Month: May 2023

Something about the “One-Way” interview has been bugging me. I tried to sort it out in the blog post here. I failed to clearly analyze what it was that concerned me.

I was denying my suspicious nature. A couple of good night’s sleep later and my concern clarified when I started down this path.

Have I become too suspicious? It that suspicion justified? Have there been simply too many bullshit recruiters and promises?

As I was thinking about it, I found myself asking this question.

“Why the one way video interview?”

The hiring manager still has to make time to review the video. Then they have to arrange to call the candidate back for another interview. This whole one way video interview paradigm saves no-one any time.

Why not just Zoom meeting or FaceTime, or whatever in the first place? Why add a layer of complexity?

Then it hit me.

The one way interview does allow for isolation, racism, and sexism.

The candidates are speaking blind to a dispassionate recording system. But the managers can review the video and easily allow racial, gender, or age bias to guide their candidate selection for second interviews. Since the hiring manager reviewing the videos doesn’t have to actually connect with the candidate, they can forget them without guilt.

It’s all done in the privacy of their office with no oversight or questioning of their choices or motives. It’s unlikely that anyone will take the time to review the reject pile.

If the manager said candidate X, Y, or Z isn’t appropriate, who’s going to go look at a video? Who will have the time to notice that the hiring manager is only interviewing candidates of a particular color or gender…

I’ll grant you, this can happen in any interview situation. But since most interviews are done with a minimum of an HR representative and the Hiring Manager present there is some oversight.

The old, “sort through resumes,” pick out those that have the skills you need and call those people for an interview tended to prevent racial stuff because you couldn’t justify hiring a less qualified candidate over someone more qualified, if you were hiring only on the merits of experience.

Looking at a resume you only had the name of the individual. I’ll grant that in more recent years, it became possible for racist bias to rear its ugly head because of the names some parents gave their children. “John or Julie Green” was pretty generic. (I’ve worked with two John Greens. One was white, the other black. Both were great guys and excellent programmers.)

With “Jose or Julia Verde” you could infer that they were of Spanish/Latin origin, but from where was the question. Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador? You might be able to narrow things down if they’d attended college or trade school in another country. If all their education was in country, you’d be fairly certain that they were at least first generation, so communication wouldn’t be an issue.

When you get to “DeKanye and Shaquanda Green” well, the parents of these children set their kids up to be victims of racism. It’s not right, but it is sadly true.

This name thing also works the other way. My surname screams white, and possibly NAZI to boot. So in this period of time I’m as susceptible to racial bias as poor Shaquanda. The only way we truly escape bias is if everyone changed our names to numbers. Perhaps our phone number or our social security number would eliminate all name based bias.

But we’d still have the physicality bias to contend with. The only way to eliminate that is to have everyone work from home and no video conferencing at all.

Which brings me back to the things that had been bugging me about the whole “One-Way” interview process.

1 It doesn’t save anyone time.

2 The candidate has little or no control over how the interview is used.

3 The “One-Way” interview can promote racism or sexism with no oversight.

4 This interview format imposes technological barriers such as compatibility and internet speed.

5 Technological barriers may indicate the economic level of the candidate, and be used in an exclusionary way or result in lower offered wages for the same work.

Now that I’ve worked through it I can tell my brain to work on something else. I hate it when my brain is chewing on something but can’t figure out what caught my attention.

If you’re looking for a job, consider the “One-Way” interview carefully. It may not be as much of an advantage as it’s purported to be.

I’d welcome an interactive video conference interview. That would in fact save everyone a lot of time and prevent un-necessary driving around.

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Now I’m off to figure out why something Apple related isn’t working after their latest software update. I think it’s a bug but need to check out my settings before contacting Apple.

Talk about a company that needs good old fashioned manual testing and human eyes looking at their products…

Oh well, that’s never going to happen!

Have a good day.