What to expect at an interview marathon?

[dave134]

I have some 3-5 hour long interviews coming up the next few weeks. I have no clue how they are going to talk to me for that long. Could someone fill me in on how they work? Also it feels like they want to know every little detail on my application and something is gonna bite me. An issue I have is I have self-employment on my resume and that is true, however it ended badly and now on the application it is asking for a customer/client reference which I'm just going to have to leave blank. I'm only a college grad though so will they care? The only references I'm going to be able to list are professors and I don't know any of them that well. They want 3, but I think I only want to put 2 on there. Does it look bad if you leave stuff blank? Also I have a misdemeanor from 1.5 years ago which might hurt me. I'm very good at interviewing though and I am one of the top grads so I just hope all this stuff doesn't hurt me. Also a couple of 1 month jobs which I'm hoping don't show up in the background check.

[old_school_soul]

I had an interview with Google a couple of years ago like this... First there was 2 or 3 phone interviews, then they flew me to California for the in-person marathon interview. Often you meet with different groups of people and they judge where you may best fit within the company, or you are meeting with managers, HR, and different staff. Google was a different beast, mostly just grilling you with technical questions.

[embrassezla]

The interview for my current position was a full 8hrs. I'm assuming you're going to be meeting with multiple people, each of whom will make a recommendation on whether they want to hire you or not. You'll probably end up repeating yourself quite a bit.

[Pol]

Who would actually tolerate this kind of insanity? 8 hour interview? 5 hour interview?

I applied for my all-time dream job a few years ago. The job was to fly all over the US and work on loans. I had three interviews with three different people over a month. I finally got a call and a job offer 45 days later, after I had already started this job I have now. Regardless of how nice the offer was, I turned it down because of their company structure.

If it happened now, I would walk.

[spokes]

that many interviews will cover a lot of miles - be ready to talk about almost anything. And more improtant be ready toask lots of questions - remember interviews are two way streets.......

[dave134]

Well, it wasn't too bad...they talked about the company for a hour and took questions in a group session, then I had 3 individual interviews. I just talked to 3 lower level employees and the questions weren't too bad.

[yankeeyosh]

Financial institutions, like insurance, are notorious for long, drawn-out interview marathons that last all day. Here is a "typical" interview for me:

8:45 Enter office building, wait for HR person to speak with me
9: 00 Talk to HR rep about benefits, culture, etc.
9:45 First interview
10:30 Second interview
11:15 Third interview
12: 00 Lunch with younger staff (still part of the interview so you can't really act "too loose")
1:15 Fourth interview
2: 00 Fifth interview
2:45 Wrap up
3: 00 Leave office

Sometimes there's a sixth interview. No matter what, it's not for the faint of heart.

[sondra_finchley]

For my current job I had a test project to complete in addition to lunch with the team, individual interviews with various people. An all day affair after a few phone screens too. It sucked and was exhausting, but what can you do?