The value of telephone interviews?

I have been the "candidate" on the end of a number of phone interviews recently. They seem to be more prevalent in my market, but are something I personally have rarely done as a recruiter. I understand that time and cost pressures make the practice appear attractive, at least, as an initial sift, but I wonder if that is the case?

It is an interesting experience being the candidate and is pretty tough in my opinion. This may just be because I am an extrovert communicator and a telephone interview really cuts down the channels for me to communicate and receive feedback.

A quick google will bring results that shows that the words alone constitute merely 7% of the content of usual human communication, that 60-70% is non-verbal and the rest is paralinguistic ie pitch, tone, pace, volumes etc. Thus a telephone conversation cuts out two thirds of the normal information available to the receiver.

There are other figures that could be quoted, but the messages are all similar.

As the candidate this means that there is a double whammy, not only do you only have a 1/3 of your usual communication capacity available, you only get a 1/3 of the feedback. Often you are talking into silence with no idea how your audience is receiving it or even listening.

They do say that in a face to face interview the decision is often made in the first couple of minutes of meeting, during which times the words that are spoken are less likely to be about a technical or work topic and more about building rapport and comfort.

I do not have any figures but I suspect that the paucity of data exchanged in a telephone interview means that a) the analysis of words is more forensic and precise, and b) that the sub-conscious decision making probably takes longer, my guess from experience is 10-15 minutes.

The implications are that a candidate must prepare and perform differently for a telephone, voice-only interview. This means extra effort to build as much rapport as possible at the start, greater care and precision with the words used, heightened sensitivity for ANY feedback they can garner.

All this means super-focus and concentration. I will be rethinking my preparation and may well return to the subject again.

I wonder how recruiters who use this technique often find it, other than less demanding on them physically and timewise? I also wonder if it is really effective as a filter as the candidates who reach a face to face interview will have been selected on the basis of unusual/limited behaviour and better "real life" candidates may be missed.






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