Stop Adding Interview Rounds

Why does good hiring feel like a tax you can't stop paying? You're an owner. There's a stack of resumes on your desk, and the person you need isn't in it. The standard advice says screen harder, stack on 5 rounds, and build a gauntlet. That advice is backwards.

Josh Bersin of Bersin & Associates has made the point for years: companies spend more finding a hire than they spend making that hire good once they arrive. So the instinct is to protect the investment with a heavier process. I've watched heavy process do the opposite. It burns the candidate relationship before day one. It guards the company's interest and disrespects the candidate's time in the same move. That costs you the best people, who have other options and use them.

Write the job post like you mean it

Post a vague opening and hundreds of resumes land in hours, most of them wrong for the role. The vagueness causes it. When the qualifications are broad and the tasks unclear, applicants can't tell if they fit, so they roll the dice. Write the post concrete and specific instead. It won't stop every mismatch. It thins the pile, because people who don't match think twice before applying.

Ask for a one-way video and a cover letter

A phone screen tells you about interest, but it costs both sides a scheduled slot. A short recorded answer skips that. Ask candidates to record themselves answering a few pointed questions. You review many people in the time one live call would eat, and you can compare them side by side. Only the genuinely interested finish the step. A cover letter works the same way. You don't read every word. A quick scan separates someone who thought about you from someone blasting the whole board.

Run the interview in 7 to 10 minutes

An effective interview doesn't need to drag. Seven to ten minutes gets you there if you structure it. You can read core skills in under two minutes by asking what the person has done, not what they know. The resume is a starting point. Use the call to clear up doubts about past roles. Ask how they moved a specific goal or project. Listen to how they describe the win. You're testing whether they drove the result or rode the company's momentum.

Here's the artifact that fixes most of this: a one-page job post you'd be proud to receive, a three-question video prompt, and a 10-minute interview script with two questions about impact. Build those three once. They outperform the five-round gauntlet, and they respect the people you're trying to hire. For the deeper screening errors, I've written about the hiring mistakes that repeat and how to recruit people who genuinely want the work.