[seymour333]

"Start with a phone screen interview"

I have to disagree with this point. Phone and screen interviews are awkwardly paced and some individuals simply don't come across well in this type of setting. If the qualifications on their resume fit your requirements, just bring them in!

[scarface74]

I love phone screens. It tells me early on whether I need to waste my time taking off work, going across town etc.

On the interviewing side, I have had 6 phone screens with different companies in one day -I was able to “work from home” to do it.

On the interviewer’s side. I was able to screen 6 people in one day and bring in only two.

A “resume fit” means nothing. People say all sorts of things on their resume but they fall apart when you actually talk to them.

[lj3]

This. Some companies proceed directly to the "build us something" or "take a quiz" portion of the interview process. I always insist on a phone interview (preferably with the hiring manager) before doing anything else. 5 minutes of frank conversation can save you hours of wasted time.

Also, you'd be surprised at how different the role they want to fill is from the one they posted.

[scarface74]

Exactly. Just like the company is juggling a lot of candidates, historically, I am usually juggling multiple companies where I am somewhere in the interview process.

[flippyhead]

Or the reverse: someone might not be good resume writing, but if you suspect this, talking to them can occasionally find some hidden gems.

[pmiller2]

I would guess those people don’t get phone screened, either, because the resume (in the absence of a referral) is what gets the interview.

[hahamrfunnyguy]

Agreed. They're a time saver for all involved. A surprising number of candidates can't answer basic programming questions about access modifiers or the difference between interfaces and abstract classes. Why bring them in if you know they won't meet the criteria?

[ravenstine]

I hate phone screenings. And that's not because I hate the interview itself, but having the interview over the telecom system. Most recruiters are using a cell phone, and cell-to-cell audio quality is pitiful in today's age. No wonder so many people in my generation don't bother calling anymore! If my ears are straining to make sure I'm hearing the fuzzy-sounding person on the other end of the line, that makes the screening a lot less pleasant.

As much as I agree that companies should be more willing to just have people come in for a quick chat, I'd like for recruiters to reach out through email or text and then setup a Hangouts chat or such. A video call would be sufficient in my book.

EDIT: One of the things that sucks about phone screenings, IMO, is when the interviewer is clearly asking a prewritten set of questions and taking notes as I speak. What I'd like instead is for the interviewer to record the conversation so they don't have to take notes, thus freeing their minds up to having a chill conversation and perhaps getting a better sense of who I am.

[hocuspocus]

I always insist on using VoIP or videochat. Nowadays most companies use Zoom, Google Meet or the like. But even then, and with a gigabit wired connection on my end, it's usually not perfect. :/

[walshemj]

That's because both ends are not using proper equipment - real sound cards real microphones.

[GhostVII]

Also I have a pay as you go phone, since I never call anyone, so a phone screening can quickly cost me $20 if it goes for more than half an hour.

[Sean1708]

They're making you ring them?! That's ridiculous! Personally I would just flat out refuse, there is absolutely no excuse for them to put the cost on you unless they can't afford to hire you anyway.

[fencepost]

In the US you're generally charged for every minute of a call on the phone regardless of whether it was incoming or outgoing. Most postpaid plans now include unlimited minutes, but prepaid are limited.

I believe European carriers were traditionally caller pays, not sure if that's still the case.

[GhostVII]

No, they call me, but I get charged for incoming calls apparently. I thought I didn't, but then I ran out of balance half way through a phone interview.

[reificator]

https://voice.google.com and a PC headset will get you free calls over the internet.

[plasticchris]

I get how annoying being asked a preselected set of questions is, but if it's being done right it's called structured interviewing and one of the more predictive methods. For example this is how Triplebyte does it.

[scarface74]

As an interviewer, I’m not interested in having a “chill conversation”. I’m interested in knowing whether you have the minimum set of qualifications to know whether it’s worth the time to go through the trouble of setting up the in person interview, reserving a room, setting up the computer with my code interview, scheduling a block of time with other developers, etc.

[ravenstine]

As an interviewee, I'm not interested in only answering questions that are easily answered by my resume so you can tick boxes. If I can't get a sense on the company spirit and you aren't going to treat me like a human being over the phone, why would I want to work for you when there are better companies looking for culture fits?

The sentiment is mutual.

[braythwayt]

You don know that anybody can put anything on a résumé, right?

We can talk about how much we hate doing anything over a voice call, but it’s ludicrous to think that interviewers should never ask a question that could be answered by reading the résumé.

For example, we have some Scala code in our analytics stack at my work. I have worked with it, but I avoid touching it and honestly, I am not a Scala programmer.

I have been at this company for 3 1/2 years, on this team for one year. Some people in such a situation will say that they have 3 1/2 years of Scala, an outright fabrication.

Others will say that they have 1 year of Scala, which is kinda-sorta true on some bad-faith, you-can’t-call-me-a-liar planet.

If I put Scala on a résumé, I would totally expect someone to drill down and find out if I was using it every day, whether I was writing big chunks of code or just fixing the odd bug and so on.

I wouldn’t highlight Scala, personally, but what if I put JavaScript down? Given how tenuous Scala might be, wouldn’t an interviewer want to know if my JavaScript experience is “real” or not? I know that I use JS almost every day and Scala almost never, but my interviewer doesn’t know that I have such scruples, so they are supposed to ask me questions about JavaScript that my résumé answers, then drill down and corroborate.

[ravenstine]

There seems to be a misunderstanding with what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that phone screenings shouldn't be about qualifications. My point is that if through that process I'm made to feel like a number, that gives me a bad impression of the rest of the business relationship. If the person doing the screening comes off as friendly, maybe enthusiastic, and we can have a pleasant 2 way chat, then I'm much more likely to move forward with the process.

To provide contrast, I had a phone screening yesterday where the screener was only asking yes/no questions that were easily answered by my resume, didn't want me to go into much detail, and didn't seem friendly at all. Why would I want to move forward with that company? There are others where I can tell off the bat that they'd be a better culture fit. First impressions do matter.

One of the things I like about a video screening is it usually changes the tone of the conversation towards being a bit less formal.

[scarface74]

My point is that if through that process I'm made to feel like a number

You are a number as an employee, we are all just disposable pieces of the cog. The business transaction is simple. I’ll stay there as long as they are putting money in my account twice a month that is commensurate with my market value and I know they will keep me employed as long as it is in their best interest.

You are just one of a pile of resumes that they are filtering at any one time.

[scarface74]

People lie on resumes either on purpose or they think they know a technology but they don’t really.

[webdood90]

Then you and your company are probably not a good fit for this particular interviewee. It goes both ways.

[walshemj]

If you give that vibe off good candidates will be like "Meh" and drop you.

[scarface74]

I don’t get it. Why is a job anything else but a place I go to get a paycheck, keep my skills marketable, and go home?

While I wouldn’t want to work in a toxic environment, I have no problem with working with a bunch of professionals that all feel the same way and just want to go home to their families, friends, and enjoy other alternatives.

I have no interest in playing foosball, socializing after work, etc.

[walshemj]

How your perceived by your peers does effect your promotion though

[scarface74]

True.

But I gave up getting meaningful raises within a company. My m.o. for the past 10 years has been to look at the market, gain the skills that are paying more, and change jobs.

As far as promotions, that’s not something I care about. 20 years ago, I was sitting at a desk writing code in Visual Studio 1997. Now I am sitting at a desk writing code in Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio Code - making a lot more money of course.

I was a Dev lead for a while, at one company just to put that on my resume, I self demoted, got a job at another company with the same pay, less responsibility, and the chance to fill in some technology gaps for next job as an overpriced consultant.

[xkcd-sucks]

Couldn't you just do that in email though?

[twblalock]

People would cheat by looking up the answers.

[gaius]

They do this on phone screens too. You can hear the keys then their intonation changes as if they are reading text out loud...

[idfoinbvc]

If someone can google exact answer in 15 seconds (to be sure they are saying things correctly), in some situations it's also great. This fact-checking instinct is good.

[walshemj]

Or there are 3 people huddled round some lap top with a pos mic.

[wgerard]

> If the qualifications on their resume fit your requirements, just bring them in!

It's not uncommon for there to be a huge mismatch between what the resume says and how the candidate interviews. Especially since it's well-known that resumes are programmatically screened nowadays, candidates feel pressured to play buzzword bingo with their resumes.

A quick phone screen or take-home is far more humane than bringing them on-site for 6 hours and having them flail miserably in the interview because of the resume problem.

I also don't see how they could nail an on-site interview but fail a phone screen. It seems like the skillset there is roughly equivalent, regardless of whether you agree with that skillset being indicative of on-the-job performance.

[ska]

I have to disagree with this, from the both sides of the table. If I'm hiring, phone screens let me sanity check the candidate resembles what they present on paper. As an candidate the phone screen lets me sanity check that the position/team resembles what they present in the job posting.

Both of these before either side has expended significant resources on a proper interview. More that 50% of the most recent interviews I have done have involved getting on an airplane (sort of "amusingly", more than once even for a position in the same city I was located) - no way I'm going to put that sort of time in for most places without talking to them first. On the other foot, it's pretty frustrating as a hiring manager to have interviews and people all lined up and prepped for someone it only took you 10 minutes to know was not going to work out.

I should probably add, I mean technical, or at least hiring manager, phone screens. Recruiter can rarely handle this, and if I'm talking to one it's really only to arrange/understand who I really need to be talking to.

[walshemj]

Isn't the sanity checking what you pay a recruiter for

[ska]

Recruiters are most typically useful as a filter. If they can reduce an unmanageable number of candidates to a manageable pile without too many false positives, you are doing well.

In more niche/difficult to match area, good recruiters can be helpful at finding difficult to source candidates, much more so that evaluating them.

Those two skill sets are quite different, most recruiters don't do both well.

[dylan-m]

I'm somewhere on the autism spectrum, which isn't a big deal, but it does have the effect that I don't come across well in phone calls. So if that's my first meeting with someone, I am doomed. It's challenging enough navigating a regular social situation, but it gets even worse when I'm down to a single source of information, and that happens to be a tiny little speaker linked to a tiny little microphone over six concrete buildings and a thunderstorm, and the interviewer's voice is oddly muffled but I didn't bring it up at the start of the conversation and now I'm wondering if I should mention it ten minutes in and damn I lost track of my notes. That isn't a comfortable situation for anyone, but I get the impression that people are usually able to fill in the gaps with their own intuition of social norms and protocols.

I suspect many of the gut feelings people get doing phone interviews are a matter of luck.

I do appreciate the convenience of a phone interview, but it would be incredibly good for my peace of mind if more of them could start off with a simple email conversation to introduce each other. I tried to do that myself for a brief moment where I was interviewing people, and I thought it went quite well. (My boss, wondering how he almost didn't hire me, put me in charge of hiring someone like me, which was surprisingly non-destructive, but I'm grateful I don't need to do it on a regular basis).

With that said, I really dislike the jobs where they ask you a bunch of random questions right in their application form. That's way too much work when your answers to those questions probably won't even reach your interviewer anyway.

[josho]

A good manager isn’t looking for polished answers in a phone screen. Rather it exists to validate that it is worth my and your time to meet in person.

Eg. I’ll provide more context on my needs as the hiring manager (often the recruiter explains the role poorly). Then I’ll ask a few questions related to the role that are pretty basic to validate your background isn’t BS.

So if you get screened out here despite nailing the questions then the manager is hiring on the wrong criteria (likability?) and you probably don’t want to work for them anyway.

[notyourwork]

Interviewing is an expensive process so you try to introduce multiple steps which filter a large candidate pool down to a hire. If every candidate with a resume that indicated they were qualified was brought in the process expense would increase drastically.

Furthermore, phone screen allows ability to get perspective on soft skills. At least in my field, technical people need to communicate and therefore a phone screen allows ability to review this attribute of candidate which isn't conveyed on a resume.

[shshhdhs]

I have to disagree. I perform a lot of interviews, in-person and over the phone, and I no longer trust resumes. People will put hundreds of words on them but can really only speak to a handful. I’d rather sort that out over the phone first before wasting their time taking PRO and traveling.

[kevan]

I don't know anyone that really enjoys phone screens or tools like HackerRank. But, given the percentage of people with 5+ years of coding skills on their resume that wash out with fizz-buzz questions I think they're a necessary filter to save everyone time.

[Quarrelsome]

I feel like its fine if its just a low technical bar. The purpose of a phone interviews for me is basically: "can they write a function signature without really thinking much?".