I would be interested to hear what you think a good number of interviews would be and their composition, to ensure a high hiring bar but also not too heavily incurring false positives, and taking into account travel costs (assumed to be paid for by the company) and time cost to the candidate.
As a candidate, I found the Facebook and Google interviews to be fairly daunting by description, but even with 10 hour timezone difference in jet lag, I did not feel I was being overworked, that the interviews overlapped dramatically in their content, or that I was being asked anything unnecessary (well, there was one interviewer...). In both cases, I felt I had an opportunity to show off some depth in a number of areas, and that I may have been less likely to succeed if my best interview was discounted. That said, I had a decade of experience before going through those gauntlets, and I am well aware that my experience of these things will differ to others.
As an interviewer and candidate evaluator, sometimes it is fairly clear from just a subset of interviews that a candidate is one we should make an offer to. But sometimes there are one or two interviewers who just did not get enough signal to be comfortable to hire, but the remainder made up for that. Improving that situation is something I am trying (in my own, admittedly limited, way), so any insight would be appreciated.
As a candidate, I found the Facebook and Google interviews to be fairly daunting by description, but even with 10 hour timezone difference in jet lag, I did not feel I was being overworked, that the interviews overlapped dramatically in their content, or that I was being asked anything unnecessary (well, there was one interviewer...). In both cases, I felt I had an opportunity to show off some depth in a number of areas, and that I may have been less likely to succeed if my best interview was discounted. That said, I had a decade of experience before going through those gauntlets, and I am well aware that my experience of these things will differ to others.
As an interviewer and candidate evaluator, sometimes it is fairly clear from just a subset of interviews that a candidate is one we should make an offer to. But sometimes there are one or two interviewers who just did not get enough signal to be comfortable to hire, but the remainder made up for that. Improving that situation is something I am trying (in my own, admittedly limited, way), so any insight would be appreciated.