Job interviews are getting longer — here’s why it could be a red flag

A pre-screen with human resources. A call with the hiring manager. Followed by six half-hour interviews that stretched across three days. 

That’s not all — a written case study exercise, before yet another interview with the hiring manager. 

And finally: one last round with the CEO. 

That makes a total of 9 interviews, for a job that 32-year-old Ayomi Samaraweera said she did not eventually get. 

“I enjoyed all the conversations I had with the team but the process was draining and there wasn’t any clarity around compensation of the role upfront,” she told CNBC Make It. 

“Or clarity of what the process would look like from my first HR call — for example, they didn’t mention there would be a case study.”

Samaraweera’s frustration in her job search is not an isolated incident.

Experts that CNBC Make It spoke to said they’ve observed a “significant increase” in the number of job seekers facing an extended interview process over the past year. 

“It seems to be a growing trend across various industries, with candidates being subjected to more rounds of interviews and rigorous testing than ever before,” said Steven Leitch, a career coach and resume expert.

According to a June report from the Josh Bersin Company and AMS, a workforce solutions firm, the amount of time it takes to hire a new employee reached “an all-time high” in 2023. 

The report showed that average time-to-hire rates for the first quarter of 2023 increased across all industries by one day — pushing the recruitment process to 44 days on average.

“As our data shows, time to hire has risen consistently for the last four years. Make no mistake, the hiring market is not going to get easier any time soon,” said Jim Sykes, global managing director of client operations at AMS, in a statement.

While there is “no specific formula” for an…