How tech hiring works, application to offer

Between an application and a first day at work there are usually eight stages, and at each one a different person decides whether you go on. A final round of five 55-minute interviews takes 4 h 35 min on its own, and the wait for its outcome is five business days at one employer and can be several weeks at another. Knowing the stages, the people and the clocks tells you what to prepare for next, and when to follow up.

Most published processes have the same eight stages: an application, a recruiter screen, an assessment such as an online test, a technical screen, a final round of several interviews (the loopinterview loop: The final round of a hiring process: several interviews, often on one day or two, each with a different interviewer and focus, such as coding, design or behavioural questions. Also called the full loop or the onsite, even when it runs on video.), a decision made from the interviewers’ written feedback, an offer, and checks before you join. Employers skip, merge and reorder them by role and level, so what follows is the pattern, and how to read one employer’s version of it.

Eight stages run from an application to the first day

The diagram shows the stages in their usual order, with the person who decides at each. Read it from the top, then the list below it, which says what each stage filters for:

Each stage filters for something different, which is why each one needs its own preparation:

1. Application. Your résumé is read against the role’s requirements. Google asks applicants to tailor the résumé to each job and to show that they meet its minimum qualifications, and it accepts up to three applications from one person in a rolling 30-day window. Microsoft says a team may follow the résumé review with a brief screening call to decide whom to invite to interviews.
2. Recruiter screen. A short recruiter callrecruiter call: A short first conversation with a recruiter, also called a recruiter screen, that checks the key skills a role needs and the practical fit, such as location, start date and pay, before any interviews. More in “The recruiter call and your introduction” that does two jobs at once. Google describes one or two short conversations with the recruiter, by phone or video, that usually assess the key skills of the role and also collect preferences such as your preferred location. From here on the recruiter coordinates every stage.
3. Assessment. Work you do on your own: an online assessmentonline assessment: A test an employer sends as a link, taken on your own device within a set window: coding problems, aptitude items, work-style statements or simulations, often several in one. More in “Online assessments: formats, rules, proctoring” of coding problems, a work-style questionnaire, a take-home task or a small project. Google may ask for its hiring assessment of workstyle skills and, for some roles, a coding exercise or a small project before interviews. Amazon’s SDE II process opens with 90 minutes for two coding questions, followed by system design scenarios and a short work style survey.
4. Technical screen. One live interview that decides whether a full loop goes ahead. Amazon’s senior SDE process uses a 60-minute phone screen with a senior leader, half on its Leadership Principles and half on coding and system design, and its front-end page notes that screens tend to go less deep than the loop.
5. Final loop. Several interviews in a day or two, each with a different interviewer and focus. Meta’s software engineer guide lists four to six interviews of 45 minutes each, for coding, design and behavioural questions. Microsoft says most of its interviews include 2 to 4 conversations of up to an hour each, and Amazon says you are likely to meet between two and seven people, for 45 minutes to an hour each.
6. Decision. The written feedback of every interviewer is read together, in a debriefdebrief: A meeting after an interview loop in which the interviewers share and discuss their written feedback on a candidate, before a decision is made or passed on to a committee., by a hiring committeehiring committee: A group that makes or confirms a hiring decision from the interviewers' written feedback and the candidate's application, usually without having interviewed the candidate., or both. The next section follows the notes from the room to the decision.
7. Offer. If the decision is to hire, the recruiter brings the offer. Google’s recruiters walk candidates through the compensation structure and benefits; Microsoft emails the documents to review and sign.
8. Pre-joining checks, then day one. Once you accept, Microsoft’s recruiting team works with you and your new manager on the start date and on steps before hiring, such as relocation, work eligibility and forms.

The order is not fixed. Google runs its assessments before interviews, Amazon’s SDE II and front-end processes start with an online assessment while its senior SDE process starts with a phone screen, and a campus drive can fit tests, interviews and offers into a single season of fixed slots. Read the stages of your own process on the employer’s page for your role, and expect one or two of the eight to be missing or merged.

Each person decides one thing, and no interviewer decides alone

Five kinds of people take part in a process, and each one decides something different:

Follow one candidate’s process from the first call to the offer, one message at a time. Watch where the notes go: the panel’s written feedback, not anyone’s memory of the day, is what reaches the decision.

At the employers quoted here, no single interviewer decides. Atlassian’s interviewers consolidate their feedback and hold a debrief, and its hiring committee then decides without having interviewed you. Google says it brings your application and interviews together for review and takes a number of perspectives into account, after interviewers give structured feedback and internal reviews run. The practical rule follows from it, and Amazon states it directly: treat every interviewer the same, because each of them is writing notes that the others will read.

Waits run from days to weeks, and a loop fills a working day

Few employers publish a full timeline, but the waits they do publish are worth knowing:

Waiting is half of the time a process costs. The other half is the time you spend in interviews, which decides how much leave you take and how you pace a loop day. The program below works it out from the counts the pages publish. Press Edit, add the counts your recruiter gives you as a new row, and run it:

// How much interviewing a final round asks of you, worked out from the counts and lengths that employers publish on
// their own careers pages (listed under References). Each row: [round, fewest interviews, most interviews, shortest
// minutes, longest minutes]; null for the shortest means the page gives only an upper limit ("up to an hour").
// Add the numbers your recruiter gives you as a new row and press Run.
const rounds = [
  ['Meta, software engineer full loop', 4, 6, 45, 45],
  ['Microsoft, most interviews', 2, 4, null, 60],
  ['Amazon, interview loop (any role)', 2, 7, 45, 60],
  ['Amazon, SDE II loop', 4, 4, 55, 55],
  ['Amazon, SDE III loop', 5, 5, 55, 55],
  ['Amazon, security engineer loop', 5, 5, 60, 60],
];

/** 275 → "4 h 35 min". */
function hours(minutes) {
  const h = Math.floor(minutes / 60);
  const m = minutes % 60;
  return m === 0 ? `${h} h` : `${h} h ${m} min`;
}

/** "4 to 6", or "5" when both ends are the same. */
function span(low, high) {
  return low === high ? String(low) : `${low} to ${high}`;
}

console.log(`${'Final round'.padEnd(36)}${'Interviews'.padEnd(12)}${'Minutes'.padEnd(10)}Time in interviews`);
for (const [name, fewest, most, shortest, longest] of rounds) {
  const minutes = shortest === null ? `up to ${longest}` : span(shortest, longest);
  const total = shortest === null ? `up to ${hours(most * longest)}` : span(hours(fewest * shortest), hours(most * longest));
  console.log(`${name.padEnd(36)}${span(fewest, most).padEnd(12)}${minutes.padEnd(10)}${total}`);
}

// A loop is usually one day or two. The breaks are an assumption (none of the pages gives their length): ask your
// recruiter for the real schedule.
const BREAK = 15;
console.log();
console.log(`With ${BREAK}-minute breaks between interviews, the longest version of each loop on one day:`);
for (const [name, , most, , longest] of rounds) {
  const day = most * longest + (most - 1) * BREAK;
  console.log(`${name.padEnd(36)}${hours(day)}`);
}

// Two levels of one job family, from Amazon's SDE II and SDE III prep pages: the SDE II process starts with an online
// assessment (90 minutes of coding, 20 of system design scenarios, an 8-minute work style survey); the SDE III page
// lists a 60-minute technical phone screen in its place and a fifth interview in the loop.
const sdeII = { assessment: 90 + 20 + 8, interviews: 4 * 55 };
const sdeIII = { assessment: 0, interviews: 60 + 5 * 55 };
console.log();
console.log(`SDE II process:  ${hours(sdeII.assessment)} of online assessment, then ${hours(sdeII.interviews)} of interviews`);
console.log(`SDE III process: no online assessment; ${hours(sdeIII.interviews)} of interviews, the phone screen included`);

Final round                         Interviews  Minutes   Time in interviews
Meta, software engineer full loop   4 to 6      45        3 h to 4 h 30 min
Microsoft, most interviews          2 to 4      up to 60  up to 4 h
Amazon, interview loop (any role)   2 to 7      45 to 60  1 h 30 min to 7 h
Amazon, SDE II loop                 4           55        3 h 40 min
Amazon, SDE III loop                5           55        4 h 35 min
Amazon, security engineer loop      5           60        5 h

With 15-minute breaks between interviews, the longest version of each loop on one day:
Meta, software engineer full loop   5 h 45 min
Microsoft, most interviews          4 h 45 min
Amazon, interview loop (any role)   8 h 30 min
Amazon, SDE II loop                 4 h 25 min
Amazon, SDE III loop                5 h 35 min
Amazon, security engineer loop      6 h

SDE II process:  1 h 58 min of online assessment, then 3 h 40 min of interviews
SDE III process: no online assessment; 5 h 35 min of interviews, the phone screen included

• A final loop is a working day. Most of the published loops come to three to five hours of interviews, and to between 4 h 25 min and 6 h with 15-minute breaks. Plan the whole day off, with food, water and a quiet room.
• The spread matters more than the average. Amazon’s general loop page allows anything from 1 h 30 min to 7 h of interviews, so ask your recruiter for the actual schedule, and whether the loop is split over two days.
• The shape changes with the level. The SDE II and SDE III processes take about the same time, five and a half hours, but the senior one spends all of it in live interviews with people, the phone screen included.

When a page gives no number, ask the recruiter for the date of the next update and write it down; then follow up the day after it passes. Microsoft, Meta and Google all name the recruiter as the person who gives the timeline.

Four kinds of process differ in their first filter and their last

The same stages are arranged in four common ways, depending on who is being hired and how many. Compare them line by line in the table, then read the published example behind each column:

Lateral hiringlateral hiring: Hiring people who already have work experience, one role at a time and all year round, as opposed to campus hiring of students on an institute's calendar. is the process of the first sections: you apply to one role at a time, all year round, and a recruiter runs the stages. Google accepts most applications on a rolling basisrolling basis: A way of hiring in which applications are reviewed as they arrive and a role closes once it is filled, instead of waiting for a fixed deadline. More in “Applications, referrals and campus drives” until a role is filled. Amazon’s pages show how the stages change within one job family: the SDE II process is an online assessment and a loop of four 55-minute interviews, while the SDE III process starts with a 60-minute phone screen and has a loop of five.

Campus and new-graduate hiring starts with an assessment because the candidates have little work history to read. Amazon makes its SDE online assessment the first step for both full-time and internship roles. Its coding part has two problems and takes about 70 minutes on average, and every candidate then answers a work-style section of about 15 minutes. Full-time candidates also take an hour-long work simulationwork simulation: An assessment that shows realistic messages or scenarios from a job and asks you to rate possible responses or choose the best one. More in “Online assessments: formats, rules, proctoring”, except in some countries, while interns finish the whole assessment in about 90 minutes. Google reviews the transcripts of interns and new graduates as well as their résumés.

A startup’s process can look quite different. PostHog, a software company that publishes its handbook, describes four rounds: a 20-minute video call with its talent team, a technical interview of 45 to 60 minutes with the hiring manager, a conversation with a member of its executive team, and a paid “SuperDay” of real work. The SuperDay task is the same for every candidate for a role and is deliberately more than one person can finish in a day, so that prioritising shows, and the company aims to decide within 48 hours of it. If a company publishes nothing about its process, ask at the first call what each stage is and who decides.

Mass recruitment fills many entry-level roles from one standard test, and the test is often run by someone other than the employer.

The recruiter settles what no page can

The recruiter is the one person who can describe your process as it runs now, for your role, so ask about everything a page leaves open. Ask at the first call, and again when the loop is scheduled. Five questions change your preparation most:

Rules on help differ between employers, so ask even when you think you know the answer. Accommodations work the same way: Microsoft and Meta each take requests through their own request forms, and Amazon asks candidates to tell it in advance, so ask before the dates are fixed.

Practise: put two processes in order

Practice questions follow one at a time, on the five ideas of this lesson, from the stages to the questions for a recruiter. Your weakest idea comes first, and two of the questions ask you to put the stages of a lateral process and of a campus drive in order:

Interview questions

What happens between your last interview and an offer, and how long can it take? (warm-up)

Each interviewer writes up their feedback, and then the feedback is read together: in a debrief of the interviewers, by a committee that did not interview you, or both. Atlassian describes a hiring committee that works independently of the interviewers and sees the interview feedback and your CV; Google says it applies internal reviews and takes several perspectives into account. If the decision is to hire, the recruiter brings the offer, and pre-joining checks start once you accept. The wait varies with the employer: Amazon’s SDE prep pages give an interview outcome within five business days, while Google warns that several weeks can pass before an outcome. A good answer ends with what you do meanwhile: ask the recruiter for the expected date, follow up once it has passed, and keep your other processes moving.

An interviewer may follow the warm-up with a question about their own process. Choose the reply you would give to each of the two below, and read why the other replies fall short:

Two situations from this module’s question bank put the stages and the clocks to work:

Key takeaways

• Most processes share eight stages, from the application to the first day, and employers skip, merge and reorder them by role and level.
• Each stage has its own decider: the recruiter screens, every interviewer writes notes, and a debrief or a committee decides from what was written, so every round counts the same.
• Published waits run from 48 hours at one employer to several weeks at another, and a loop of four to six interviews fills most of a working day.
• Lateral, campus, startup and mass-recruitment processes differ in their first filter, their final stage and who decides.
• The recruiter settles what no page can: the stages left with their dates, each round’s format, the language, the help allowed and any accommodation you need.