Conventional and Non-conventional Job Interviewing Methods: A Comparative Study in Two Countries

Abstract

With recent advancements in technology, new platforms have come up to substitute face-to-face interviews. Of particular interest are asynchronous video interviewing (AVI) platforms, where candidates talk to a screen with questions, and virtual agent based interviewing platforms, where a human-like avatar interviews candidates. These anytime-anywhere interviewing systems scale up the overall reach of the interviewing process for firms, though they may not provide the best experience for the candidates. An important research question is how the candidates perceive such platforms and its impact on their performance and behavior. Also, is there an advantage of one setting vs. another i.e., Avatar vs. Platform? Finally, would such differences be consistent across cultures? In this paper, we present the results of a comparative study conducted in three different interview settings (i.e., Face-to-face, Avatar, and Platform), as well as two different cultural contexts (i.e., India and Switzerland), and analyze the differences in self-rated, others-rated performance, and automatic audiovisual behavioral cues.