I noticed that the people who interview a lot don’t really get anything in return; in our quarterly engineering org meetings or whatever there’s a slide thanking the people who interviewed most. I’ve never gotten a thanks when I interviewed more than other times, nor any other indication that this is something my manager values. (And what your manager values is kind of everything, in my experience.)
So I almost never volunteer when they need someone to cover, don’t try to put more effort into it than necessary, and have blocks in my calendar so they don’t try to schedule when I don’t want them. It may be crucial for the company (and ethically, you owe it to candidates to treat them fairly) but it’s not treated like something they value.
For what it’s worth, I somehow slipped through the cracks and didn’t have to interview for quite a long time after I started. No one complained or made a note of it at all.
Ideally, the trade-off from Interviewing should be that a person has some agency in the direction of the company, that their values can be reflected in the influx of new recruits, and that persons with similar ideals or interesting skillsets can be added to the floor to make it a more interesting place to work.
I've had the role of global interviewing for our technical team thrust on me, and most of the time, it's just a chore. I'm constantly battling with HR/Managers who simply have a "fill seats" attitude towards hiring, and it can be a political minefield. (Professional tip; if someone asks you to take-over hiring from someone (or a group) that has not fully ceded this responsibility for any reason, don't accept)
Despite the above though, our global team now looks, works, and acts like I want. Even our technically weaker Engineers have the interest to improve and the drive to get better, and universally our team agrees that the flood of questions from these weaker engineers are not wasted. This is the one bit of satisfaction I get from doing this type of hiring -- I get to work with people that do the type of work I want to see.
You touch on a very important thing. It feels like no one cares about interviewing UNTIL they can use it like a cudgel to hit you in the head when you ask for a promotion. In the normal course of affairs, interviewing gets you nothing. But if you don't interview, they get a convenient excuse to not promote you.
So I almost never volunteer when they need someone to cover, don’t try to put more effort into it than necessary, and have blocks in my calendar so they don’t try to schedule when I don’t want them. It may be crucial for the company (and ethically, you owe it to candidates to treat them fairly) but it’s not treated like something they value.
For what it’s worth, I somehow slipped through the cracks and didn’t have to interview for quite a long time after I started. No one complained or made a note of it at all.