The Interview Process Is Broken. Let's Fix It.
- Sean Robinson
- 7 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Right, let's talk about something that's been on my mind since my last post about radical honesty in interviews absolutely blew up—over 100,000 impressions and thousands of responses. Clearly, I've touched a nerve.
Reading every single comment and message has taught me something: interviews are making everyone miserable. Candidates, hiring managers, recruiters, the lot. And the data backs this up in a way that's honestly quite grim.
The State of Play (And It's Not Good)
61% of job seekers have been ghosted after an interview The Interview Guys—that's nearly two-thirds of people experiencing complete radio silence after they've invested time, energy, and emotional capital into your process. That's a nine percentage point increase since early 2024 alone The Interview Guys.
Meanwhile, only 24% of candidates are actually happy with the interview process JobScore. Three-quarters of people interviewing at your company are having a shit time of it.
Candidates aren't the only ones suffering. 69% of tech companies reported increased time-to-hire in 2024 GoodTime, with the average ballooning from 36-44 days in 2023 to 68.5 days in 2025 The Interview Guys. That's over two months from application to offer. Two months where your best candidates are getting snapped up by companies with their act together.
Half of employers have lost quality talent due to poor interview processes JobScore. You're literally losing the people you need most because your process is pants.
Why This Matters (And Why I'm Qualified to Talk About It)
I've been on both sides of this table more times than I care to count. I've hired hundreds of people at this point. I've also been the candidate in processes that ranged from brilliant to absolutely insulting.
The responses to my last post about giving immediate feedback and honest conversations in interviews weren't just agreement—they were relief. People are desperate for someone to acknowledge that the emperor has no clothes. That our interview processes are often performative theatre rather than genuine attempts to match people with roles where they'll thrive.
What Research Says About Interview Process Improvement
Candidate resentment is at an all-time high in 2024, with tech and finance seeing 25% resentment rates compared to a 14% average ERE. One in four people walk away from your interview process actively angry about the experience.
When companies actually do the basics well, the results are dramatic. When specific feedback was given to finalists, their willingness to refer others increased by over 50% ERE. Candidates who were asked for feedback were 126% more likely to refer others ERE.
In plain English: being a decent human being to people—even those you're rejecting—more than doubles the chance they'll send talented people your way. It's not rocket science.
The problem isn't mysterious either. 42% of delays come from untrained or underprepared interviewers and poor communication with candidates GoodTime. We're sending people into interviews with no training, no structure, and no real idea what they're looking for beyond "I'll know it when I see it."
The Uncomfortable Truth
Most interview processes are designed to protect the organisation rather than find the best person for the job. We've built baroque, multi-stage processes because we're terrified of making a bad hire. Fair enough—a bad hire costs six to nine months of the candidate's annual salary BarRaiser. But in trying to eliminate risk, we've created processes that are so slow and degrading that 70% of candidates who considered dropping out cited processes taking too long or being too complex Toggl.
We're optimising for the wrong thing. So focused on not hiring the wrong person that we're actively driving away the right ones.
Companies with positive candidate experiences are three times more likely to improve employee retention and two times more likely to improve employee performance ERE. The way you treat people during interviews predicts how they'll perform if you hire them.
The Philosophy: Ten Immutable Principles
I've spent the last few days thinking about what a genuinely good interview process looks like—not the LinkedIn recruiting guru version, but one that actually works in the real world.
1. Respect is non-negotiable. If you wouldn't accept being treated this way, don't inflict it on candidates.
2. Time is the currency of trust. Every minute someone spends in your process is a minute they're not spending elsewhere. Waste it and they'll remember.
3. Transparency scales trust. Tell people what to expect, when to expect it, and why it matters. Hiding information doesn't create mystique, it creates anxiety.
4. Feedback is oxygen . Everyone gets better with it. Everyone suffocates without it.
5. Structure enables fairness. Ad-hoc processes don't surface talent, they surface privilege and pattern-matching.
6. Speed without quality is waste—but so is thoroughness without urgency. The best talent is gone in 10 days Toggl. Your six-week process isn't rigorous, it's delusional.
7. The interview is two-way. If candidates aren't actively evaluating you, your process is fundamentally broken.
8. Enrichment over extraction. Everyone who touches your process should leave better than they arrived. This isn't altruism, it's brand building.
9. Documentation is kindness. Write down what works and why. Your memory is not a reliable system, and the next person shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.
10. Iteration beats perfection. Your process should evolve with every interview. If you're doing it the same way you did two years ago, you're doing it wrong.
Where We're Going From Here
Over the coming weeks, I'm going to work through how to actually build an interview process that doesn't make everyone involved want to throw their laptop out the window. Not theory. Not best practices from companies with hiring budgets bigger than your revenue. Practical, reusable frameworks you can adapt to your context.
We'll cover:
How to design an interview process from scratch (or fix the one you've got)
What each stage should actually test for—and what's just theatre
How to train interviewers who aren't rubbish at it
How to deliver decisions (yes and no) in a way that leaves people better off
The infrastructure and tools that actually help rather than hinder
This isn't about making interviews "nice." It's about making them effective. Right now, we're failing candidates and organisations in equal measure, and the data proves it.
If you're an interviewer or hiring manager who's tired of losing great people to your own process, this series is for you.
If you're a candidate who's been ghosted, strung along, or treated like a supplicant rather than a professional, this series is also for you—because you deserve to know what good actually looks like.
Let's get into it.
What's your experience been? Are you seeing the same patterns in your interviews? Drop a comment—I read all of them.