[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.