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Hi all. I'm a junior associate currently interviewing with a small to mid-cap tech company in a major market. I had a screener with a person from HR in mid-May, a phone interview with the VP and head of my practice area in late May, and a 3-hour on-site interview in mid-June. It seemed to go well.

I followed up with the HR person about a week after the on-site to ask generally about the timeline and was told I was on high on their list but to hold tight. I followed up again last week after three weeks of silence and got a vague answer about "trying to track down the VP." Now, almost five weeks later, I still haven't heard anything definitive. Is this typical?

My hunch is I'm an acceptable candidate but not their top candidate, so they are keeping me as a backup. Or is in house interviewing actually this slow sometimes?

It could be a multitude of things: perhaps the VP is really hard to pin down (sometimes it's irritatingly difficult to find higher-ups to sign off on things), perhaps there's some HR issues (e.g., hiring freeze), perhaps there's personnel issues (people have left/been fired who are necessary to move the hiring process along), or perhaps they've found a better candidate.

In sum, it has been an oddly long delay, but that could be a result of many things which you will not be able to divine.

My impression having worked in house for a small-to-mid cap tech company for a while is that there is no "typical" for in house, especially smaller tech companies. Every company and every department does things differently. It could be that the company is undergoing a rearrangement, and waiting to hire until it is done. It could be that they are waiting until Q4 because thats when they budgeted the hire. It could be that its summer and people are travelling. What I typically see is that things move slowly until they are a priority, and then they move very quickly. So we will sit on someone's resume for 6 months and pass it around and just say "yeah whatever looks good", and then all of a sudden for whatever reason there will be a push from above to hire someone for the position in the next 2 weeks.

OP here. Thanks. I guess I'll just try to be patient.

Could be any number of things, many of which are benign and are unrelated to whether your the first choice. Keep the faith. My longest in house interview process was 6 months, and my quickest was 1 week.

You cannot read into the timeline. I know of an in-house candidate that had to wait 3-4 months for the entire process to unfold, even though that person was the top candidate. For instance, it could be that they want to interview others just to look like they've done their diligence. Or it could be that people who sign off are traveling. You can check in every few weeks, if you like, but don't be annoying.

Feel free to PM if you have specific questions.

If OP is still on TLS, would be curious to see how this panned out. I've waited a month since my final interview with a large company (been 2.5 months since I applied) and still no final decision.