably also re-ask what the process is from here, what's the next step(s)?

If after 5 rounds of interviews they are still not sure what to do personally I wouldn't want to join them: it sounds like the leadership lacks decisiveness and/or that they are plagued by internal politics, not to mention their own confession that the previous rounds were badly designed (i.e. they don't now what they are looking for). but as others have commented it depends on how much you want this job.

Or maybe they pushed the code you wrote in your previous round to prod and got an issue so now they need you to fix it ;)

It's important to keep in mind how these decisions are made. The panel of people who interviewed you each give feedback and that feedback is aggregated together by the hiring manager (and possibly other leadership) to make a decision. If there is consensus in the group (in either direction) that decision is easy. If the group is split but nobody has very strong opinions, probably it will be an easy decline. If however, there is a strong difference of opinion: some folks advocating for you and others against, then they might want another round to focus specifically on the points of contention.

Also, as others have pointed out, it's not clear what a "round" means to you. Where I work, we typically have two rounds: Screening (typically 2 meetings), and full panel (6-8 meetings). Before Covid, the full panel round was done in-person in a single day. Now it might be spread out, but it's still one round. Meetings between the candidate and the recruiter don't count as a round.

I was going to say it depends how much you want the job. If you're talking about the US, you're at very little unemployment, so you have some leverage there. After hearing that this is the SIXTH round with multiple live coding challenges, it sounds like they're not interested in hiring, but are just trying to get free labor out of interviewees.... :D

As a favor to yourself, me, and all other developers, you should not accept another interview round. 6 rounds, one unplanned, is embarrassing. Where does it end?

Personally, if they can't get their interviews right (they forgot to test for something?), I don't trust them to be a good employer.

Alternatively, if you really need the job, then yes you should participate in the interview.

That’s a pain, but not uncommon. I’ve heard of big, good companies that do this in some cases. Could be one person was unsure about your performance, or they’re deciding between two levels for you, or even that the person that did your coding interview got fired and didn’t leave notes.

I really wouldn’t overindex on it. Others are saying it’s a bad sign about their internal procedures and culture which, sure yeah it’s not an ideal way to run an interview process. But that might just mean that the HM did it in a previous job and it worked out well, or the recruiting head thinks it’s a good idea, and everything else is fine about the company.

For the sake of an hour of your time and some extra interview practice- just do the interview. If you want, use this thread to guide your questions after you get an offer and figure out whether there are other signs of internal dysfunction. But turning down a job you want because of this one blip in the interview process would strike me as petulant.

I went thru 4 rounds recently with a startup, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I liked it since it gave me lots of info. I am by no means a hardened interview taker.. but I've had my fair share of interviews (and lots of rejections). These 4 'rounds' were spread across almost 2 weeks, so fairly quick. (4 zoom calls).

Round 1: Screening for strategic fit. Round 2: Paired coding interview (~ 1.5 hrs) Round 3: Detailed interview with co-founder. Round 4: Panel interview with team I was to work with.

It didn't feel insane, in fact the more I interviewed, I pretty much got a detailed picture of what I would do if on that job, and who I would work with. Lots of times you can't get that sort of peek into your prospective workplace.

The thing that made this process bearable was : 1) niceness of people involved 2) Having a fairly limited coding phase....

So as long as these are not all coding phases, it will give you a really good view of the org fit for you.

It depends on the position. 5 interviews for an entry level job isn't standard, especially if the fifth was unplanned. Of course if you're applying for a leadership or management position then it's different, but it's generally not a bunch of live coding sessions, more interviews with team members or executives.

> Are they reliable

well, depends on the company.

Google did this to me. I did their 5 round gauntlet and they forgot to give a behavioral so I had to reschedule that interview.

Thank you everyone for your advice - I didn't expect so many comments, much appreciated.

I ended up doing the challenge because I thought it would be a good learning experience and a way to ask questions and learn (even) more about the company.

I was offered the job straight away but turned it down because I felt the company was dysfunctional as many of you suggested, slow to make decisions and slightly chaotic. There were some nice people and unfortunately some (potentially/seemingly) toxic ones.

Can't justify accepting it when the market is so good right now and there so many good options out there. I will keep looking. Thanks once again all of you for your help. I read your comments with great interest.

What you should not do is ask these questions here, where anyone of the company can read this and link it with you..

I would have been honest with them, tell them you didn't expect a 6th, ask them if they think you are close to getting the job, else it will be a waste of effort on your end.

I sense there are doubts about hiring you. What is the tell? Another live coding challenge is not the kind of deal-breaking round a company should opt for, if you passed the other 4 rounds. Also not a deal-making round if you failed the other rounds. (It's just a smoke-test.)

Assuming there are indeed internal doubts, then chances are there's a person in power who is casting those doubts. Could be for example there's a preferred candidate who that person in power already set their eyes on. And the inexperienced hiring manager is not seeing that.

Good luck either way.

Edit: I would probably ask which topics the earlier test missed, and whether it's possible to hop on a call with to share your thoughts about those topics instead.

For me, six or more rounds of interviews for a tech position suggests that that they have management issues and no one is willing or able to make decisions. Just as likely, product direction is a mess.

I would politely decline but I guess it boils down to how badly you want this job.

Depends on how bad you want the job given your experience over the last 5 rounds. Gut instinct though is that you are dealing with a difficult company that is unable to make a decision and likely to nickel and dime you as an employee.

Five interview rounds?? When did applying for a job become a job itself? I feel bad putting candidates through three (recruiter screening, me, a second opinion from someone educated in the position)...

Depends on how desperate you are and/or how lucrative this potential offer is. If you are desperate, then go for it, you are already mostly there. If the offer is lucrative/great company, go for it.

I’d just have it. Every extra round is also additional investment on their end. Good sign, if they don’t offer past that many, it will be frustrating, but most probably better for you.

I think you should take the interview. I bet they had a debrief but were on the fence because of something specific like being unsure if you know relational DBs or something.

They’re looking to test for that specific thing, in my experience when this happens it’s usually pretty easy to pass.

Of course if you’re on the fence yourself I also think it’s reasonable to use this as justification for not taking the role. Plaid had me do 2 separate full day on sites and I rejected them for that reason alone.

You should consider the actual job will be just as tedious.

We can't answer the question of their reliability, you would have to gauge that from your experience with the company thus far. I feel like if you liked the interaction with the team so far, and the package is desirable it's worth it. But depending on the type of role you're interviewing for, I would consider the length of the process a pretty negative signal.

My brother in law had the same problem, completely different type of job. He fixed it by the next time they scheduled an interview, he said he could not on that day as he had another interview (with a different company). In a couple days he had the offer, and not another interview.

What does 5 rounds even mean? Like HR chat? Then phone screen. Then technical assessment. Then behavioral? Even that is 4...

We do it in 2 where i work. I guess you could say 3 if you count the hr call asking if your interested and eligible to work in the US.

All things considered - if I went through 5 rounds of interviews I'd go for the final one, otherwise you wasted so much of your time. Also nobody says you need to accept their offer after this 6th round, it's up to you.

While they appear not sure about you, I would definitely be sure of them. They playing two candidates off against one another, or they're paralyzed by indecision. Time to bail.

I’ve had that happen before - companies requesting one more interview to get “more signal”

Glass half-full: you still have not been rejected

If it is worth it, do it.

If it isn't, don't.

There's an opportunity.

And an opportunity cost.

Maybe it is a test of how you handle last minute changes.

Good luck.