Late Oct: Put together letter and resume.
Early Nov: Applied to position.
Late Nov: Phone interview with recruiter.
Early Dec: Phone interview with hiring manager.
Mid Dec: Second phone interview with hiring manager's team.
Late Dec: On-site.
Early Jan: Second on-site.
Mid Jan: Offer.
Early Feb: Negotiated offer and acceptance.
Early Mar: Started.
This process was a four person local and 2 person international team to decide hiring and needing the VP of R&D's permission. They needed someone to do the job, they posted a specific position, and quickly filled it to get work done. For my academic search, here's how quickly things have been shaping up for the position I'm furthest in on.
Mid Sept: Started putting together materials
Mid Oct: Applied.
Early Dec: Got request for phone interview.
Early Jan: Phone interview.
Now: Expressed interest in bringing me in for on-site.
By now I had a written offer from industry after 3 phone interviews and 2 on-sites from the job I eventually accepted. What the heck takes academia so long? After the two schools that have said they'd like to bring me on campus told me so, I responded to the email with something like "Great! Please let me know which dates work best for you, as I have some international travel coming up to test some new devices." I threw in the devices thing 1. Because it's true, and 2. Because I want to hammer in the point that they want someone with my experience. This was a couple weeks ago.
The two schools that have said they are interested in bringing me out seem to be holding still. So what could possibly be taking so long? In industry, I got emails saying "unfortunately, we had to go with someone else", or "how does INSERT DATE HERE work for you?". But no response since my response to their interest-emails. Not even an email saying, "we will let you know more details as get closer to scheduling". Bear in mind that they have already gone out of their way to say they want to bring me out. I'm bewildered as to what's taking so long (although maybe ~2 weeks isn't that long?). Maybe I just operate on a much shorter time scale than most other people I know. I know if I took this long to get candidates together, short-list them, and bring them in I would be in deep trouble from my boss wondering what the heck is taking so long. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
I'll never understand how this process works.
