My suspicion is that it's purely monetary and driven by the finance people.
a) Don't have to pay to fly candidates out, pay for their hotel, etc.
b) Don't have to pay relocation
c) Get access to a larger pool of candidates, so can price the wages lower than local wages would require
My last company there was a top down directive that in-person interviews were straight up not allowed, everything had to be over Zoom. Even for local candidates, for a job that was supposed to be in-person! Completely crazy IMO.
The advantage of a larger pool of candidates is not mostly a financial benefit, IMO. The benefit is mostly the ability to hire from a larger pool of people especially with a specialized skillset, and also to have less of an echo chamber.
But yes, that directive to interview local candidates over zoom does seem very silly.
My experience is that yes it opens up the wider pool, but it makes the filtering process much more difficult in trade.
Opening up the wider pool without the in person interview is where things hit the wall since the filtering criteria everyone learned over their careers went out the door thanks to the online interview process. And the online interview process is much more subject to cheating--not exactly a huge concern in-person.
If you want a software engineer silicone valley you can stay all local. There are companies in remote small towns who need a software engineer - they have to open up to non-local candidates as there are zero people in town who could do the job that don't work for them. There is always someone from elsewhere excited to move to a small town, but finding those people is hard. (and for those people finding a company that wants them is hard)
I'm in a tech hub so the local pool is wide and deep. But I was flown up for an interview, and I've known other people who were flown out, were hired, and have become locals.
I agree that there's a trade-off in filtering, but I really just don't resonate with this "cheating" issue.
I haven't run into this thing where I'm talking to a video AI, but maybe I'll sing a different tune if that ever happens and is high fidelity enough to trick me.
If "cheating" just means using AI assistants to answer my interview questions, honestly I think I've done a poor job structuring the question and interview.
I do recognize this as a giant challenge right now, to structure interviews in a way that provides real signal, while allowing candidates to use the tools they'll actually be using for the job. But I don't think the challenge is significantly different between remote and in-person.
a) Don't have to pay to fly candidates out, pay for their hotel, etc.
b) Don't have to pay relocation
c) Get access to a larger pool of candidates, so can price the wages lower than local wages would require
My last company there was a top down directive that in-person interviews were straight up not allowed, everything had to be over Zoom. Even for local candidates, for a job that was supposed to be in-person! Completely crazy IMO.