How to Get Started With Video Interviews

Whether you’ve made the decision to transition to video interviewing by choice or through recent circumstances, this guide steps you through exactly what you need to know to make the right decision for your company.

The video-interviewing-software decision should not be made ad hoc. Rather, like all personnel decisions, it should be made strategically.
 
Video interviewing can revolutionize your hiring process. With thoughtful implementation, this way of interviewing improves your hiring process ROI, candidate experience, hiring manager satisfaction, and time to and quality of hire. It provides a better look at applicants earlier in the process.
 
Video interviewing also improves collaboration with team members and hiring managers. Everyone has the ability to provide feedback on a candidate. Giving and leveraging feedback creates aligned hiring decisions. All of this enables you to sustain your revenue, growth, and culture with consistent, high-quality hires.
 
To reap these benefits, you will want to start by deciding your video interviewing strategy.
 
Decide Your Video Interviewing Strategy
 
As with any new tool, how video interviewing is used is as crucial to good ROI as having video interviewing capabilities in the first place. This means you should decide what video interviewing will look like within your hiring process before selecting a provider. Some important elements to consider include:
 
What Are Your Video Interviewing Goals?
 
Are you looking for an in-between solution to inadequate phone screens and time-consuming in-person interviews? Are you looking to modernize your hiring process? Would you like to decrease your time to hire? Maybe you want to spend more time on the most enthusiastic candidates instead of the unqualified ones.
 
No matter your goals, be sure they are clear. Use your goals to evaluate potential tools according to how they’ll help achieve those goals.
 
Where Will It Fit in Your Process?
 
Examine which steps of your process stand in the way of your goals. Identify the bottlenecks in your strategy, and consider whether video interviewing might be able to alleviate some of those bottlenecks. Are you looking for a replacement for your phone screens? Interested in doing more live interviews on a more robust platform than Skype or Zoom? Seek out a platform that offers you flexibility, allowing you to achieve your goals while also giving you room to grow with additional tools to support your employer brand.
 
Who Will Spearhead the Implementation?
 
Decide who will champion your team’s effort to begin using video interviews. The ideal champion is a team member who has a thorough understanding of your organization’s hiring process and the interest in researching available options. They also have purchasing power or the ears of those with purchasing power. You yourself might be the right person, as you’re the one reading through this guide.
 
What Is Your Ideal List of Features?
 
Features on video interviewing platforms come in two categories: customization and companion tools. Examples of video interview customizations include branding, sharing, feedback, video questions, and take settings. Companion tools to video interviewing include video messaging or interview scheduling.
 
The structure of your hiring process and the specific criteria you’re evaluating in your candidates will dictate the crucial features you need.
 
How Will You Measure Results?
 
Results must tie directly back to your video interviewing goal. If, for example, you’re testing video interviewing with your summer internship hires, how many interns have you hired before? How long did it take to hire them? Compare your metrics now to your metrics before launching video interviews to get an idea of your results.
 
Analyze Feedback and Assess Metrics
 
Next, you’ll want to determine an assessment time frame. This could be two weeks if you choose an easy-to-use platform, or a couple months if you sign a long-term contract. Either way, use this time to assess what team members think of video interviewing. Determine if there is a better way to use it in your process, and if you need more time for implementation. Your video interviewing account manager may also have best practices for your platform of choice. Most of the time, their best practices are battle- and time-tested, so following those should provide you with the best results.
 
A word of warning: The initial completion rate for video interviews deters some organizations. They see this drop-off as a loss of potential employees. It’s important to remember candidates who decide not to complete your video interview are not a good fit. Excited candidates will find ways to complete their video interviews, even if doing so is a new concept to them.
 
One organization, Breakside Brewery, flipped this fear on its head. The team incorporated video interviews into its process. A year later, they realized their best employees were the first candidates to complete their video interviews. These candidates’ enthusiasm for the brewery clearly stood out from the very beginning.
 
Keep the Process Personal
 
A principal fear for HR professionals is making the hiring process impersonal. This fear is especially common when evaluating HR technology. Video interviewing does not have to be impersonal. Offering personalized invitations, video questions, and resources for applicants to get help can show candidates that you are involved and engaged in their video interviewing experience.
 
Video interviews allow candidates to get comfortable, practice, and put their best videos forward. You and your candidates no longer have to squeeze a phone screen in at an inopportune time. Your team gets to know candidates better through a video interview, leading to better late-stage interviews.
 
Choosing the Right Video Interviewing Platform for Your Organization
 
There are many video interviewing providers. Picking the best one for your company can be overwhelming. The criteria and questions above focus on what you want from video interviewing and allow you to evaluate providers based solely on your needs, not their sales pitches. There are also two final considerations to remember when choosing a video interviewing solution:
 
Proactive Support
 
Video interviewing has been around for a while, but its recent rise in popularity (and necessity) means it can be intimidating to some candidates and users. As a result, the availability of both technical and customer support is crucial to your video interviewing success. Technical support should be available to both your team and your candidates. Contacting technical support should be simple and available 24/7. This allows candidates and your team to resolve issues night or day.
 
Customer support should be well versed in most use cases of the platform. They should know what results are normal, help you put best practices in place, and assist in getting buy-in from your team. Your account manager should review your account regularly. They should suggest points of improvement without prompting. They should offer to train all other members of your team on the platform at any point.
 
Ease of Use
 
Any time your hiring brand is at stake, making a mistake is scary! A clear, easy-to-use platform and training from your provider can keep you from making errors. There are a few easy ways to check if a video interviewing platform is truly easy to use.
 
A platform designed for its users builds video interviewing tools that hiring teams will actually use. The best providers don’t focus on the next big thing. Instead, they build customer-requested features. Your video interviewing platform should aim to enhance your process, not attempt to replace your team’s intuition.
 
An easy-to-use platform makes implementation of your video interviewing strategy easy. A simple learning curve leads to a quicker return on your investment. The faster you implement your video interviewing platform of choice, the sooner you can see how your candidates present themselves.