Now that AEA 2021 is online, can we permanently decided now to stop having interviews in hotel rooms?!

Question

The ASSA 2021 Annual Meeting is now being held virtually. It will be super interesting to see how the job market works out, but presumably it will work and all first round interviews will be online. Which will prove that we don't need to have interviews in hotel rooms! (Hotel suites are indeed hotel rooms. They give off more of a honeymoon vibe than a normal room in fact.) You may not be as confident that the job market will work well this year all online, and given hiring freezes it won't be a pretty one. But many other fields have all their first round interviews online and it works perfectly fine for them, so I don't see any valid arguments why it wouldn't work for econ.

Answer 1

I really like the in-person component of the first-round interview because we are a SLAC (selective liberal arts college) and that part is important for evaluating potential for teaching.  But in-person and in a central location like a nearby office-space-for-rent place would be OK with me.  And I'm expecting the job market to be less active this year; most colleagues I've talked to say their universities have a hiring freeze.