How your fantasy life can get you a real job

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Giordano felt relaxed communicating with Myra through the avatars and instant messaging.

“I could joke around with her and she would laugh,” he recalls about the 90-minute interview. He realized things were going well when Myra invited a senior director to meet with him at the virtual office.

At the end of the meeting, Myra showed him out, and Giordano was feeling positive, although he admits he didn’t know how to shake her hand.

While the encounter may sound odd to many of us, some workplace experts say it represents the future of the job search. Joyce L. Gioia-Herman, a strategic business futurist, predicts virtual interviews will become a mainstay in 10 years, especially for the younger set.

But others believe virtual interviews with avatars are just another Internet flash in the pan.

"In my experience, virtual interviews are more gimmicks than anything,” says career counselor Anna Ivey.

“They can be fun and sometimes funny," she says, noting that avatars are not always easy to control and can sometimes be seen floating above their chairs.

"But I have yet to hear about a virtual interview where anything meaningful was accomplished," she says. "You're basically just instant messaging each other with some cute visuals thrown in for fun — not a great substitute for a real interview."

Even advocates of virtual job fairs see avatars as unprofessional.

“We instead emphasize professional networking," says Brent Arslaner with Unisfair, a virtual event provider that uses icons rather than avatars. "The easiest way to think of this is we use the most business-applicable aspects of Web 2.0 and social networking to enable attendees at our event to be able to network professionally. There are too many stories of people showing up naked to interviews in other virtual job fairs, so Unisfair doesn't go there.”

For Giordano, his meeting of the avatars with Sodexho was just the beginning of the interview and screening process.

Myra told Giordano that he would contact him by a real phone, and a few days later did just that. “She said I scored high on the interview and that other people in the system were watching,” he recalls. That led to a few more phone calls back and fourth, and then a real-life interview with a district manager on the West Coast in late July.

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On Aug. 20, he started his job as a chef in the senior services division of Sodexho and he says he loves it so far.

Having an avatar that didn’t look quite like him may have been the clincher for Giordano. “It gave me more confidence,” he says.

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