Video interviewing—whoever has gone on one knows that it is a different beast, both for the candidate and the recruiter. Aptitude Research reported less than 60% of US companies used or planned to use video interviewing in their HR processes. At the height of COVID-19, a Gartner study revealed that 89% of organizations have used video interviews to hire talent. This number is expected to rise even more as video interviews become increasingly popular. For this reason, it’s important for employers to understand the benefits of video interviewing and get more comfortable with it.
Our Guest: Sean Fahey, CEO, VidCruiter
Sean Fahey is an award-winning business leader, serial entrepreneur and CEO of VidCruiter. His company is one of the fastest growing in remote recruitment in the market. After years of firsthand recruitment experience, he’s on quest to share everything he knows about the evolution of video interviewing.
Sean started us off by explaining the basics of video interviewing in the recruiting space and its many forms:
“The most popular would be like a Teams, or Zoom, or a Skype type interview. We have that solution here at VidCruiter and we’ve repurposed it to be recruitment specific. The most popular type is called an asynchronous interview or an on-demand or prerecorded interview. This is where a candidate records themselves on their own time at home and recruiters watch this recording on their own time in the future. This allows recruiters and hiring managers save a lot of time.”
The Myths of Video Interviewing
Candidates prefer in-person interviews for a fighting chance at securing job. However, it’s becoming evident that video interviews produce greater results for employers. There is a lot of good happening behind the scenes that candidates don’t realize. Sean explains:
We often hear candidates say, ‘I’d rather meet with you in person or talk to you.’ ” The purpose of this tool is not to eliminate the in-person interview or a video conference, it’s the step before that. The benefit of a prerecorded interview is that you can now open the pool up to whoever is remotely qualified. So, you’re giving a chance to 20, 30, 40, 50 candidates to showcase themselves. This tool enables more people to have real conversations, more people to see your profile, and more people to be interviewed. The goal is not to eliminate the in-person or the video conference that you’re going to have after, it’s to facilitate who will go there first.”
How Video Interviewing Mitigates Hiring Bias
People assume that video interviewing increases hiring bias, but in actuality, it’s quite the opposite. The pre-recorded method, for example, allows candidates access to an identical question and answer experience. Sean further explains how video interviews mitigate small talk, a common contributor to hiring bias.
“It’s hard to avoid small talk, but small talk has the potential to create bias. Video interviewing reduces hiring bias by treating everyone identically. Another component of the bias reduction is the ability to share video interviews with multiple stakeholders. More than one decision maker can watch an interview and determine who they want to meet with next. The third component is how the evaluation process is done. More than one person can be part of the evaluating criteria. VidCruiter’s tools and other vendors within the space have what’s called ‘structured interview evaluation guides’ built into on-demand or video interview solutions. This way, when recruiters vet through candidates, they have the proper evaluation metrics and guides to make the right decisions.”
Artificial Intelligence and Video Interviewing
Sean expects that artificial intelligence will make a significant impact in future digital recruiting:
“If you talk to Siri, Google Voice, or Alexa, what percentage of the sentence would you say did it captured properly? Sometimes it’s 100%, other times it’s 80% or 90%, but the point is, they’re the leading provider of that kind of technology in the world. AI is performing in terms of predicting where candidates should apply in a chatbot or predicting the best recruiters. However, in terms of analyzing a candidate, it gets kind of risky.”
How to Prepare for a Video Interview
The interviewing process has changed drastically over the past two years. Candidates are less likely to meet potential employers in-person, and more likely to suit up for their webcams. This could be a new and daunting experience for most, which is why Sean left us with tips to best prepare for video interviews.
“The best thing that you could do is practice. You can get an interview coach or you can get someone to sit with you and ask you some questions to prepare. I’ve found that the most successful candidates are detailed and they have more examples to support their responses to questions.”
How Companies Can Improve Their Video Interviewing Experience
There are ways for recruiters to improve the recruiting experience for candidates so that they feel like they’re being interviewed by real people and not lifeless computers. Sean fills us in on a few tips that will have candidates happily complete the vetting process, rather than give up midway.
“If you’re a recruiter, record a video in your home, on your phone, in your car, or in your office asking the interview questions. Have different managers from your team record themselves and have staff members of the same role give testimonials on their experience working at your company. This is even a better experience than a traditional interview because the candidate is able to meet more people in your team.”
I hope you enjoyed this episode of #WorkTrends, sponsored by VidCruiter. To learn more about video interviewing and recruiting in today’s climate, contact Sean on LinkedIn.
