Corporate recruitment and hiring process challenges

Corporate hiring processes have increasingly become described as ‘exercises in endurance.’ While intended to facilitate informed decision-making, there are growing concerns that overly lengthy recruitment cycles may serve as a substitute for actual decision-making rather than a tool to enable it.

Recent developments highlight significant hurdles regarding consistency and transparency in recruitment. In Hong Kong, HR professionals are being advised to adopt structured interview frameworks to prevent conflicting evaluations. Recommendations include establishing specific job requirements and core questions prior to interviews, scoring candidates independently, and focusing on observable actions.

Concurrently, candidates and senior HR professionals report increasing difficulty navigating extended cycles, with some processes exceeding five rounds. These cycles often result in rejections based on skill sets that were not explicitly discussed during the interviews. These challenges are further compounded by a competitive job market and concerns regarding the impact of AI on human roles.