Optimizing onsite interview scheduling
Living in Maryland and looking to move to Seattle. I'm looking to apply to the following companies: * Google * Facebook * Uber * Microsoft * Amazon I have a couple of questions: 1) As a remote candidate, I have no idea how I should go about scheduling these interviews. I've heard that G/MS can take 4 to 6 weeks to go from onsite to offer, and that the others can be anywhere from 2 weeks to same day. For this set of companies, what's the optimal grouping/batching such that I end up with the most offers in hand at the same time? 2) Once I start scheduling interviews, how do I actually get two or three companies to interview me in a given week? For example, my plan is to apply to Google and if I'm scheduled for an onsite, move the return flight back a day, contact MS recruiters and let them know I'll be in town for G interviews. I guess I'll just pay for that hotel night out of pocket. Any advice? If you were remote, how did you manage to get all your offers in hand at once? $145k TC / 9 YOE (TS security clearance, if that changes anything)
Itās a luck of the draw. Sometimes itāll work out and theyāll start phone screening you around the same time. Once the phone screens are done you may be able to schedule on-site interviews back to back. The onsites are pretty accommodating . If the on sites start rolling in at the same time, chose one company to interview with first, emphasis a Monday is most convenient for that interview. Then the other companies should be able to schedule interviews around that. Just tell them youāll already be in town so all you need is a return flight and a hotel/transportation. Once you get offers you can start pushing the other companies to hurry up since youāre now on a time limit to accept other offers.
I started doing phone interviews in April and scheduled onsites for June. As soon as I got the positive result from a phone interview, I told them I wanted the onsite to be in June. For optimal scheduling, Google would be first. However, I wanted to be warmed up for them and so did their interview in the same week as Dropbox and Facebook. So far all the companies that want to give me offers have been accommodating -- waiting to hear back from Google before going to verbal offer stage.
Give phone screens now. Get your onsite results. Then schedule for onsite one month later. The idea here is that, you get to pick the exact date for each company's onsite when it's a month away. Recruiters may not have the flexibility to schedule onsites on particular days if it's in the next two weeks or so. For eg, I scheduled 5 back to back onsite interviews in a week. I chose which company to interview on which exact day.
How did the back to back 5 days of interviews work out for you? I did that a few years ago, while still in school, and I was super tired by Friday.
I have no idea how people would. Time from application to initial contact can be days to months. Time from initial contact to phone screen can be days to months. Time from phone screen to interview can be days to weeks. Time from interview to offer can be days to weeks. That puts the whole range from weeks to a year!
Tbh, I just went through this and it's really hard. The best way to do this is to do all your phone interviews ASAP, get results for onsite. You normally have a lot of flexibility for onsite interviews, so this is when you optimize your scheduling. Schedule Google first because they're really fucking slow. I had a lot of trouble, I got an Uber offer first but Dropbox and Twitter delayed so much that I couldn't interview even within 3 weeks of getting the offer. Ymmv, good luck.