Asynchronous Interviews are not the answer

Interviews are difficult to schedule, time consuming and don't really give a fair chance for all participants when questions go off track. Asynchronous interviews would seem to solve many of the problems mentioned - they can be completed whenever a candidate has time - reducing scheduling delays - and developing a great set of questions at the start means that every participant has in theory, an equal chance of success.

With recorded asynchronous interviews, candidates can be directly compared and judged according to the technical correctness of the answers they give. If we add technical testing, and perhaps psychometric evaluation (both done asynchronously of course!) we theoretically have a complete picture of a candidate - their technical capabilities, learning style and specific responses to the precise challenges of our role. It's perfect right?

Would you hire the candidate?

I often ask clients whether they'd be happy to hire direct from a CV. The answer is a "no". When I press for why, one of the answers always has to do with "exaggeration or lies". Would you hire a person direct from the CV if I could guarantee there were no lies, and that the person who wrote this CV really contributed in the way they say they did?" The answer is still no, and the feeling at least is "We don't know the person".

"If I set up a telephone call, along with this guaranteed CV? A call where you can get to know them. Would you hire them then?" The answer is still no, with a few insincere-sounding "Maybe's".

It seems important to these clients to at least see the person they are going to work with. As though that (and not the data on this person) is the single defining fact.

Clients are shocked when I tell them about Malcolm Gladwell interviewing methods where he never meets people at all in order to reduce his cognitive bias and focus on the need.

Most clients are not Malcolm Gladwell and cannot get work the idea of telephone-only interviews.

"We don't get to look someone in the eyes and see who they really are" (sic).

Yet interview processes continue to be drawn out and time consuming. The cost in terms of working hours is huge just to "look someone in the eye".

Enter Asynchronous interviews. Here's a convenient way to see the applicant that won't take up valuable time. A way to optimise the hiring processes. For advocates of Asynchronous interviews it seems the image of the person, captured in video, not the depth of conversation but the physical embodiment of the person is enough to move things from not reliable enough to "the complete picture".

I disagree.

Why it is more difficult to make an asynchronous decision

Let's imagine for a moment you were to design effective questions that got to the precise heart of the need for a role. You upload those questions to your interview platform of choice and await the answers. A group of candidates reply, all of whom seem sincere, learning-minded, and likeable. Each answer to each question seems appropriate and well reasoned. Which do you hire?

Asynchronous interviews fail because they cut out the real skill of interviewing; namely the opportunity to understand why someone makes the choices, decisions and actions they make. Absolutely the questions need to be right, but it is the depth of answer and the reasoning behind the answer which reveals the person themselves. Anyone can prep for a right answer, very few people can talk at length without revealing details about who they are.

The greatest journalists build compelling biographies of their subjects not through perfect questions (though they certainly ask the right questions) but through enabling their subject to talk at length on the key topics they have identified. The first answer to their question, the sanitised, prepared, safe answer, is not the whole truth, but a social act. It is a sketch not the art.

Job interviews have the greatest predictive potential when we try to see the whole human. We are after all hiring the whole human. We don't hire from just a CV because it doesn't reveal the whole picture, and we can't hire from an asynchronous interview for the same reason. We are hearing a single piece of a wider answer, a piece that speaks to a technical efficiency certainly, but not a to the manner of carrying out that efficiency. We do not learn of the person loves or simply tolerates the work, or indeed anything further about the human being we are hiring outside of their production capacity.

Building winning teams, teams that transform industries, is a function of having both a meaningful mission and meaningful relationships with the human beings hired to deliver that mission. That is to say, the specific function each team member performs has to be right, and performed to a very high standard, but it is the ability of the people to trust, to develop shared mental models, to support, encourage, challenge, learn, teach teach each other (all of which are functions of the hires as whole human beings) that makes the biggest impact. Hiring via asynchronous interviews simply cannot and does not provide enough context of the human being behind the skills profile.

Hiring via asynchronous interviews is hiring with incomplete information.

Competing for Talent means investing time

The concept of time saving in interviews can seem incredibly compelling. Add up all the work hours lost in a typical round of interviews, each stage containing multiple candidates assessed by multiple busy members of staff. Almost by design most of this time is wasted because all but one of your interviewees is rejected. Getting that time back seems like an easy win.

But this kind of time saving comes at the price of candidate engagement. Put yourself in the candidate's shoes - you have two companies interested in you. One of them asks you to do a series of asynchronous interviews and tests. The process seems well thought out and the questions are good - you get to complete these at your leisure using convenient and intuitive interfaces. The other company runs traditional interviews, perhaps a Zoom call initially, followed by arranging a visit to an office for a technical discussion with future team mates and an exec interview. Thanks to diary difficulties (on both sides) these interviews end up widely spaced and even require a second visit to the office to meet a couple of senior staff members who were sick on the day you were originally slated to meet them.

From an efficiency and user experience perspective, interview A is the clear winner. But how does the process feel? And how important is "convenient" to a candidate's choice of where to go next in their career? Does option A feel like a company that you are ready to join, or does fact that company B set time aside to get to know you and to meet with you in person make them the favourite?

Much depends on the quality of the interview and the effort company B puts in of course, but I would argue that company B has a significant advantage in securing the candidate by leveraging their more involved, connected strategy. Company B gets a fuller picture of the candidate, as discussed above, but they also have a much stronger opportunity to "pitch" their organisation and role. By establishing a real life dialogue, being open and honest in their conversations with the candidate and spending time developing a rapport, the organization's time invested is repaid in getting their favourite candidate to accept the offer. By contrast, Company A now seems distant, dismissive and unconnected with the real life human being behind the candidate. By not caring enough to make the time to interview, they show that they don't value the whole person.

The dying art of concentration

Interviews are rife with bias and it takes considerable energy and commitment to recognise and minimise our bias. In person interviews are more likely to elicit bias than telephone calls because human beings have strong responses to visual clues and body language stimuli. On the positive side these in person interview formats require our full and visible concentration. The person interviewing you on the telephone might well be taking notes as they speak, but could just as easily be online shopping.

Asynchronous interviews double the problem. Here are all the visual stimuli presented in a way you can turn down, skip and fast forward. The candidate's first incorrect answer, or their physical appearance (or that of their room) might be enough for a bad interviewer to tune out completely. "I am a busy person, thinks the manager and I'd never hire this candidate anyway. Here's a chance for me to get in with that report." before muting or skipping forward though the interview and missing all the opportunities to learn about the candidate.

An asynchronous interview is an opportunity to avoid the hard work of interviewing (full attention, listening, single focus) and be be subject to all the thin slice biases of human interaction.

Diminishing concentration in this way can only result in worse hiring outcomes. Left to run rampant, the biases will have their way resulting in homogenous hiring and a distinct lack of creative spark. The time saved by building asynchronous interviews to "free up time" will be paid back with interest by a worse performing team.

Invest time in interviewing - it will provide an outsize return on investment.