To be put off by recruitment process ?

I’m also intrigued as to how the staff themselves have enough time to conduct all of that! I find recruiting with just a 2 stage process is enough of a time sucker!

There's so much that's affected by timing in going for a new job. In some ways it's akin to a lottery, in terms of who else is on the market and which opportunities offer first and are out of synch with other opportunities which may offer a bit later (but too late to stall it)

We like to think we are in control, and focus on the bits we can control such as interview technique, but I'd say most of getting a new job is complete random chance!

How the buggeration is anyone supposed to keep all that time off a secret from current employers?

I have just seen your reply that you’ve withdrawn from the process.

I do however think you’ve been overthinking this presentation a bit too much. They just want to assess your ability to solve a problem or innovate within a task or team. It really doesn’t differ much from just answering a question. Only you have visual cues to help you.

Pretty standard, a lot of roles now include a case study presentation. I’ve seen this outlined on company websites when looking in to roles.

DH also interviews candidates for senior positions and back when he was less senior than now he used to do the stages with presentations.

Well it is normal in my industry (3 rounds, I’ve heard of 4). But depends what’s normal in yours. If you don’t like it then don’t do it. Best of luck!

The company I work for has stuff like this, but it tends to all be done over a day - so you’ll have an interview, some sort of group activity, then either a pre-prepared presentation, a case study or a presentation prepared on the day from a title given then with an hour or so to prepare it. This is for ALL levels of the business - the idea being you benchmark for the level of the job. They recruit with the expectation you’ll develop and progress though, so I guess the process helps show who has future potential.

An hour presentation is ridiculous. If they can't assess you in a 20 minute presentation then they have a big problem.

I’m sure you feel relieved to have made a decision now OP! Good luck in your new role!

Exactly. I would think this is more about HR etc needing to look busy.

an effin joke these days. Last week I was invited to interview. All booked in and confirmed. I then get a request for a pre interview phone interview with HR "prior to my interview". Unbelievable.

That's too much. Tell them to ram their job. Who do they think they are?

I think it sounds fairly normal OP, and I would do it if you want to progress. Even if you don't get it you'll have had the experience and you already have another offer as well.

I would also be put off by this and i am a finance director. I understand about identifying those who are willing to put the effort in but when you already have a full time job, all the extra effort and time off for all of these interviews is asking a lot and a one hour presentation is ott, would fill me with absolute dread and take an enormous amount of time to prepare for. 1.5 hour for 1 hour presentation is unrealistic.

I was offered a job about twelve months ago by another company, their process was an initial interview with hr and md, a further one with md and international fd, then a third with all of the senior team, a factory tour and lunch with md. This followed the external recruiter insisting on an in person meeting.
After offering the job they wanted me to come in and spend one day a month with them while I was working my notice. And all of the senior team called me in the first couple of weeks to introduce themselves again and ask my opinion on things. At this point I had already used 4 days of annual leave as the interviews were all late morning and would have required another 3.

I eventually withdrew from the position for a variety of reasons but the time they expected for all the interviews and the pressure to 'keep in touch' and be part of decisions and use my leave to spend the day there regularly were part of that decision. I was still being paid by the current employer to do a job and felt strongly that I wanted to tie up all loose ends during my notice.

From your breakdown of their case study format, it sounds more like an exam than a case study. An exam with witnesses. 😛

To be honest, I’d be tempted to tell them to get lost. Although I’d politely phrase it along the lines of “I’m sorry to say but regretfully I have no choice but to withdraw from the interview process. We have an important deadline coming up in my current role and we’re all working flat out and long hours to meet it. It just isn’t feasible right now to spend all the extra hours that you seem to require preparing for the case study interview in addition to my current workload. Actually I’m a little confused as I’ve already had a technical interview with you but the case study also seems to be very technical, is that correct?”

It's been par for the past for decent companies for a long time. It helps weed out who's worth looking at and who isn't. If they can't be bothered completing the selection process then they're likely to be a pretty awful employee.

Companies really shouldn't flatter themselves that they are that special, they mostly aren't.

Their presentation format does seem to be incredibly OTT with its multiple sections and questions. What exactly are they trying to test here? It looks like they’ve given zero thought to the actual candidate experience and are solely thinking about what they need to find out.

I wrote on one of my earlier posts about my current employer/dept doing case study interviews. When I was interviewed by them 6 years ago, my case study interview consisted of me being given one sentence on a piece of paper at the start of the session and then being left alone in the room for 20 mins with a flipchart to gather my thoughts and write up what I was going to present. They came back, I presented and they asked questions which I answered. It was a little pressurised but at least it meant I didn’t have to do any preparation.

These days we’re a little more sophisticated and have more detailed case study scenarios that the interview panel (usually 2 people) select (and may tailor) for each candidate if/when they pass the screening interview but there is no expectation on the candidate to do any preparation. I much prefer that approach. We combine this 20-30 mins of case study with 30 mins of deep dive into their c.v./experience. Our corporate values are a fundamental part of any interview so we don’t need to test that separately.