Somewhere between the phone screen and the final round, a lot of hiring processes start asking the same questions twice. Every extra stage may feel like a safety net, but it adds time for both candidates and interviewers, and if it covers ground you’ve already covered, it tells you nothing new while risking candidate experience. In this post, we explore why hiring quality comes from what each round is designed to find out, rather than how many rounds there are.
A long process costs more than time
A long process costs both candidates and employers.
For candidates, it’s exhausting. Every extra round means more time off work, more preparation and more waiting to hear back, often for a job they may not get. When so many have been ghosted by employers before, a process that keeps adding stages while they stay in the dark doesn’t read as thorough. It reads as disorganised, or as a sign they’re not a priority. Many candidates are sceptical of longer processes and find them a real source of frustration.
For employers, the cost is also tangible. Every round takes interviewers away from their jobs, and the time adds up across a panel and a shortlist. Perhaps the bigger risk, however, is losing the people you most want to hire. Strong candidates are often talking to more than one employer, and they won’t necessarily wait for you. Some lose patience and drop out partway through, while others accept an offer while you’re scheduling the next round. Then you’re back at the start, with interview time already spent and no hire to show for it.
That was the pattern Cytora, a digital risk platform and a Screenloop client, ran into before reworking its process. “We had a lot of different interview stages and a chaotic interview process. We realised that the candidates were there, but we were losing them because it was all just taking too long,” says Prince John, Talent Acquisition and People Operations Manager at Cytora.
Structure the process, not just the interviews
Cytora’s fix started with the design of the process rather than the length of it. Quality comes from how the process is designed as a whole, not from how many times you sit down with someone. Quality of hire is the metric that tells you whether the process is working, and it is not improved by adding rounds.
Start from what the process has to establish about a candidate overall. Write down the things you need evidence on, assign each one to a stage, and pick the method that gives the best evidence for it. The CIPD recommends using several selection methods rather than relying on one. A work sample, a structured interview and a reference check each tell you something the others cannot.
Then make the stages consistent with each other. One scoring framework, agreed before the first candidate enters the process, with each criterion owned by the stage best placed to assess it. Where criteria are not assigned, stages overlap by default, and that overlap is what makes a process long without making it more accurate.
The individual interviews still have to be run well. A major 2022 review of selection research ranked structured interviews first among the procedures it examined for predicting job performance (Sackett et al., 2022), so the interviews you keep should use the same predefined questions and pre-agreed scoring for every candidate. Some ways of helping that happen: prepare questions in advance, ask every applicant the same ones where possible, have more than one interviewer where possible, and base decisions on the job description and person specification.
Six steps to a shorter process
So how do you begin reducing stages in an interview process? A good place to start is by deciding what the process, and then each stage within it, needs to establish. Everything else will follow from the answers to that.
Write down what each stage is for. If two stages test the same thing, merge them.
Make the stages you keep structured, with the same questions and scoring criteria agreed before the first interview.
Combine methods, don’t repeat them. A work sample or task gives a different signal from a second conversation covering the same ground.
Use a panel in one sitting instead of separate rounds. CIPD recommends panel members score independently before they discuss.
Pass notes forward, so later interviewers build on what earlier ones found instead of asking it all again. Recordings do the same job. At Cytora, other stakeholders run the early interviews and hiring managers review the recording when it suits them, which removed the need for a manager to sit in on the first or second stage at all.
Tell candidates what happens next. Acas advises explaining when and how they will hear the outcome and what feedback to expect.
Do | Don’t |
|---|---|
Give every stage a clear purpose | Add a stage “just to be safe” |
Score against criteria set in advance | Decide on gut feel in a debrief |
Combine different methods | Use a second interview where a work sample would do |
Interview as a panel in one sitting | Score together instead of independently |
Share notes across the panel | Ask the same questions again in round two |
Tell candidates the timeline | Leave people waiting without an update |
How Screenloop helps reduce interview stages
Screenloop makes reducing interview stages a lot more straightforward. You’ll also achieve fairer, more structured interviews and a lot less admin for your hiring teams.
Interview Intelligence records interviews and lets you create and share short clips with any stakeholders who missed the live interview, rather than booking a new round for them.
AI Notetaker joins the interview and leaves a full transcript and summary, so later interviewers build on what earlier ones found instead of asking it again.
Smart Scheduling takes out the diary back-and-forth that makes a four-stage process feel like six.
Data & Analytics shows where candidates are waiting, so you can see which stage is adding time rather than evidence.
Cytora used Screenloop’s ATS and Interview Intelligence not only to reduce interview stages, but to cut their time to hire. Some roles are now filled within a week, and the team reported a 41% reduction in time to hire.
“Screenloop is better for leaders and better for candidates.”
Prince John, Talent Acquisition and People Operations Manager, Cytora
Ready to see how Cytora did it?
Discover how Cytora reduced interview stages, slashed time to hire and streamlined their whole interview process with Screenloop.
How Cytora slashed Time to Hire by 41% with Screenloop
This article is general information, not legal advice.
