I'm somewhere on the autism spectrum, which isn't a big deal, but it does have the effect that I don't come across well in phone calls. So if that's my first meeting with someone, I am doomed. It's challenging enough navigating a regular social situation, but it gets even worse when I'm down to a single source of information, and that happens to be a tiny little speaker linked to a tiny little microphone over six concrete buildings and a thunderstorm, and the interviewer's voice is oddly muffled but I didn't bring it up at the start of the conversation and now I'm wondering if I should mention it ten minutes in and damn I lost track of my notes. That isn't a comfortable situation for anyone, but I get the impression that people are usually able to fill in the gaps with their own intuition of social norms and protocols.

I suspect many of the gut feelings people get doing phone interviews are a matter of luck.

I do appreciate the convenience of a phone interview, but it would be incredibly good for my peace of mind if more of them could start off with a simple email conversation to introduce each other. I tried to do that myself for a brief moment where I was interviewing people, and I thought it went quite well. (My boss, wondering how he almost didn't hire me, put me in charge of hiring someone like me, which was surprisingly non-destructive, but I'm grateful I don't need to do it on a regular basis).

With that said, I really dislike the jobs where they ask you a bunch of random questions right in their application form. That's way too much work when your answers to those questions probably won't even reach your interviewer anyway.