Abstract:
Employment interviews present a puzzle: a substantial body of research suggests they are of little if any value in screening new hires, yet they remain pervasive as an integral component in hiring. Using a large, longitudinal dataset from a call center company, we find evidence that researchers may have overlooked that, independent of how effective they are at screening, interviewers are essential to convincing desirable candidates to accept a job offer. We find that faced with similar candidate pools, some interviewers are better at “selling” the company than others. Also interviewer performance in terms of acceptances and stay improves with tenure, especially for interviewers in the HR division who previously worked elsewhere in the company. This previously unstudied effect of interviews has important implications for our understanding of their role in the hiring process. This may be especially relevant given the advent of algorithmic technologies which appear to outperform humans in screening, but which would almost certainly fail to sell the job to a candidate.
Authors: Tavis Barr (Talenteck), Raicho Bojilov (PUC) Kate Gautier (Talenteck) Lalith Munasinghe (Columbia)
