One-on-one interviews often tend to be unstructured conversations with no concrete records or standardisation and can therefore be unobjective, biased, and bring irreparable damage to the recruitment brand, says a research study.

The findings from SHL Lab’s research reveal eight out of 10 interviewers make at least one critical mistake involving interview etiquette or missing out on the candidate-centric practices that can impact the candidate's experience.

Further, there are more interviewers who miss interview etiquette as compared to candidate-centric practices. As many as 70% of interviewers miss interview etiquette while 37% of the interviewers do not follow appropriate candidate-centric practices.

Global talent acquisition and talent management technology company, SHL, which helps conduct over 300k online interviews every year for its customers in India, analysed a random sample of these interviews involving over 100 job profiles across different companies and revealed some key insights about how interviewing practice is performed across the Indian IT software and services industry.

Its findings break down interview experience into multiple objective metrics including conversational behaviour and etiquette, interview best practices, and accurately measuring time spent in different interview segments. Conversational behaviour includes appearing on time, providing enough time for the candidate to speak, and switching on their web camera if they are insisting the candidate switch it on, among others.

Breaking further the interview etiquette data, the findings reveal that 41% of interviewers do not introduce themselves while starting a conversation while 26% do not switch on their camera.

In terms of candidate-centric practices, the interviewers tend to show a lack of respect for candidate's time with as many as 13% joining the call more than five minutes late and only 28% of interviewers allowing candidates to ask questions.

“These statistics reveal a serious shortfall in interview practices. Now more than ever, talent leaders need to take proactive measures to ensure that interview best practices are implemented effectively so that companies can hire high-quality talent while providing a positive and memorable candidate experience,” said Himanshu Aggarwal, chief digital officer, SHL.

“Our research has enabled us to provide actionable feedback to our customers allowing them to take a more standardised approach to the interview process. SHL’s interview intelligence platform provides the data that talent leaders need to quickly identify and action key gaps that exist in their existing practices,”  added Arthur Rassias, chief revenue officer, SHL.