**7. Potential cons of virtual interviewing**

### **7.1 Behavioral aspect**

It is a well-known fact that while a candidate may look good on paper, that candidate's personality may or may not be a good fit for the respective program's culture. Personality plays a large role in how well a trainee fits in, and how happy and satisfied they are with their peers; this in turn has an effect on their medical training, how comfortable they feel approaching their faculty and coresidents. Without a doubt, in person interactions facilitate the observation of nonverbal cues, body language and micro facial expressions, which in turn, allow the interviewer a better grasp on how good a fit the respective applicant is for the current program. The concern with video interviewing being that it is harder to gauge these interpersonal skills. Fortunately, in the author's personal experience this interview season's high quality video streaming has allowed a better-than-expected measure of noncognitive and interpersonal skills. The accuracy of our interpretations remains to be seen.

#### **7.2 Living situation**

Another aspect to consider is that the future resident will be living in the area for the next 3–7 years depending on their program. It is difficult to gauge whether one will be happy living somewhere without having been physically there and evaluating potential neighborhoods, school districts and recreational activities.

#### **7.3 Number of applicants**

It is possible that programs will be faced with higher numbers of applicants as it is easier for students to schedule interviews virtually for the reasons discussed a priori. However, it is possible applicants will be attending program interviews they have no genuine interest in, just to adjust to the new playing field. This may need to be circumvented by programs interviewing more applicants.

### **8. Response to the current match**

Although long-term follow-up will be the greatest indicator of success of for virtual interviewing in the 2021 NRMP match, initial analysis suggests that the first large-scale test of virtual interviewing in GME was a success. Despite a 2.3% year-over-year increase in the number of available PGY1 positions, the percentage of unfilled positions decreased by 0.3% [25]. The 2.3% decrease in number of applicants that successfully matched is likely driven by the (6.0%) increase in the number of match lists submitted [25] rather than an inability to connect programs to applicants. This is evidenced by a similar distribution of interviews conducted as compared to prior years [26], alleviating concerns that a disproportionately high proportion of interviews would go to a small group of highly-qualified individuals while a large portion of the applicant pool went unnoticed. While large-scale surveys of how applicants and programs feel about the match are sure to come, at least objectively the initial results are promising.

### **9. Future of virtual interviewing**

In the near future, trends in the number of current and new COVID-19 cases, as well as vaccination rates, will determine when a return to in-person interviewing can be safely considered. Once a return to in-person interviewing is considered safe, the question shifts from 'can we?' to 'should we?'. The response to this question will likely be driven by large-scale analysis of program and candidate satisfaction and preferences, as well as in-depth analysis of the downstream effects on GME. Such analysis should include whether candidates that interviewed virtually tend to be considered a good 'fit' for their programs, which will not be known until well after the first class of virtual interviewees starts residency in July 2021.

*Virtual Interviewing for Residency/Fellowship during the COVID-19 Pandemic DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.97936*

One possibility to consider is a hybrid approach [27], and although there are many ways to implement this, the overall goal would be to minimize social contact while maximizing the ability of the program and candidate to evaluate each other for fit. Even an in-person campus visit would afford an opportunity to for the candidate to interact with faculty and residents in a nonformal in-person manner [28].
