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Comment by souprock | Hacker News Reader

There shouldn't be many all-day interviews. If you are honest on your resume and there is a phone screen, your chances with the interview should be pretty decent.

The company doesn't like all-day interviews any more than you do. Multiple highly-paid people get distracted from their normal duties to interview you. With both you and the employer having a cost to bear, the interview should mean that both you and the employer are pretty serious about you being hired.

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Sadly, this is not true. I live in the bay area and most startups here, need you in person for their day of interviews. The industry standard seems to be 1 soft skill/ HR discussion + 1 technical phone screen + 1 day of technical interviews(4-6). And as optimistic as one can be, it's hard to find the right (job + company + people) combo in the first try, since it's hard to judge certain aspects from a HR call and a technical interview which is usually a 45-60min call where most of the time is spent coding. This leads you to interview in-person at places where you might not like the company culture/ team/ leadership/ commute/ etc. It is true that a lot of resources go into interviewing from the company's perspective but it is also pretty much the same for an interviewee.

> There shouldn't be many all-day interviews. If you are honest on your resume and there is a phone screen, your chances with the interview should be pretty decent.

While it's nice to think this is true in an ideal world, having been on both sides of the interview in numerous companies in Silicon Valley (even having done hundreds of interviews in a big company I had worked in), this is remarkably false. (Sorry, didn't intend to be mean, just stating how it is.)

Both in terms of candidates that I've interviewed, as well as when I'm a candidate myself, pass rates for on-site interviews are quite low. I'm not selective as an interviewer, but when everyone else is unreasonably selective, there's not much I can do as a lone interviewer who gives a "Hire" to candidates I thought were fine.

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