Firm reveals 22-hour job interview to weed out fakers

We’ve all heard of some pretty gruelling job interviews in our time – perhaps it involved several stages, tests or even the dreaded ‘curveball’ questions. Can you describe the sky without using colours?

Now a new standard appears to have been set for the most challenging interviews. To get a job with Australian app development firm Appster you must navigate a 22 hour application process consisting of eight stages, four interviews, up to ten reference checks and even a body language assessment.

Appster co-founder and CEO, Josiah Humphrey, says that the firm needs to be rigorous in its hiring. Speaking to news.com.au, he said it was “scary how often people can con their way in”.

He said that before the company introduced such strenuous processes they were regularly hiring the wrong person.

“If I go back to our first year, year-and-a-half, we were finding the right candidate maybe 25% of the time,” he says. “That doesn’t mean we’d fire them, but we might have to change the role, train them up, change our expectations.”

He says that the figure is now more like 80% - significantly higher than the industry average of around 30%.

Humphrey, 23, tells of an applicant “freaking out” during the initial screening interview when called out on inconsistencies in his story.

“This guy looked great on paper but I was fact-checking some of his claims as we were talking. I told him I thought he was being dishonest, and he freaks out and hangs up the phone.

“Two years ago we would have hired this guy.”