I’ve just had to interview a graduate over the phone. It’s always so difficult when you can’t see the candidate or assess any of his reactions.
I was on the articling student hiring committee at my job for several years. To accomodate students who were out of province, we would interview by telephone if they asked.
In the time I was on the committee, we never hired someone who did a telephone interview. They just didn’t make the same impression that people did sitting across the table from you.
Based on that, I would never recomend doing a telephone interview for a job - find a way to get to the interviews.
Is there any HR type study to show generally if telephone interviews are an effective way to land a job?
I have a second round interview at 9:30 tomorrow morning. It was to be a phone interview as well, until the ‘big boss’ showed up and decided to do them all personally. Not sure how I feel about this yet…
I have hired phone interview candidates, but never on the strength of the phone interview alone. We always get the person in for a face-to-face interview before offering a job, but we often do phone interviews for interstate candidates to see whether it’s worth the cost of flying them to Sydney. I agree with you though that a candidate in a phone interview is immediately disadvantaged and has to “shine” much more than any other candidate just to make the short list.
I have at least five scheduled for this week - but the phone interview won’t be where the committee’s hiring recommendation comes from. Once we’ve done these, we will bring the 3 most likely in for in-person interviews and make a decision from there.
I’ve never been on the hiring end of a phone interview. I have had to call references in the past, though, and that drives me batty.