It's not really slow if the "time to hire" is the time from an inbound resume, to an outbound written offer (or even longer, an accepted offer). (A verbal offer is great, but nobody generally accepts a verbal offer, they have to sign some kind of agreement to formally accept the job.)
The screening process takes a week or two (14 days) and then you have to schedule an on-site interview loop, which can often take a week or two lead time (since many interviewers have to travel to SF, and you have to schedule the interviewers as well) and that only leaves a week or two at best to issue a formal written offer. I've seen it take a lot longer than in total at many good companies.
> (A verbal offer is great, but nobody generally accepts a verbal offer, they have to sign some kind of agreement to formally accept the job.)
Well, you'd want to call someone on the phone and get a verbal OK before sending them the offer letter, right? From verbal to written shouldn't be more than a 24 hour turnaround.
So that's the day of the interview, the day after the interview to make the decision, and three more days (so the rest of the week) to generate and send out a written offer that the candidate may or may not have already verbally okayed. That's 5 business days, or 5-7 calendar days.
> The screening process takes a week or two (14 days)
14 days to look at resumes and do a phone screen or two? Maybe at maximum, if you have to bounce the resume between teams to find the best fit.
> and then you have to schedule an on-site interview loop, which can often take a week or two lead time (since many interviewers have to travel to SF, and you have to schedule the interviewers as well)
Why would the interviewers have to travel? Don't you interview people on the same campus where most of the interviewers actually work? Why would it take two weeks to book a couple of hours on k different people's calendars (hopefully most of them selected from a pool of size n >> k)? Sorry, I think that timeline is way too padded.
No, it can be a long time between a verbal and a written, because the verbal offer doesn't contain all the compensation details and requires final sign off from whoever makes those decisions. In almost all the corporate jobs I've gotten, I got a verbal offer relatively quickly, but the formal, signed offer letter came a long time (anywhere from a week to a month) later because it required the signature of VP or someone similar.
Re travel: I meant that the candidate has to travel, and the interviews have to be scheduled with the pool of interviewers. The minimum time for this is generally a week, but usually it takes longer. Interviews are a significant / immovable commitment and interviewers are required to give notice if they can't make it several days ahead, which means they have to be scheduled well before that.
The screening process takes a week or two (14 days) and then you have to schedule an on-site interview loop, which can often take a week or two lead time (since many interviewers have to travel to SF, and you have to schedule the interviewers as well) and that only leaves a week or two at best to issue a formal written offer. I've seen it take a lot longer than in total at many good companies.