People should absolutely be respectful of their applicants' time. And applicants should use how they're treated during the application process as a signal for how they'll be treated as employees.
One of the best interviews I had was very informal, was only with the hiring manager, and it was pretty obvious that there would be a good fit between myself and the company. I took the job and had no regrets over it.
One of the worst interview processes I went through had me doing two rounds of phone interviews and then a half-day in-person consisting of four one-hour interviews with various people. The selection of people conducting the one-hour interviews were fair enough -- HR, hiring manager, a peer, and someone from a related department I'd have contact with but wouldn't work with frequently. But you could easily tell there was no organization behind what they were doing, unless their strategy was to have each of the persons doing the interview have the same exact conversations with me. This was at a Fortune 500 company and it became clear from the interview process that the culture would be extremely frustrating for me to work in.
I think it's fair to follow a process like this to respect the time of your applications:
And you drop people out of the funnel at every step. I also think it's best to keep your in-person interviews to two hours max, between however many people they need to talk to.
Technical tests are a double-edged sword. For candidates with little to no prior work experience (fresh out of uni for example), it makes sense. Unless serious question marks arose during the prior interviews, I find it disrespectful to play the "stump the candidate" game with candidates who come in with 10, 20+ years of experience. I'm not aware of any other industry that deploys a barrage of obscure technical tests on their candidates the way some companies do in IT.
The more intensive processes are a fine line to walk. It's easy to go overboard. I recently went through an interview process that was more on the intensive side and left feeling better about it because I knew the people I would potentially be working with had gone through that same process. It's harder, yes, but I felt the chances were higher that I would be working with more competent people on the other side.
One of the best interviews I had was very informal, was only with the hiring manager, and it was pretty obvious that there would be a good fit between myself and the company. I took the job and had no regrets over it.
One of the worst interview processes I went through had me doing two rounds of phone interviews and then a half-day in-person consisting of four one-hour interviews with various people. The selection of people conducting the one-hour interviews were fair enough -- HR, hiring manager, a peer, and someone from a related department I'd have contact with but wouldn't work with frequently. But you could easily tell there was no organization behind what they were doing, unless their strategy was to have each of the persons doing the interview have the same exact conversations with me. This was at a Fortune 500 company and it became clear from the interview process that the culture would be extremely frustrating for me to work in.
I think it's fair to follow a process like this to respect the time of your applications:
resume cover -> screen -> phone interview -> in-person interview -> tests/samples -> hire
And you drop people out of the funnel at every step. I also think it's best to keep your in-person interviews to two hours max, between however many people they need to talk to.