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I've been given most of the hiring responsibilities and will be conducting the in-person interviews. I'm also going through the resumes for worthy candidates. The plan is to have the HR department do the phone screening though. They'll ask the normal HR questions and then any questions I give them and then report back the answers.

The idea is to not have me (or my project manager) waste valuable time making tens of calls. What this would mean, though, is that HR would be asking the questions. They don't know anything about programming, and really nothing about what we do from a technical aspect.

When researching phone screen questions, most assume the screener is technical, such as Steve Yegge's phone screen questions. I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with this and has any advantages/disadvantages to this.

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    The constant "ok" then on to the next question is likely to be a very weird interview; never any followup or expansion questions. Remember they're interviewing you too, if you don't respect their time you'll turn people off Commented Oct 16, 2015 at 21:15
  • recommended reading: What is the problem with “Pros and Cons”? Commented Oct 16, 2015 at 21:47
  • What do the HR people themselves think about it? They are probably familiar with requiring persons for functions they themselves would not qualify for. Perhaps you can ask on workplace.SE as well. Commented Oct 18, 2015 at 11:39

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No, I don't think this is a particularly good idea.

  • The HR interviewer can't ask follow up questions to see if "near miss" answers are good or not.
  • The HR interviewer can't answer the candidate's technical questions (remember, interviews go both ways).
  • It presents the company in a poor light, not valuing candidates' time.
  • That process is more likely to let through shoddy candidates, and the wasted time interviewing them in person will kill any gains you might have had by having cheaper HR people do it.
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    Point 2 is great. Sometimes the questions asked aren't clear and if the candidate can't ask for more details or clarification, then they are being penalised unnecessarily. Commented Oct 17, 2015 at 19:20

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