Question: How long does the interviewing, task and trial process typically take before securing a full-time role? Is it worth taking up a job in retail/hospitality to support me during the process after leaving university? Chloe, France
This question is a good opportunity to think about the process from the hiring organisations’ point of view, which is not always well understood by students.
For an ‘immediate hire’ vacancy (the vacancies you see advertised year-round) it could be anything from 2 – 8 weeks or more, depending on the organisation and the stakeholders involved at their end.
Typically, the hiring manager will be the decision maker, and they’ll be keen to get somebody in as soon as possible.
HR will be running the process and posting roles, doing the initial sort of applications and being the first point of contact for candidates. The department head will want to be kept informed and perhaps have a say in the decision making.
There could be other folks involved in approving offers and signing off on salaries, too.
Recruitment isn’t any of these people’s day jobs, and they’ll be trying to fit this activity in around other priorities, which is one source of delays.
At each step of the selection process – initial sort, first interview, second interview, possibly a task or a ‘meet the team’ opportunity – two or more of these people need to get their diaries aligned to run the activity and then agree on which candidates go forward.
They could be doing this for a dozen candidates at any one time. And there’s a lag from posting a role, to getting applications, to arranging interviews for everyone, to arranging the next round of interviews, to getting the offer approved by higher ups, to waiting for the first choice candidate to respond…etc…
All of which takes time. In a fast-moving agile organisation that prioritises recruitment, it might be done within a week or two. For a more bureaucratic one, it can take months.
This creates a lot of frustration for candidates, particularly around time-frames and communication of next steps. And you should plan to be involved in several processes before you’re successful – there’s a lot of competition out there.
So, to answer your question directly – taking a temporary job is a question of money. If you have bills to pay, don’t rely on the job search and application process being quick!
I’m Dan (He/Him), a careers coach who is passionate about helping people make good career choices. I currently work for Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. Follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter and drop me some ideas/feedback via email.
AI is now everywhere, with ChatGPT boasting over 800 million weekly active users. It is disrupting our creative processes, speeding up productivity and causing controversy the world over. Given that young people are set to inherit this changing work environment, how do they feel about it all?
No matter who you ask, everyone has an opinion on AI.
When automated, prompt-based content generators initially launched, they were mostly gimmicky and...
For some of Gen Z, the new career ladder means stepping off entirely.
For most people, the idea of “retirement” is something that arrives after decades of work – a reward for staying the course, paying your dues, and submitting to the grind. But for Gen Z, a generation raised in the shadow of economic precarity, climate anxiety, and post-pandemic existential dread, that finish line is no longer the goal.
Instead, we’ve...
Research shows that Gen Z is avoiding traditional news due to an innate scepticism for the institutions delivering it. They also see the constant stream of negative content as being at loggerheads with a need to maintain good mental health. Legacy media is panicking, and rightly so.
Blissful ignorance or doomscroll-induced anxiety? Pick your poison.
Given how bleak a daily peruse through mainstream news has become, it genuinely feels like these...
A new global study by researchers at the University of Cambridge and UBC has found that ‘Gen Z, women, conservatives, and less-educated individuals’ are more likely to believe misinformation. This goes against many common ideas of younger people being more digitally native than their parents.
New research indicates that Gen Z are the most susceptible to misinformation, contradicting assumptions that young people are more digitally savvy than older generations.
A global...
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok