In an ideal world, the interview process itself would be efficient and would optimize (rather than maximize) stakeholder participation and alignment, and would not take more than a few months. A warning sign arises when the number of interviews becomes excessive and the process lasts for an extended period. Either of these factors (or both) can be a sign that the team or organization is too consensus-driven, hesitant, or having trouble completing things. People must give at least a few days' notice before an interview.
That's enough time to look up the address on the Internet and make a plan to get there. A candidate for an untimely interview is an employee who is not punctual. Details such as other people's time and schedules don't mean anything to them. They will appear when they are ready.
The delay is worse when the person doesn't apologize or give an explanation. If they hadn't been so transparent about that and their hiring process, I'm not sure I would have been so willing to accept their offer. I accepted the job despite the warning sign of rapid change, which turned out to be a big mistake (the organization was subject to its whims), the statement of objectives changed regularly, people were hired and fired on a whim, all chaos. We contacted internal recruiters (CEOs, HR managers, and talent acquisition executives) to discover the main red flags in the interviews.
Just because you receive an offer on the spot doesn't mean it's a quick decision; you may be a better known number than you think. Clarify what your most important values are before starting the interview process and prepare questions that allow you to evaluate the company's culture, to what extent the organization shares its most deeply held values, and how well you could express those values at work. Stokes said that the sudden change in enthusiasm was a warning sign that they had found another candidate that they preferred, and that they simply didn't want to cancel the interview because they wanted to make sure they had the right feeling. However, a simple follow-up question could have generated an important red flag, such as: “How do you treat other people who have different opinions? You may have learned more useful information here from both her words and her body language, and from those who worked with her to see what her experience was about how she deals with conflicting points of view.
Obviously, things happen, but if the hiring process is sloppy and generally disorganized, consider what this might tell you about the company. Therefore, I would be wary of a practice that doesn't address this topic at all in interviews, but one that does it in an abbreviated form, such as the one that offered you a job after working there for a few hours, would probably be fine. If things are scattered and everywhere or are disorganized, it's absolutely a red flag. You want to work for an organization that takes hiring seriously because you want to have good colleagues (and, of course, you want whoever hired your manager to take their hiring seriously) and also because you want to be sure that they've really thought about whether you can succeed in the position or not.
