The Virtual Recruitment Onion: Peeling Back the Layers of the Interview Season During the COVID-era

OBJECTIVE: We sought to characterize General Surgery residency program directors’ (PDs) baseline perspective on how the COVID-19 mandated changes to the recruitment and interview processes impacted how the PDs evaluated and recruited the applicants. DESIGN: An anonymous cross-sectional questionnaire survey. SETTING: A large, mid-western academic general surgery residency program. PARTICIPANTS: 47 PDs of Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredited General Surgery residency programs. RESULTS: During the virtual-only interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic-era 2020-21 General Surgery residency application cycle, PDs shifted their focus to virtual outreach efforts and bolstered social media presences to recruit strong applicants. Also, our study found statistically significant changes to the increased value of letters of recommendation (LORs) for the PDs when assessing an applicant's commitment to surgery. These findings suggest that the necessity of adapting to the virtual-only interview format significantly altered how the PDs recruited and evaluated applicants for the General Surgery residency match. CONCLUSIONS: A complete replacement of the in-person interviews with virtual-only interviews may be challenging unless buy-in exists from key stakeholders in the surgical community. Our study highlights the PDs’ hesitation in assessing candidates’ commitment to surgery from virtual interviews alone. Incorporating virtual interviews as a part of the screening process for applicants may serve as an avenue to maximize the benefits of the virtual interview format. Furthermore, COVID-19 pandemic has normalized the growing social media presence of residency programs, adding to the changing landscape of recruiting and interviewing applicants for General Surgery residency match.