'Personal interaction ranks higher than video interviews'

Face-to-face interviews and personal interactions are what a majority of organisations rely on for hiring a candidate, while technology is only used for initial screening, a new survey says.

"Eighty-two percent of the organisations still rely on face-to-face interviews. Organisations believe that though technology has made an impact on the global hiring landscape, some traditional methods like personal interaction with the candidates still holds a lot of significance in hiring the best," states a survey by TimesJobs.com, a job portal owned by Times Business Solutions Ltd.

Though video interviews are conducted by organisations, they are done during the initial hiring phase and it is followed by personal interviews.

According to the survey, technology is used just as an enabler and 55 percent of the organisations surveyed said they source candidates from job portals and a similar number use personality profiling tests.

Most organisations indicated that a telephonic or video interview is always followed up by an in-depth face-to-face interview, said the survey.

Only three reported using just video interviews for selecting a candidate, reveals the TimesJobs.com study.

According to the survey, 98 percent of the organisations in both the automobile sector and business process outsourcing (BPO) industry rely solely on in-depth face-to-face interviews, followed by the information technology (IT) and telecom sectors.

Healthcare was one of the key sectors to report using video/telephone interviews followed by face-to-face interactions.

About 50 percent organisations in the healthcare sector use video/telephone interviews followed by face-to-face interactions, states the survey.

The trend for video interviews is a little better in metros and in key job hubs, including Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

Nearly 11 percent of representative organisations in Delhi- National Capital Region, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore conduct video interviews but they are followed by face-to-face interactions.

About 84 percent organisations in metros and 78 percent organisations in Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad prefer using only face-to-face interviews.