Phone Interviews Discriminatory?

shel90

shel90

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Nowadays many companies are requiring phone interviews to select potential candidates for interviews. Lately, I have been hearing stories of a few of my deaf friends getting disqualified as potential candidates because they didn't "give" a good phone interview. The reasons...relay is too slow, misunderstandings, or mispronounction.

I remembered 10 years ago, I applied for a teaching job at a public school and I had to do a phone interview. It was new for me so I did it through the relay. The relay was too slow so I got disconnected by the interviewer. When I called again, I learned that I was disqualified. Now, I wish I had filed a discrimination suit but I was new at them.

Do you think phone interviews put deaf people in an unequal playing field?
 
Frankly, I find phone interviews to be in bad taste. How do you get to know somebody through a phone? Wouldn't you want to know what they look like, how they dress and the impressions they make in person?
 
Banjo said:
Frankly, I find phone interviews to be in bad taste. How do you get to know somebody through a phone? Wouldn't you want to know what they look like, how they dress and the impressions they make in person?
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That was my other thought as well. Why did companies start doing them?
 
I refused to do phone interviews through relay. I hate relay with a passion. That is just too awkward. I told the HR/managers to do IMs or email. Most were actually fine with doing that. One even set up a time block of 1 hour of emailing each other back and forth.
 
I would imagine they would do phone interviews due to long distance, to quickly narrow job candidates, and to save time and money? Then there's a follow-up interview in real person.
 
I was requested for a phone interview (not a job interview) and I explained my situation to them. They allowed me to do an IM interview instead. But agreed, I'd rather a more personal interview.
 
shel90 said:
That was my other thought as well. Why did companies start doing them?
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Because of the internet. Before, you had to mail in or drop off your resume. Now employers and companies are getting deluged with them via emails and online applications.
 
shel90 said:
Nowadays many companies are requiring phone interviews to select potential candidates for interviews. Lately, I have been hearing stories of a few of my deaf friends getting disqualified as potential candidates because they didn't "give" a good phone interview. The reasons...relay is too slow, misunderstandings, or mispronounction.

I remembered 10 years ago, I applied for a teaching job at a public school and I had to do a phone interview. It was new for me so I did it through the relay. The relay was too slow so I got disconnected by the interviewer. When I called again, I learned that I was disqualified. Now, I wish I had filed a discrimination suit but I was new at them.

Do you think phone interviews put deaf people in an unequal playing field?
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I don't like them either, but from what I understand it is an easier way to process and 'weed' the applicants quickly without having to resort to reading long emails or applications.

It does seems to be the standard these days. With my last job area (in Computers/IT), I was contacted by multiple agencies, all of them sought intial phone interviews including Google. The questions google gave were more 'personal' and wanted to get to know you for your skills as a person rather than generalized questions.

I saw my competitors as we all showed up on interview and testing day. Later when I was hired, I asked my supervising IT manager why was I chosen. Apparently he had implemented three hurdles to cross - the first being the phone interview, the second being the examination, and the third (and fourth) were interviews and follow-up interviews.

It feels like a lot of deafs would be weeded out for a hearing job if they could not make it past step 1. So it is definitely an uneven field.

However I do think today the times are changing. The use of internet and IM has became really popular in bigger companies - most recognized software development companies tend to use them.
 
I wish I can remember if I told the school that I was deaf and prefer not to do a phone interview. :hmm:

I plan to start applying for different jobs and I am worried about the phone interview issue and now that Banjo has mentioned it, group interviews as well.
 
Phone interviews are absolutely discriminatory and should not be used with ANY candidate, not just deaf/hoh folks.

There should be enough information on a person's resume to determine if they get a full in-person interview. There does not need to be any pre-selection process involving a phone call. HR people need to do their jobs better.

Banjo is right. HR personnel have gotten lazy.
 
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TheWriteAlex said:
There should be enough information on a person's resume to determine if they get a full in-person interview. There does not need to be any pre-selection process involving a phone call. HR people need to do there jobs better.
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Unfortunately, but the times we live in are too materialistic.

Unless if it was regulated by government (outside of ADA and related laws), I feel private corporations get away with it all too easily.
They get to decide who and what on a whim, and it feels to me there's always likely a shade of personal preference on the candidate selection.

I can see it being a bit more restricted with the government, as they'd have to judge each application giving equal preference unless they were veterans or transfers.
 
TheWriteAlex said:
Phone interviews are absolutely discriminatory and should not be used with ANY candidate, not just deaf/hoh folks.

There should be enough information on a person's resume to determine if they get a full in-person interview. There does not need to be any pre-selection process involving a phone call. HR people need to do there jobs better.

Banjo is right. HR personnel have gotten lazy.
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The biggest problem is that a lot of people don't really read the resumes. They just choose them at random. More often than less, people who are not qualified get hired while the qualified ones don't even get a phone call.
 
My company does phone interviews first.. We have offices all over the US so your manager might be in a different state then what your hired in. After the phone interview we will fly the manager to do a face to face interview. Once that is done we will bring you back for a panel interview.

Alex is correct because of long distance, to quickly narrow job candidates, and to save time and money we start with phone interviews. We are a tech company and do not hire HR for there tech skills. The questions we ask via phone interview are basic computer questions.

With that being said, once we know a phone interview is out of the question we will do it via Skype. I have a deaf coworker and we did her phone interview via Skype and change our panel interview to only have 2 people in it. Where HR came in handy is they met with us before her last interview and told us to make eye contact at all times, only one of us to speak at a time, not to cover our months when talking, and to repeat any questions when requested by the interviewee.
 
naisho said:
Unfortunately, but the times we live in are too materialistic.

Unless if it was regulated by government (outside of ADA and related laws), I feel private corporations get away with it all too easily.
They get to decide who and what on a whim, and it feels to me there's always likely a shade of personal preference on the candidate selection.

I can see it being a bit more restricted with the government, as they'd have to judge each application giving equal preference unless they were veterans or transfers.
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Trust me, it happens in the government too. :mad:
 
DeafCaroline said:
Because of the internet. Before, you had to mail in or drop off your resume. Now employers and companies are getting deluged with them via emails and online applications.
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This is a very good point. Depending on the area and the position, companies can get upwards of 1000 applications per vacancy. Added to that, since the internet tools for finding jobs are pretty standard and accessible for everyone, it is often the same people applying for every job in that field, over and over again. It is insane. The ease of applying attracts a lot of "just looking" applicants: people who already have a job but are applying for whatever reason: to get leverage with their current employer, move up the rungs quicker, just plain boredom, etc.

I think the Dept. of Labor needs to allow companies to use special hiring procedures in certain instances where they only have to accept applications from people who are unemployed or not already at a full-time position. It would decrease applicant stuffage considerably.
 
DeafCaroline said:
Because of the internet. Before, you had to mail in or drop off your resume. Now employers and companies are getting deluged with them via emails and online applications.
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99% of the job listings I see offer the opportunity to e-mail your resumes instead of dropping them off. However, the other day, I came across one where you could only fax the resume.

Fax? Really? This isn't 1990. :lol:
 
TheWriteAlex said:
There should be enough information on a person's resume to determine if they get a full in-person interview. There does not need to be any pre-selection process involving a phone call. HR people need to do their jobs better.
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My husband does the hiring for a small, regional chain of grocery stores. It's only four of five stores in a small corner of our state, not big enough to have an HR department, and this isn't his only responsibility for the store. He learned thru trial and error that quite often applicants do not fill out their own resume or application.
Somebody else did this for them. So he would call in an applicant for an interview and then find that the person really wasn't as good as their application because they did not write it. Sometimes he wants to say, "I can't hire you, but if you'll send your mother or whoever wrote this for you, I would like to hire that person.":lol:
Because his organization is small, he found another solution (he asks applicants to fill out the basic application right there in his office). But maybe larger corporations have the same problem? A phone interview would help with that, so that could be one reason why they do it. They just wouldn't think about it.
 
I also think they're discriminatory:(

I've had a couple of places where they did group interviews....
 
Actually, I have to confess I that my one and only phone interview worked out into a great job despite the fact that I told my head hunter I wouldn't do one.

My head hunter called me about an opportunity that was a phone interview. After cussing out my head hunter for a good few minutes, he explains to me that the guy is in Houston so a face to face meeting was not going to happen. I was lucky I made it through the interview without a relay service. One hour later, the company's Human Resources person calls me to confirm plane tickets for the next day to Houston Texas, the company's home office. After a long flight, amazingly, nobody at the home office other than my boss, could interview me. I thought for sure I would not get the job. After I got home, there was a message from the local office to come in and talk to someone. I was given an offer that day.

I agree. It is a huge disadvantage, but you never know how it will work out.
 
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