Hiring Processes
Having just graduated from Uni, I've gone through a few interviews with major companies. I'm not going to name any names, though, as I don't feel completely justified in divulging my opinions on all of them.
All of this took place in the fall, before the economy went downhill. (My university had an excellent career services department, which gave us huge opportunities to get jobs with any size company- the school is regularly head-hunted by companies like MS, Google, Cisco, Boeing, Lockheed, etc, in addition to other events put on for smaller companies to get some time to interact with students)
Job 1:
Chat at career fair, get an interview for their on-campus stuff the next day.
Interview takes two hours, one technical, one procedural/interaction based.
Phone call the next morning asking me to stop by the location that they were still hanging out at on campus, and had a verbal offer extended then and there, written in my hands within 3 business days.
Before offer expiration, they had set up a weekend for all the people they had offered positions to, flew them all out to the location, got them face time with other employees, managers, etc, and showed them the company facilities, general location, etc.
Job 2:
Talked at career fair, got interview for next day.
Interview started late, took 5 minutes with technical side, (guy was a recent graduate from the school, and they needed a niche role, at a small company, so just mentioning classes I had taken was enough to tell him my skillset) 10 minutes with owner of company, and never heard from them again, despite promises I would.
Job 3:
Sent in resume.
Phone interview, ~30-45 minutes. Used to gauge my skills and figure out what departments I might be suited for.
Talked a couple times via phone and email over the next week, identified best time for me to fly out to location for on-site interviews.
Flew out, had interviews with 4 different department groups, all told me at end of time if they were interested or not. (All were)
Got called an hour after interview saying that, conditional on my answers to a security questionaire I had filled out before leaving, (it was a position that would require TS clearance) I was going to be extended an offer by the next morning, and would have my choice of departments, as all were interested.
Had verbal offer by next morning.
I wound up going with 1- and found out during new hire training that I was on the small end of the scale for interview times. Most people in the room went throguh 4-10 hours of interviews over a day or two, meeting with all sorts of people in the department(s) they needed to work heavily with, and making sure they knew what they said, could handle random challenges, and would be a good match for the environment.