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Phone screens are tests of sociability. Sociability is an inherently bipolar or multipolar activity, where participants speech, body language and tone are inter
by ipnon 6y ago
Phone screens are tests of sociability. Sociability is an inherently bipolar or multipolar activity, where participants speech, body language and tone are interpreted by other participants, digested, then fed back to the original participant in the form of more speech, body language and tone. We deem those who would score high in sociability to be charming, to have charisma. We deem them so because they have the ability to raise the sociability of those around them. By dent of their mannerisms, they make others feel confident in expressing themselves, and they are willingly to let minor faux pas slide.
We would thus expect a candidate being interviewed by a charismatic interviewer to score more highly than they would in the presence of a social dolt. This state of affairs brings into question the utility of phone interviews as measures of job performance.
- fractionalhare 6y agoI don't think I've ever taken or given a phone screen where sociability was the metric being tested for. If I was far below a certain baseline of sociability I'm sure I'd fail, but beyond that I don't think phone screens were distinguishing my sociability or charisma whatsoever.
- xxpor 6y agoI don't think OP is implying it's a conscious thing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ThePadawan 6y agoReally? I generally found that in a sequence of ~3 interviews for a position, the order will generally be * a personal interview (i.e. the one for sociability - mostly with HR people) * a more technical interview (generally with tech people who don't answer questions about non-technical stuff) * an interview with stakeholders (i.e. a potential future boss, or a department head who can answer questions about long-term career development, perks, etc.. This also tests for sociability)
- fractionalhare 6y agoThat sounds nice! It definitely seems like a better process than 5 interviews of coding + system design and a half assed behavioral thrown in, which is what I'm used to.
- ThePadawan 6y agoAh yes, that's one of the worst systems I've encountered as well. (For full disclosure, I should mention that I received an "You passed 4 out of 5 of these interviews, and got a 'maybe' on the fifth" and thus received no offer).
- entangledqubit 6y agoWhen I used to conduct a ton of interviews, I would explicitly call out candidates I found exceedingly charismatic in my feedback so the hiring committee could watch out for other interviewers lowering their expectations. This pattern popped up regularly when I would compare my feedback against feedback from others. When you meet these people, it can really be its own kind of drug.
- crucialfelix 6y agoThis is often a factor. I'm hiring right now and I notice that the product manager judges engineers skills inaccurately. Fortunately I'm able to point it out to him and explain why B is probably a better engineer than A