So you wrote a great Job Description – it really spoke to the candidates. Now, your email account is overflowing with resumes of interested job seekers. Your move. Should you shortlist candidates on the basis of resumes and conduct face-to-face interviews? Should you have a phone interview with the candidates?
A recruitment process is after all an optimisation problem – hiring the best candidate at the lowest expense of resources. The question is which route is the most optimal for your hiring process. Since it is a long-drawn process, we focus on just one aspect of it – the decision to conduct a phone interview or not.
Think about it – you can’t meet each applicant for a one-on-one interview. It’s likely that you will receive a few hundred applications for each open position; you need a way to identify the candidates worth meeting in person. A phone interview is the best way to achieve that.
Here are three reasons we believe you should conduct phone interviews for your recruitment process.
1. A Phone Interview helps you do some Preliminary Filtering
Sometimes a quick conversation is all it takes to assess if you want to continue evaluating a candidate. For example, you can assess if a candidate is reasonably intelligent and has a favourable emotional disposition. You can also get an idea about the candidate’s communication skills.
The thumb rule is if you cannot make up your mind, then don’t write them off yet.
You can also use phone interviews to make sure that each candidate fully understands the position and its requirements. This will save you a lot of time if the candidate decides after learning what the position actually entails, that they are not a good fit for it. This is desirable than taking the time to meet them in person and then finding out that they are not the best fit.
2. A Phone Interview runs on your Schedule and Saves you Time
A face-to-face interview is not easy to schedule. You need to sync the calendars of the candidate and the interviewer. Maybe the candidate needs to be flown down from another city, and their travel arrangements taken care of. Right when you think it’s all set, that unforeseen situation might come up and you will need to reschedule the interview and do it all over again.
Moreover during the interview, it is easy to lose track of time and overshoot the planned duration.
A phone interview on the other hand has less moving parts and hence is easier to manage. Even if a call gets rescheduled you are not left with massive wasted efforts. It is comparatively easier to stay focused on the interview and not lost track of time.
3. It helps you Take Decisions Collectively
A phone interview can be recorded. If you record phone calls, you can go back and re-listen to them anytime. You can also share the recorded phone conversations with your colleagues. Once everyone has listened to the recorded calls you can compare notes and then decide which candidates should move onto the next step in the interviewing process. Just make sure that the candidates you are interviewing, know that you’re recording your conversation.
We hope this convinces you one way or the other about the advantages of doing phone interviews. Phone interviews can be well worth the effort you will put into them. Just remember to think through your exercise and plan it out well. Tell us in the comments below what your experience has been conducting phone interviews.