Anyone else have firms request these of you? I’ve turned down both instances when they’ve been requested and will probably continue to do so. If some of you run shops and think this is a cool or cutting edge way to conduct first round phone screens, it’s not. lol. I find it off putting, impersonal, and lazy quite frankly.
I get it. Hiring managers are busy, but you are looking for someone who is going to potentially add to your firms pnl one day and spend up to 80-100 hours in some cases per week around you so either send an e-mail to schedule a call or pick up the phone.
Me either until the past two weeks I have had two. Both ironically in the Real Estate space. Right after I applied, I was sent an immediate automated reply requesting the phone screen so I know it is being sent to everyone and not just me. Hopefully this isn’t a new “thing” because it’s pretty awful tbh.
was it a mom and pop real estate that is into building 2 unit multi fams? Although each of these projects can net you several hundred thousand in profits in 9 months…it is neither sexy nor lucrative for the salaried…
I don’t know about automated telephone interviews, but I can talk about automated video interviews.
Automated video interviews are actually something relatively new in the commercial real estate and research industries (I’m mostly from the former industry so I know a little bit about it). The thinking is that people often get flustered when they are sitting in front of a live person who is giving feedback via body language in real time. Through an automated video interview, the interviewee can choose when they want to do it, where they want to do it, and there’s no one staring at them or crossing their arms or doing whatever and making the interviewee think twice about their responses.
It’s also a great way for the HR and the hiring manager of the firm who don’t have the time to book proper interviews. I’ve done it a few times and what inevitably happens is that you do get selected for the next round, but then scheduling is a nightmare for an in-person interview. I had to wait 4 weeks from when I was told that I was selected to when I got my actual in-person interview.
This is mostly being used by the big firms/banks though. By big I mean at least national and even multinational. Most smaller firms do care enough to take the time out to meet you in-person. The place I’m working currently is crazy busy. I’m probably in meetings for about 3/4 of my day, but the fact that people here took the time out to meet me in-person 3 times says something to me about them. That’s why I chose them over a multi-national bank, where it took them 4 months just to go through the interviews because of scheduling issues and because they wanted to run diagnostic after diagnostic and do a couple of automated video interviews.