LONG DISTANCE JOB INTERVIEWS NOW POSSIBLE
THROUGH TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPED AT UNCG

 By Steve Gilliam

 GREENSBORO--The interviewers and the job candidate may be half a world apart, but the players can be brought as "close" as the conference table by technology that is being developed at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
 Business executives have been conducting meetings and job interviews face-to-face for years. The demands of the modern corporate structure and busy executive schedules, however, often keep one-on-one contact from happening until the final meetings take place.

A key to bridging that gap, which can be thousands of miles, is harnessing technology, according to Dr. William Tullar, who heads a research group at UNCG aimed at developing a software and video package that will make interviews and related communications activities possible in cyberspace.

"The question we want to answer is, ‘Can you be just as effective and efficient talking to a group of people you can't see or hear as you can be doing it person-to-person," said Tullar, an associate professor of business administration at UNCG. "Group decision-making technology, like this, has implications for strategic planning, and it will be useful for executives who can't get together face-to-face without some difficulty."

The project and its evolving technology is designed to help executives make decisions under conditions where decision-makers may be on different continents while working for the same multinational company.

Tullar's colleagues in the project are Dr. Paula Kaiser, a lecturer in business administration, and Dr. Pierre Balthazard, a former faculty member who has taken a position at Arizona State University. Called both InterView and Virtual Communication Challenge, the project is taking place in the Joseph M. Bryan School of Business and Economics. Student involvement in the project is heavy.

Group decision-making has always been an important element of strategic planning, but never more so than in today's rapidly changing global economy, Kaiser said. Executives on different continents who have to decide on hiring management team members must discuss applicants, but the entire group is seldom able to board a jet, cross an ocean and sit down for a face-to-face.

The UNCG project has been exploring the pros and cons of virtual meetings. The project has developed software and technology that works, and it has been tested with student groups in  classes at UNCG, the University of Illinois, Indiana University and the Fochhoschule in Worms, Germany. More than 1,200 graduate students and undergraduates have taken part in the project over the past three years.

In classes at UNCG, students get an assignment that is more than a class exercise to demonstrate the possibilities of the Web, said Kaiser. "We tell the students they are trying to find the best candidate for the job and not just going through the motions. We assess the teams before and after each session and we're looking for the most insightful discussions we can get."

Intercontinental and multinational group discussions face a variety of problems, including cultural and time zone differences. There's also the issue of misinterpretation, simply because one group of interviewers may not understand slang expressions or can't see facial expressions or body movement.

"It's amazing the difference an hour or two can make in the corporate culture of a business day and this can impact a group interview," said Tullar. "There's only about a two- hour window of time where the business days in the U.S. and Europe coincide, and we'd be catching the German teams late in the day.

 "There's also cultural differences between countries. We had trouble explaining to our German friends the importance of the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament, and why our colleagues in Indiana showed so much interest in the tournament. Our German friends didn't have anything comparable."

Decision-making software, such as that in the InterView project, is not expensive when viewed as part of a corporate budget. A large company, for example,  may have to interview 500 candidates for positions over year's time. "If you allocate roughly $100 per candidate, that's $50,000," said Tullar. "What's $50,000 in a Fortune 500 company's budget?"

Tullar estimates that a company could start up InterView at a cost of approximately $25,000, with a timetable of about two months.

The top echelon of corporate America has not seemed to warm to ideas such as InterView, said Kaiser. She and Tullar believe the hesitancy is due in part to corporate culture and the comfort levels of corporate decision-makers.

"Part of the difficulty is to get the heads of organizations to see how technology will help and to support using it," said Tullar. "They have to see how it will fit into their corporate planning. Many CEOs are not comfortable with technology--yet. But we see developments like our software coming in the very near future."

Executives who might want to discuss applications of the  UNCG technology in their companies can call Tullar at 336-334-4526. #####

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