I think we are still a bit misaligned. I'll explain my process for my last role as an example. Maybe one too many interviews for my taste, but it was for a senior role, so I'd say it's fine:

- 1 recruiter call to align (I personally don't count this, but some do)

- 1 call with the technical director focused on language and tool specific questions

- 1 call with 3 different team leads (since I was being considered for multiple roles). These were mostly soft questions with some light prodding of concepts.

- 1 call with 2 producers for some more soft questions and culture fit

- 1 more call with the overall director (basicslly 1 level below founder/c class) for, well, more soft questions and culture fit.

- lastly, an offer call with HR (I don't count this, but some do)

So I consider it 4 stages, some consider it 6. The times for all of them were around or a little over an hour so there's no issue IMO with call length. Usually 30 minutes of questions, 10 minutes of intro, and then 15 minutes of my own questions.

The number of stages felt a tiny bit too obsessive (did I really have to meet a director 3 levels above the chain? I don't think so), but not worth complaining about for a senior role. But still, these were separated 1-1.5 weeks apart, so this process ended up taking 7 weeks from recruiter call to offer letter. That's just so much dead air and it feels like this could have been condensed or abridged somehow.

For a new grad this just seems to be madness. Not just the time span but the number of people involved for a single hire at a moderately large company. (And I have gone through that many stages just to get rejected in my junior days). There's not as much to ask a new grad (again, unless you just want to quizz them for hours), not as many people will interface with them on day to day tasks, they will likely negotiate less than a senior unless it's some top student will multiple pending offers.

>Most candidates won’t even like that these days. They want to talk to the company, not get quizzed for 60 minutes and then asked to quit their current job and join this new company

That'd be preferable for me. But Im not a new grad. I did my time doing 20 hour take homes and grinding Leet code. I was sure hoping there'd be less of that as I have 8 YOE and more direct experience to speak about on my behalf, but it seems that even 10+ years can't escape Leetcode hell.

But I digress. Most of the conversation revolved around new grad stuff after all. I understand the need to make sure people with no experience (and an industry with no licensing) have the technical know how. I'd just wish project times were more realistic.

> So I consider it 4 stages, some consider it 6. The times for all of them were around or a little over an hour so there's no issue IMO with call length. Usually 30 minutes of questions, 10 minutes of intro, and then 15 minutes of my own questions.

Which adds up to the 4-5 hours I mentioned.

> Maybe one too many interviews for my taste, but it was for a senior role, so I'd say it's fine:

I think we're forgetting that the focus here was on new grad roles. I don't really think it's fair to use my new grad experience of doing a 20 take home project that wasn't even in the tech stack the role asked for.