Telephonic interviews can be an advantage as well as a disadvantage.
Advantages:
-can check on comm skills.
- can check most of the educational/ experience details.
- can get a feel of the candidate
- can sometimes get to know about the basic interest of the candidate and also whether s/he fits the requirement.
Disadvantages:
- You cannot be sure who is answering the interview (more so in the case of scheduled telecons)
- Cannot say for sure whether the person is genuine or not.
- Tech skills cannot be vouched for
- If the position is for a tech position where comm skills may not be of importance, then ....
My feel of this is basically if there has been a tele interview, the personal interview must go over the experience and the educational details once again., just so that we know that it is the same person spoken to over the phone.
Similarly have heard of cases where the candidate's tech interview on phone was superb but when it came to a face to face interview, it was a failure
All in all i dont think a tele interview is a substitute for a face to face meeting. At most, it could be time saver, so that the preliminary checks etc can be completed.
Kishwes