I have been working through many phone screens and phone interviews over the past few weeks. These interactions are tough for the candidate and for the interviewer. I was at a communication conference this past weekend that restated something I already knew – 55% of all communication is non-verbal. This fact is never more obvious than during a phone interview.

So SellingPower.com has an article in their latest hiring newsletter that caught my eye – Three, Two, One, Action. The article discusses video-conference interviewing. I am currently working on national positions in every region except the Southeast. Video conferencing would make this task much easier.

Some points:

Rooms can cost between $150 and $300 per hour, but that far outweighs the cost of airfare and hotel. Rooms also have equipment variances that can include multiple monitors, VCR or DVD players, or connections that allow computer content to be presented. Some rooms even have catering services available.
Another advantage of video interviewing is how far it can reach. For example, if you need to bring in a panel of interviewers from all over the nation or world, they can all go into separate public rooms and interview the candidate €“ either all at once or InterCall can bring them in every 15 minutes.

These advantages are hard to ignore and I think ones that will certainly lead to a shift in sourcing/interviewing activities. The technology could crash during an interview which would be an obvious problem, but I suspect these locations have redundancies built into them.

One line that made me laugh:

While there are advantages to video interviewing, there are some disadvantages. For one, it can be intimidating for a candidate to walk into a strange room all alone and talk with someone who isn’t really there.

That may be true, but I would find a video interview far less intimidating than walking into a room with 3 or 4 directors sitting on the other side of the table.

Posted By Lee Fratzke | Interview,Screening | | Comments(2)