It's important for candidates not to over-emphasize the smoothness of the hiring process.
I almost didn't work for a company because my experience during an internship was that HR, payroll, and other departments that were not part of my day-to-day job were painful and bureaucratic. I was talked into the job anyway, and it was without a doubt the right decision for me. I learned an enormous amount, worked with some terrific people, and helped ship a very successful product. You could argue that the ancillary stuff reflected company issues that ultimately led to the company's demise. But I would certainly not have passed up the 3 years I spent there even if I'd known that in 3 years I'd end up looking for a new job. And that's not least because so everyone I worked with did the same thing, and now I'm still working with many of those same people on much of the same technologies.
What was important about the candidate experience? It was clear that the team was interested in working with me and developing me as an engineer, and that they were very bright and working on important problems. That trumped basically everything for me.
Because we spend so much time at work and because a bad workplace is such a miserable experience, I think candidates should pay close attention to negative signals, even if they could turn out to be anomalous. Of course, when things go wrong it's certainly important to pay close attention to how that is handled. Basically everything that happens during the interview and recruitment process should be treated as signal even though some of it will be noise.
For employers evaluating a candidate, "if it's not yes it's no" - I would suggest job seekers to have the same attitude. (Unless your current job already sucks.)
I almost didn't work for a company because my experience during an internship was that HR, payroll, and other departments that were not part of my day-to-day job were painful and bureaucratic. I was talked into the job anyway, and it was without a doubt the right decision for me. I learned an enormous amount, worked with some terrific people, and helped ship a very successful product. You could argue that the ancillary stuff reflected company issues that ultimately led to the company's demise. But I would certainly not have passed up the 3 years I spent there even if I'd known that in 3 years I'd end up looking for a new job. And that's not least because so everyone I worked with did the same thing, and now I'm still working with many of those same people on much of the same technologies.
What was important about the candidate experience? It was clear that the team was interested in working with me and developing me as an engineer, and that they were very bright and working on important problems. That trumped basically everything for me.