Anyone ever worked in HR, please chime in here.

[raccoon]

I've heard that in certain kinds of jobs, especially state, county, city, they have to interview a certain number of people for a position--even though it has already been decided who they are going to hire.

This used to really p. me off, especially when they schedule you for an interview and you have to travel a long distance--for nothing, since they already know they're not going to hire you anyway.

Can anybody give me the story on this?

BTW, I'm not job-hunting now, thank goodness.

[NewJeffCT]

1. I think it depends on the company

I'm not in HR, but I do know something about some corporate hiring policies/practices.

In one company, you had to keep the job open for a certain length of time. Once that period was over, you had to then formally justify the candidates you are interviewing (I am interviewing Bob, Amy and Sarah because each meets at least 8 of the 10 requirements needed for the job. Tom is disqualified because he does not have one mandatory requirement, despite also meeting 8 of the 10 requirements. The other 10 candidates meet 7 or less of the 10 requirements. They actually had some sort of matrix form you had to fill out...) Then, after interviewing Bob, Amy & Sarah, you would then have to formally justify why you hired Bob, Amy or Sarah over the other two using a similar form.

However, the next company I worked for - if they liked you during the interview, they'd make you an offer within 12-24 hours and that was it. No formal justification process, no forms to fill out, etc. I was literally contacted by them on a Tuesday, went in on Thursday afternoon for an interview and got the offer on Friday morning.