Do We Need to Interview Candidates In Person Again?

Are we about to go full circle and return to in-person interviews for most salaried roles?

COVID pushed us to remote, Zoom-based interviews. Emerging tech then allowed employers to leverage AI to prompt interviewers on questions to use to interview humans. And now those candidates are responding by using AI to ace interviews. Which has caused folks like me to push TA leaders to get out ahead of this. Especially because some employers are even encouraging candidates to use AI during the interviewing process. 

If everyone is using AI, how will we know what a candidate can actually do? Does it matter if they need AI to do great work, as long as it’s great work? Will the future be bot-on-bot action, with employer AI agents screening and interviewing candidate bots? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that some companies are going old school, returning to in-person interviews, mostly because they’re fearful of hiring someone who’s aced the interview only because they have help from AI.

3 reasons why companies are considering a return to in-person interviews

1. Based on my conversations with heads of TA, candidate use of AI is about 80% of the pull to return to in-person interviews. With the rising risk of candidate fraud — especially AI-assisted identity fraud and cheating — companies like Google and Deloitte are starting to prioritize in-person live interviews over remote video interviews. If you’re just getting up to speed on the risks, check out some of my previous articles here:

• What is cheating, what are the risks, and why you should have a company-wide point of view on what is and isn’t considered cheating.
• How are candidates using AI now, where are things headed, what are companies doing to mitigate the risks, and what kind of conversations should we be leading.

2. Another small reason for the return to in-person interviews — maybe 15% — is related to the big shift back to in-office work. Several TA leaders I spoke with said in-person interview requests are being driven somewhat by a need for a realistic job preview and an improved opportunity to connect with and sell candidates. In-person allows the candidate to meet the team in person, see the office and learn about their commute pattern, and experience the culture. 

• I think recruiting for key roles will still require high-touch recruiters and hiring managers. But for high-volume hiring, AI is already taking over the bulk of the recruiting process.

3. The third reason — maybe explaining just 5% of the pull — is related to beliefs that 1) soft skills and motivation are even more important to predicting success in a world where most knowledge is just a quick ChatGPT prompt away and that 2) human interviewers can better evaluate those soft skills in person, sitting across from the candidate. 

• Note: Most interviewers are still pretty terrible at evaluating soft skills fairly, so I think this reason is kind of weak. I’m sad to report that many companies still let affinity and likability bias drive their feelings about candidate match; ask personal questions to evaluate fit; struggle preinterview to define and align on what good looks like for soft skills; and rarely leverage a high bar for evidence of soft skills when making hiring decisions. Similarly, most interviewers still rely on biases to evaluate motivation to do the work. (Learn an alternative to behavioral interviewing to evaluate soft skills here and how to more fairly evaluate intrinsic motivation here.)

Is returning to in-person interviews a good idea?

I think most of us have mixed feelings on this. The table below outlines the pros and cons of live, in-person interviews:

Are we ready?

The good news? Companies are 100% prepared for this shift back to in-person interviews. 

Just kidding. 

Most of us are not ready. In fact, because of the uncertain economy, recruiter and recruiting coordinator layoffs, more reliance on assessment-related tech to interview, and generally slower hiring, candidate experience and interviewer capabilities have not improved in the past three years. In fact, if you talk to candidates and hiring managers in focus groups as my team does, they’ll often say it’s gotten worse.

What do we need to do if you and your business leaders decide to return to in-person interviews as the norm?

6 action items for TA leaders to prepare for in-person interviews

1. Training: We need to ensure our hiring teams are trained, not just in behavioral interviewing, legal risks, biases, and process. They also need to be aligned on your company’s new hard and soft skill needs — AI is disrupting a lot of jobs, so a more prescriptive weighting and shared philosophy on what’s trainable and what’s not will be key to selecting the right talent. For some companies, that’ll mean a smaller weighting on hard skills and a bigger emphasis on soft skills like curiosity, empathy, learning agility, building trust, influence/gaining buy-in, problem-solving, and communication skills. For others, that’ll mean a bigger focus on the expert skills and smaller focus on the supporting skills - and unfortunately, expert skills and soft skills are harder to evaluate than the supporting skills that AI will likely take over. 

• We’ve trained 10,000+ interviewers and hiring managers from 30 countries, so if you’re considering building or refreshing training for hiring teams, check out these suggestions we’ve pulled together on how to make sure your training is great and goes beyond 1990s-era basic behavioral interview training. 
• Many of your hiring managers will need significant help redefining job roles for 2026+ as AI is set to take over a lot of the white collar work that many of us thought was protected from automation. The work that remains will reshape what it means to be a software engineer, a marketer, an analyst, a sales person, even a people manager. And there’s still a lot being written about early career talent struggling to get hired as companies slow down hiring for junior roles, so you’ll need to guide hiring managers in rethinking career pathways and building roles that create space for growth and skill development.

2. Candidate experience: Take advantage of the in-person interview to create a better candidate experience. In-demand candidates still need to be sold, even if it’s an employer’s market. Show off that expensive real estate, go old school and set up a non-interview lunch with the team, and get an executive to jump in and wow them with insights into your company’s compelling future. Some of us might need to rebuild the muscles around creating a great candidate experience for interviewed candidates, which includes excellent preinterview instructions on what to expect, a nice “we’re expecting you” greeting with reception/security, on-time, prepared interviewers, and excellent communication and expectation setting on next steps. This focus on CX might even bring us back to hiring recruiting coordinators.

• Interviews aren’t just about evaluating candidates. Demonstrating genuine interest and showing agency on both sides - we want the candidate, the candidate wants us - is key to building the kind of connection humans want and maybe a justification for in-person interviews, even if AI gets better at predicting success than humans. 

3. Scheduling: Place advance holds on busy interviewer and hiring manager calendars for in-office interviews and same-day hiring decisions. We need speed to get quality, so don’t let in-person interviews cause you to miss out on top talent.

4. Identity verification: Ensure you have a mechanism to ensure that the person you screened over Zoom is the same person who shows up for your in-person interviews. Identity fraud — where someone uses AI or another interviewer to complete and pass the pre–onsite interview screen and assessments — is a bigger problem than it used to be. Talk to your HR and security team about the rigor needed to verify identity.

5. Talent advising: Train your recruiters to move from transactional process owners to true Talent Advisors. The business needs us in TA to level up the role we play in interviewing and selection given the renewed prioritization on quality of hire. Check out these free resources I’ve pulled together on how to be a Talent Advisor. And if you’re going to LinkedIn Talent Connect in San Diego in October, sign up for one of my sessions on quality of hire and reducing candidate fraud.

• One head of TA I spoke with last month is leading work at his company to break every job into a collection of tasks and determine which tasks 1) can and should be outsourced to AI now, 2) will likely be outsourced to AI soon, or 3) need to remain human. And of course, it’d make complete sense to make sure your interview guides and rubrics are aligned to the human-first tasks when hiring with a 2-3 year lens.  

6. Leverage AI: Use generative AI to help your hiring teams translate job description language and your company-wide values/behaviors into hiring criteria, interview focus areas, interview questions, and good answer rubrics. But don’t just trust generic AI content on interviewing — your company may have a very different hiring approach than the median content AI has been trained on. Be sure to review what AI generates and correct anything that’s not in line with the business VP’s goals around what she wants her org makeup to look like in two to three years. 

A critical conversation for TA leaders

Too often, TA has seen the middle-funnel work of interviewing and selection as something the business designs and leads independently. 

In fact, I’d argue most recruiting teams play a very small role between screened-candidate presentation and the post-interview decision action items (offer or decline). That needs to change. The risks associated with AI, the cost of bad hires, and the significant time investment around hiring requires us to lead more around the middle of the funnel. This starts with leading a conversation with the business around the pros and cons of remote interviews, asynchronous assessments, AI, and in-person interviews. 

Are you seeing a shift in your org to in-person interviews? Just for key roles, just for salaried corporate roles, just for executive hiring? I’ll post this article on my personal LinkedIn feed, and I’d love it if you’d share your plans and the why for your approach to interviewing in 2025 and beyond.

© Recruiting Toolbox, Inc.