The Illusion of Perfect Hiring: How Amazon Infected the Entire Market with Endless Interviews

“Ten.”

“You mean with 10 different people, right? You talked to ten employees?”

“No. Ten separate, individual, scheduled interview stages. In total, probably around thirty people. Over three months.”

And she didn’t get the job. If I were in her shoes, I’d probably burn down their office. And I’m not 100% sure I’m joking.

However, such a process is becoming the norm. In fact, I’m hearing more and more about so-called “interview loops” that last for months. The candidate is run through dozens of interviewers: from HR playing the good cop to potential colleagues, future bosses, and even potential subordinates.

You may have noticed that I referred to this as an “interview loop.” I didn’t invent this term and I don’t claim authorship. Otherwise, I’d probably be sued.

Because guess who invented, introduced, and possibly even patented this term?

Yes. This is the main problem of modern hiring, and it was launched by Amazon.

The Goldberg Machine in HR

Before we take a look at history, let’s take a step forward.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a rather popular post about the vicious circle of indecision in hiring, especially in the IT sector. I discussed how this increases the risks of long-term unemployment among technical specialists and threatens the industry with economic chaos.

For that article, I spoke with my former colleague Kelly, who has been out of work for almost a year. During this time, she reached the final stage of interviews a staggering 11 times.

So, it shouldn’t have surprised me that one of these “loops” consisted of 10 separate sessions over three months. But it did surprise me because the hiring process shouldn’t work this way.

What surprised me even more was the dozens of job seekers who wrote to me to share similar stories of disappointment and indecision from employers. Many casually mentioned “loops” that stretched across four, six, and even 10 rounds.

“Now everyone does 4-5 stages,” wrote one of the commenters.

Another commentator: "I spent two months interviewing with a company, going through 9 stages. In the end, they said: 'Great job! We’re hiring you, HR will get in touch with you.' Two weeks later: 'We’re very sorry, but we can't hire you.'

From a reader's letter: "On a Zoom call, there was a guy I had talked to two weeks ago, and he didn’t even remember me."

"That's about how it went," Kelly said when I showed her these messages. "But in my case, the rejection was much... more polite. They said they would stay in touch and asked me to let them know if I found a job elsewhere. That was four months ago. I sent [the department head where she was supposed to be hired] an email asking about the status and never got a response."

I didn’t suspect that Goldberg’s HR machine had become so massive.

But I knew where it all started.

The Terrifying Amazon "Loop"

In the early 2020s, two of my colleagues first encountered the Amazon Interview Loop. The company describes it as: "Each person will evaluate different aspects of your skills and experience, helping us gain a thorough understanding of how you will perform at Amazon."

Both of my colleagues, independently, described the process to me as "a maze of cultural barriers" or "some kind of cult." Perhaps it’s because both of these excellent professionals have over 20 years of experience in their fields. They were quite successful at their previous jobs, including long experience in executive positions at Fortune 100 companies.

And they had never encountered anything like this before.

"The preparation requirements alone are already a filtering mechanism," one of them said.

"I spent a total of about 24-36 hours preparing," said the second. "And that’s probably an underestimate."

Notice, I said "early 2020s." This means two things. First, at that time the market was heavily favorable to job seekers. Second, this was just before Amazon (and other similar giants) launched a long and painful series of mass layoffs.

Both of my colleagues were laid off about 6–8 months after starting at Amazon. This means that their tenure was only 3–6 months longer than the time spent getting that job. By the way, both left good positions for Amazon. One eventually returned to his old job, and the other spent 18 months searching for a position, which he has held for the last two years.

Yes, you might say this is just "sour grapes" from disgruntled employees. But I would argue: although I don't know the exact data on the average tenure of corporate employees at Amazon, the commonly accepted (though unofficially unverified) number is about 1.5–1.8 years. Current and former employees often challenge this statistic, but it suggests that the PR around their "interview loop" works against them.

However, this has not stopped other companies from starting to copy Amazon — as often happens in business.

Unjustified inflation

Yes, I just combined those two words.

Here's the thing: Amazon can be picky with candidates, cultivate its corporate culture, and drag out hiring as much as they want. Amazon will always have more applicants than they need. And I’m sure this is intentional. I believe they know where their reputational and operational boundaries lie, know when and where they can cross them, and understand how much pain they can endure.

If the market pendulum swings back toward job seekers, even heavily, Amazon has years of data on this "loop" and the operational muscle to recalibrate. Remember: they created this cult and tough screening process in 2021 and 2022, when employees demanded double salaries for remote work from some "Lord of the Rings" style location in New Zealand.

Most other companies haven't earned such luxury.

Therefore, if the market shifts even slightly back toward the job seeker, any company (except Amazon) will have to urgently simplify its inflated hiring process. Otherwise, it will start to impact their operational efficiency and destroy the expectations of current employees — including the expectation that subordinates have a say in hiring their own manager.

See? That's why I used this word earlier.

And then company leadership will face uncomfortable conclusions like:

• Wait, some of our current employees are just protecting their own fiefdoms.

• Wait, we are spending weeks of paid working time trying to measure "feelings" and cultural codes.

How to stop wasting time and start working efficiently

While corporations spend months on endless interviews and trying to measure candidates' "cultural codes," real business requires speed and efficiency. And if you’re still doing routine work manually or waiting for approvals for weeks, you're losing the most valuable thing — time.

• Wait, why don't we move strong candidates past the first round?

• Wait, how did my voice in hiring outweigh the AI algorithm?

These are very uncomfortable conversations... the ability to have them, by the way, is probably one of the skills that are tested at Amazon.

Get rid of the ballast before it's too late

On one of my recent projects, I had to "inflate back" a number of processes that not only slowed down the company's work but also created such opacity in operations that the management didn't even realize: their growth prospects were actually negative.

It's funny that they hired me as a consultant, a contractor. They hired me in one day, not the three months they spent on all new full-time employees. Imagine how long their hiring process helped to hide these secrets and sweep problems under the rug.

Sometimes, the pursuit of cultural fit can lead to cultural decay. Take a look at your hiring process. If you need more than four people over two rounds, and you are not Amazon, start asking yourself questions – why.