I was just scrolling through Twitter and came upon an interesting tweet from the super-well-informed Matt Maiocco. He wrote that Jed York interviewed Falcons director of player personnel Les Snead before hiring Trent Baalke as GM. Jed conducted the Snead interview on the phone, Matt wrote.

I also read during the past week that Jed interviewed other so-called candidates on the phone.

Phone interviews stink. A real interview is when you sit in the same room as the person interviewing you. You can see his (her) body language and he can see yours. You can see each other’s facial expressions and get the real tone of the voice. Inteviews involve so much more than mere words.

When I interviewed at the Press Democrat 16 years ago, I was ushered from one executive’s office to another. I answered a lot of questions. The process took all day, including a dinner with the sports editor. They were judging me and I was judging them.

It was an in-person, serious interview process. And I felt honored this New York Times newspaper would spend so much time on me, spend time trying to get the right person to be one of their sports columnists.

The stakes are high at the 49ers and I simply don’t understand this phone interview business. I consider it insulting to the candidate and only partially helpful to Jed.

(Visited 1 times, 1 visits today)