Do you have some context around that number? E.g. are you in a large company that pre-filters the pool for you?
I ask because 50 is not completely unreasonable. I've had positions where we've had to interview dozens of candidates, in our small company. In larger companies, often someone else does some initial interviews though and that filters out candidates who e.g. can't code at all (sometimes - not always!).
7 was at a large enterprise software company. I don’t remember exactly how many phone screenings they did, but it was less than 20. I still thought it was too many.
Like I said, I think if you have to interview that many, your filtering process is really broken further up the pipeline. You don’t know what you want, what the job really is, the or application process isn’t properly structured.
Interviewing large numbers of people is also a huge liability unless you’re extremely consistent and well-documented in your hiring process (something which I’ve found to rarely be the case).
> You don’t know what you want, what the job really is, the or application process isn’t properly structured.
I interviewed at Google. The position description versus what I was interviewed on were two worlds apart. Like the position mentioned front end CSS and HTML. I was grilled on SQL in two of the 4 interviews. This wasn't a SWE position, it was more of a client support role, but I was given a coding test. I did poorly on the test, but I still consider it difficult for a role that was not a SWE.
It didn't even seem like Google knew what role they were hiring for they just wanted "someone technical" to do something. I left this process feeling pretty confused and turned-off at their hiring process and questioning if I really wanted to work at a place like that.
I ask because 50 is not completely unreasonable. I've had positions where we've had to interview dozens of candidates, in our small company. In larger companies, often someone else does some initial interviews though and that filters out candidates who e.g. can't code at all (sometimes - not always!).