Ask ten candidates what interview format they prefer and you will get ten different answers. There are people who walk into a room and take it over with a burst of energy. Others get their best thinking done in the comfort of their own space, away from the stress of commuting and small talk in the lobby. But preference and advantage are two different things, and the more useful question is not which format you like best. The question is which one offers more chances to applicants in reality and why.
Having been on both sides of the hiring table for years, my honest answer is that no format is universally better. But each one creates specific conditions that favor specific types of candidates, and understanding that can genuinely change how you approach your job search.
What the Numbers Actually Say
It is helpful to first see where things stand before getting into the nuances. In a survey of 2,019 U.S. adults, 70% still prefer in-person interviews over the 17% who prefer video calls. That gap is significant given how normalized remote interviews have become since 2020. A LinkedIn survey found that 81% of hiring managers still conduct virtual interviews even after workplaces reopened. So you have a format that candidates don’t love so much, but employers have fully embraced. That tension is worth paying attention to. SHRMNext Interview
What Remote Interviews Actually Open Up
The most overlooked advantage of a remote interview is accessibility. Geography used to be a big barrier, before video calls became the norm. If you lived near the company and could afford to travel, you were in; if not, you were out. That has shifted a lot.
There are also benefits to the level of control candidates have over their environment. You select your background, your lighting, your chair. For people who find unfamiliar environments distracting or anxiety-inducing, this is more important than it might sound. Research has demonstrated that candidates are 30% more satisfied with remote interviews, due to the comfort and flexibility of their own environment.
Remote interviews also tend to create a slightly more level playing field in one specific way. Nearly 48% of recruiters say they find it harder to assess soft skills like teamwork and leadership through a screen. For candidates whose strengths are more technical or task-oriented rather than interpersonal, that actually works in their favor. Sci-Tech Today
Where In-Person Interviews Give Applicants an Edge
That said, in-person interviews hand candidates something that a video call simply cannot replicate: the ability to make a full human impression. Body language, energy, the way you carry yourself into a room, these things communicate competence and confidence in ways that a camera compresses or loses entirely.
The data backs this up in a blunt way. Research shows you have just seven seconds to make a first impression in an interview. In person, those seven seconds include your posture, your handshake, your eye contact, and your energy. On a video call, they include your lighting and whether your camera is at the right angle. Infeedo
For senior or relationship-heavy roles, in-person interviews are often where the real evaluation happens. Hiring managers for leadership positions are frequently assessing how someone holds a room, not just what they say in it. Walking the office, noticing the culture, commenting on something you observed are real opportunities to demonstrate genuine interest that simply do not exist on a call.
The Honest Trade-Offs
The benefit of physical presence and personal magnetism is lost in remote interviews, which can be good or bad depending on who you are. They also introduce technical factors that have nothing to do with your qualifications. A real and often overlooked barrier is that roughly 35% of candidates from lower-income backgrounds say they are disadvantaged in remote interviews because they need better equipment or a reliable connection to the internet.
In-person interviews carry their own set of biases. Around 34% of interviewees report experiencing bias during the interview process, and face-to-face settings are where many of those biases surface most strongly. Snap judgments formed in the first few seconds of meeting someone shape the rest of the conversation, and factors like appearance and physical confidence influence perception in ways that have little to do with competence.
How Smart Candidates Adapt
The candidates who do best across both formats are not the ones who got lucky with the right setting. They are the ones who understood what each format rewards and prepared specifically for it.
For remote interviews, that means treating your setup as seriously as your answers. Test your equipment, clean up your frame, and practice speaking to a camera rather than a screen. It is a learnable skill and most people underinvest in it.
For in-person interviews, preparation means managing your physical presence as deliberately as your responses. How you walk in, how you greet people, how you handle the small moments between formal questions, all of these count. With 70% of employers now emphasizing behavioral competencies over hard skills, your ability to tell clear, specific stories about your experience matters more than your resume alone.
On the preparation side, platforms like Lockedin AI give candidates a realistic space to rehearse and sharpen their answers before either format, which takes some of the guesswork out of how your responses actually land.
So Which Format Favors Applicants?
The format that favors you is the one you have specially prepared for remote interviews give you more control and remove certain geographic barriers. In-person interviews give you more opportunities to connect with people and allow your full presence to do some of the work.
Neither is a silver bullet. Roughly 31% of interviewees receive job offers, regardless of format, which means the format is far less decisive than the preparation behind it. The candidates who treat format as an excuse in either direction are the ones who lose. The ones who treat it as a variable to manage are the ones who consistently do well.
