Phone interviews can rejected valid candidates due to 7 reasons

In India, a common and costly mistake by the recruiting team in MNC R&D centers or Indian firm is arranging a candidate's phone interview with a peer product manager. This is seen as the first bar to clear, before a full day interview is arranged with multiple people.

The common issue with this process is that it does not account for an interviewer's bias, which often leads to rejection of a perfectly valid candidate. 7 common pitfalls that hamper phone interviews include:

• Short listing candidates from the same school or former employer as the interviewer, while rejecting others
• Rejection of a brilliant candidate due to fear of competition 
• Misuse of informal networking to pre-judge the candidate in his current role
• Rejecting candidates because the panelist is not trained properly
• Rejecting candidates not referred by existing employees
• Rejecting candidate referred to by existing employees
• The interview is just a formality to complete the process, candidate’s resume is already rejected by the hiring manager

There are more, but if you have experienced rejection in PM phone interviews, you are not alone. Many fully qualified candidates continue to get rejected for inane reasons.