hiring

Post-lockdown considerations: virtual or in-person job interviews

Like organizations everywhere, my consortium is grappling with questions about which functions will remain virtual and which will return to in-person now that we are no longer required to do perform all of our operations remotely.

In our case, many meetings will continue to be remote for the indefinite future, allowing greater participation from people spread across a large geographic area, with the few remaining in-person meetings almost always supporting a remote component.

We are also considering the question of what the standard practice should be for job interviews. The last time we filled positions was in the spring of 2021. At that time, there was no question those interviews would be virtual, and, from our perspective, they worked well. The virtual component did not interfere with our ability to obtain a solid understanding of the candidates’ experience and how they would fit into our organization.

Mother distracted by children while working remotely
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto under the following license.

But I’m also considering this question through the lens of inclusivity and establishing a level playing field for all candidates so that we can evaluate them based on what experience and skills they bring to the role and not on external factors irrelevant to their potential success in our organization. Virtual interviews invite a whole host of potential external factors that could affect a candidate’s interview performance.

What if the candidate doesn’t have private space at home, has young children who are likely to interrupt the meeting, or has noisy upstairs neighbors who choose that moment to blast their music? Candidates are likely to have different levels of bandwidth at their home, allowing some candidates to have smooth interviews while others end up turning off their video in an attempt to resolve lag issues. As an interviewer, I would be understanding of any problems or interruptions, but distractions are likely to impact performance in what is already an anxiety-filled situation for the candidate.

I am reminded of a situation that occurred in my last job when I was participating in a conference call from home with my development committee. We most likely were using Zoom, but, back in those days, we still kept our cameras off. I had to be totally focused on the call because I was the primary person delivering information and gathering feedback from the committee. As we neared the end of the call, a hornet started flying erratically in the room where I was stationed. I paced around the room in an attempt to stay out of the hornet’s path, and my responses to questions in the meeting became unfocused and distracted. As the business on the agenda wrapped up and people started chatting, the hornet hit and then bounced off the ceiling, landed in my hair, and got stuck in my curls. I had to quickly explain the situation, apologize, and then abruptly end the meeting to deal with the situation.

In my case, I knew the people on the other end of the call, and we were all able to laugh about the strange things that can happen during a conference call. In the case of a job candidate, a similar situation occurring early in the meeting can throw off the entire interview. Of course, these problems can also occur during in-person interviews (I also once held an in-person training that was similarly disrupted by a hornet), but, in those cases, the distraction becomes a shared experience for everyone involved in the interview and isn’t something solely borne by the candidate.

I’ve heard from at least one public library director that patrons are starting to ask about space to perform virtual interviews. If public libraries are starting to get these questions, then we should expect that not everyone on your interview list lives in an environment conducive to virtual interviews. If you work at a public library with the right space to support virtual interviews, consider offering it as a service and promoting it!

As Roy Maurer, Online Manager/Editor for SHRM Online writes, “The shared pandemic experience has engendered empathy among recruiters and hiring managers, but new biases may have also been born, such as judgment of a candidate’s ability to effectively do a video interview or judgment of a candidate’s home surroundings, referred to as “background bias.”

Of course, there are also many positives to interviewing from home. You don’t need to take as much time off work and don’t need to worry about traffic or other delays when traveling to the interview. When Hiring Librarians asked if virtual interviews were effective hiring tools, Gemma Doyle, Collection Manager at EBSCO made this point: “I feel like everyone is more comfortable in their space than they would be if we arranged meetings in person, and the more comfortable you are, the more authentic the conversation will be.”

We still haven’t made any decisions for our own process, though I expect there will be at least one in-person meeting before final decisions are made. There are lots of tips online to support a fair process if virtual interviews are required. In particular, the University of British Columbia has some very good suggestions, some of which are listed below:

  • Build a common set of questions to allow for objective comparison among all candidates. This should really be done regardless of whether the interview is virtual or not.
  • Ask candidates if they require accommodations for the virtual interview. Employers may need to be flexible when scheduling the interview if there are specific times when the home is less likely to have distractions.
  • Clearly communicate the schedule and expected duration of the interviews.
  • Allow candidates to conduct portions of the interview (or maybe the whole interview) without video.

I would love to hear from other organizations that have also considered these questions. What final decisions did you make?