The Phone Screen
Joel was talking about how much of a time saver phone interviews can be because it can weed out half of the people who looked good on paper. I thought the article was interesting from a psychological point of view too though.
From The Phone Screen:
With a phone interview, because you can’t see the person, it’s easier to focus on the quality of what they’re saying rather than other external factors not relevant to their job, like their appearance, or their nervousness. Ever since Malcolm Gladwell wrote Blink, I’ve been terrified of the prospect that we might be judging candidates too quickly based on things which are not relevant to their ability to do their job-their appearance or confidence or height or general nerdy demeanor might make us way more apt to look on everything else that happens during the interview with rose-colored glasses.
The great thing about a phone interview is that it’s much harder to form these kinds of snap judgments; you actually have to listen to what the person is saying and decide if that corresponds to what a smart person might say. This isn’t completely true, of course: you may have prejudices about certain accents or dialects. But at least you are moderately less susceptible to appearance prejudice.
From The Phone Screen:
With a phone interview, because you can’t see the person, it’s easier to focus on the quality of what they’re saying rather than other external factors not relevant to their job, like their appearance, or their nervousness. Ever since Malcolm Gladwell wrote Blink, I’ve been terrified of the prospect that we might be judging candidates too quickly based on things which are not relevant to their ability to do their job-their appearance or confidence or height or general nerdy demeanor might make us way more apt to look on everything else that happens during the interview with rose-colored glasses.
The great thing about a phone interview is that it’s much harder to form these kinds of snap judgments; you actually have to listen to what the person is saying and decide if that corresponds to what a smart person might say. This isn’t completely true, of course: you may have prejudices about certain accents or dialects. But at least you are moderately less susceptible to appearance prejudice.