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Showing posts with label Job interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Job interviews. Show all posts

Job Interviews and Body Language, Algorithms And Online Job Interviews

Software is screening resumes and analyzing video interviews. But what if you want to be treated like a person?


I’ve been pursuing a master’s degree for the last couple of years, and I’m worried about hitting the job market, mostly because job searches seem to have changed since I went back to school.

Companies are screening candidates by using automated video interviews, parsed by algorithms. One of my classmates had an interview with a beauty company last spring. She didn’t go to its offices or talk on the phone with someone — instead, she sat alone in a library study room. Questions flashed across her laptop screen, each time giving her a few minutes to speak her answers to the webcam. The company recorded her responses, to be evaluated later. Another classmate had a similar experience with an educational institution. This trend is set to spread: Almost half of respondents to a 2019 Deloitte global survey of executives and workers expect technology’s role in interviewing will increase over the next three years.

Employers say technology lets them access a wider pool of candidates, speeds the hiring process, shrinks time employees spend interviewing, and saves money. Video interviews save time for job candidates, too, says Sean Rogerson, managing director of the Boston office for employment agency Michael Page.

But my classmates say they found these interactions awkward, devoid of the normal back-and-forth with the interviewer. Neither made it to the next round, perhaps no surprise, since recruitment software can now identify mood based on how your voice sounds. In fact, these programs can look at your video interview and identify your education level, whether you’re lying, and your cognitive abilities, according to a Deloitte report. HireVue, one such video interviewing platform (customers include the Red Sox, Ocean Spray, and Dunkin’ Brands), uses predictive analytics to assess and filter job candidates on their vocabulary, intonation, and body language, including facial expressions. It can also compare applicants with the “traits of top performers.”I fear that after a stilted, one-sided chat with a camera, my résumé will be automatically relegated to the “do not hire” database.

I worry about what gets lost without human contact. The majority of the impact in an interview comes from nonverbal messages, says Patti Wood, an expert in nonverbal communication. She says nonverbal cues have 4.3 times the impact of words. In video interviews, some cues get lost, she explains, so I’m not wrong to fret about my camera presence. Wood says people tend to be more spontaneous, less in performance mode, and more in the moment in natural face-to-face interactions.

Of course, I’ll have to get my résumé past the screening algorithm to get to the video assessment algorithm. I could be the perfect candidate but if I don’t use the keywords the system is programmed to find, Rogerson says I could wind up in the reject pile. Even before that, though, I have to get past the algorithm deciding which job listings I see.

A 2015 study found that women received fewer ads for high-paying jobs than men do. Another study found that because younger women are a valuable demographic to online advertisers, it costs more to show them ads, so algorithms on major digital platforms — optimizing for cost effectiveness — showed women fewer job ads in science, technology, engineering, and math. Just last year, Amazon reportedly scrapped an AI recruitment tool that was biased against women despite efforts to fix it.

Maybe the algorithms will get better, but bias isn’t easy to fix because algorithms don’t write themselves — humans do. Machine prejudices reflect human prejudices. Upturn, a nonprofit in Washington, says without active measures to mitigate biases, these tools will be biased by default. It has called on companies and vendors to be transparent about their tools, allow for those to be independently audited, and asks vendors to takesteps to remove bias from them.

Automated interviews can perpetuate bias, too. Even if the algorithm works well, the playing field for job candidates isn’t always level, because not everyone has the same access to technology, audio-visual quality, and quiet conditions conducive to video interviews.

And then there’s the legitimate concern about what happens to applicant interviews once they are recorded. Are companies keeping this sensitive data confidential, and protecting it securely? Do they delete candidate files when the job is filled? Or does the interview and assessment become just another piece of data for a person’s profile, at risk of being sold to marketers and data brokers, packaged and divulged and perhaps even finding its way onto the Internet like other personal information?

These new approaches may backfire on companies, because we job candidates are also assessing them. And we generally prefer dealing with people. In 2017, 76 percent of Americans told one Pew Research Center survey that they wouldn’t want to apply for a job that used a computer program to select applicants. Another Pew survey found that two-thirds of respondents deem automated video analysis of interviews unacceptable, and 57 percent feel the same way about automated résumé screening.

I wonder if I’ll even have a choice. I know if I’m invited to do a video interview conducted by a program, I’m going to ask if a face-to-face chat is possible.

Link to Article


Patti Wood, MA - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com.
     

Improve Your Job Interviews on Skype,


How Do Your Prepare to Give and Interview via Skype


Many of my clients have asked me how to interview and give a good interview via Skype. It certainly isn't easy, but you can do it.  Prepare you room check to see what shows up on the screen. Simplify your background. Try different locations for the lighting to make you look your best. Even guys may want to use a little brush of translucent powder so you don't look sweaty on camera. Make sure you if you wear glasses that they don't have a glare bouncing off of them. Lens Crafters has nonglare lenses for an extra 40 dollars. Do a dry run of your interview with a friend. Preferably someone who isn't hyper critical. Check your connection, and sound.

during the interview notice the words that the interviewer is using and mirror them back. For example if they say, "We have a great TEAM here at EYZ company."  you can say somewhere in the interview. When I was working with the TEAM at...." or if they use a technical term a few times and you know what it means you can use it as well. This makes you sound and feel to them that you
are a good match.

Make sure you have examples of your successful contributions in previous jobs. For more tips including body language for good interviews go check out my other job interview posts.

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional a body language expert and a interview coach.
 For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Tips on Using Skype to Inprove the Quality of the Your Interaction


If you are giving Job interviews, media interviews, attending business meetings or talking to friends and families over Skype you can improve the quality of the interaction and body language by changing where you sit and how the camera is placed.  It is important if you are using a camera on your laptop or desk top on the small computer screen of Skype that you sit back from the camera so people can see more of your body.  The more body windows they see such as the honest window at the palms of your hands and the more gestures they see the better they will understand your message and the more they will feel comfortable with you and like you. You don’t just want to be a big ole’ bopping head.  

I did a Skype interview with the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago about the last presidential debate. I was in a hotel room in Greensboro, North Carolina that day so I only had my laptop. I was so pleased that the producer and tech person liked that I had pushed back my chair from the desk where my lap top was sitting and that they suggested that I put the laptop on top of several books and aim the camera down to get a great full sitting body view.  The change in view is tremendously advantageous.  You now are able to give more body language cues to others and can create a richer feedback loop so there is more clarity; you know not only what people are saying with their words but also what they feel.

View My Skype Interview from Greensboro for the Wall Street Journal Below!



Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.