Virtual Recruiting for Real-World Jobs

"Virtual Recruiting for Real-World Jobs" was a very interesting article with many good points supporting the "virtual interview". It seems, to employers, that an interview conducted in a virtual world, such as Second Life, allows them to learn things about a potential candidate that they otherwise wouldn't if conducting an in-person interview. However, I do not believe that someone's "avatar" can accurately convey the aspects of a candidate as well as an in-person interview would.

This virtual interviewing may be a nice to use as a step toward an actual face-to-face interview, but not necessarily as a replacement. Although this "Second Life" type interview would allow an employer to "see what they chose to wear, you see what they laugh at or what they interact with", it doesn't allow them to get to know the actual person themself. It may be a nice representation of the individual, but there is no way to see their "true colors" so to speak.

Another point mentioned in the article was that "you can always hit the backspace button when you start to answer an interview question; you can't do that in real life, although I'll bet a lot of people wish they could." To me this is not a good thing. An interviewee should come well prepared to their interview, and should be able to answer questions to their fullest potential, with exactly what they want to say, on the first try. It would be nice to be able to "backspace", but when you think about it, you aren't able to do this in the business world the majority of the time. You can't just "go back" and change your words or actions, so I don't believe it would accurately represent a person if this was allowed to happen, espeically in this virtual world.

Also, there are many ways to make mistakes in worlds such as that of Second Life. The example given in the article for this was the individual, Carlos Krefft, who "mistakenly handed a greeter a beer instead of his resume". Clearly something like this would not happen in the real world with a face-to-face interview, but it seems it can easily happen in a virtual one. Although this would be overlooked as just a "mistake", if you are looking at the overall quality of an individual through this virtual world, you should have to take into account everything that happens throughout the process.

Aside from the aspects mentioned above, you also have to keep in mind that technology continues to change, but individuals do not. Those who are not "tech savvy" would, in all actuality, be struggling with a concept like this. It may leave behind very qualified individuals based solely on their lack of technological understanding.

To answer the overall question, I do not believe that a company can get a quality interview with a candidate using a virtual world such as Second Life. I just feel that it is not personable enough to help an employer make such a serious decision. There seem to be both advantages and disadvantages of the virtual interviews, but I personally feel that the latter of the two would be the case more often than not.