Although AI can assist in culling through hundreds or thousands of resumes, hiring technology workers still requires spending time with the candidates to get to know them, and for them to get to know you.
Too many times, we brought candidates into the office, and regretted taking that time out of our day, based on who showed up at our door in contradiction to the person we imagined from their resume. Brief video interviews have drastically improved our hiring process, saving significant time for our hiring manager, but ultimately for me and my staff to vet candidates. Here are 4 great reasons to insist that candidates go on camera before you move them forward in your hiring process:
First, candidates need to demonstrate that they can use video technology, either on their phone or computer, to log into your video chosen platform (Teams, Zoom, etc.). You would think that 100% of technology candidates should have no problem with this task. Not so fast! At least 40% of our candidates have issues with either the video or audio, don’t understand how to best position their viewing angle, or don’t ensure that they are in a location with enough solid bandwidth to promote a good connection.
Second, seeing is believing. You have the opportunity to see how they are dressed and groomed and if they’re making eye contact. If they haven’t chosen a background, look at what items are around them and how tidy is the area, as both aspects give you a clue about them. If they have chosen a background, is it work appropriate?
Third, listening is also believing. Listen to their speech from the perspective of proper pronunciation, slang, sentence structure complexity, vocabulary, hesitancy, and their ability to modulate their voice to sound interesting, You can also be listening for industry acronyms and terminology that will tell you if they have specific knowledge in the technology area for which you are hiring.
Finally, and most importantly, you can get a sense of their personality, work ethic, trainability, patience, and motivations. With this aspect, it’s important that the person conducting the interview be keeping in mind the company’s culture, along with the sub-culture of the team for which this candidate is being considered. Also, you’ll be able to assess how interested this candidate is in the position and your firm.
The benefit for the candidate is the flip side of these aspects, as they will get to see, hear, and feel all of these things in regards to your organization. The key to this is making sure that the staff that conducts these interviews need to truly represent your organization. Don’t hesitate to have two staff members on each interview if you have two people who can represent different aspects of your organization.
A few final tips for successful video interviews.
- Pick a popular platform to reduce technical difficulties.
- Make sure your platform can be used from phone browsers and don’t require any downloads.
- Record the video for viewing by managers to determine if the candidate should move forward. They might notice things that the interviewer didn’t. Check your state laws regarding recording, but most will allow you to do this if you don’t start the recording until you announce that you are about to record, and ask the candidate if they want to proceed. Also, by recording the video, the interviewer can focus on listening and interacting with the candidate, and not on taking notes. Finally, you can point your AI application to the video to summarize the interaction and, depending on your AI capabilities, give you an overall impression of how this candidate will fair in your organization and in a particular position.
- In your email communication ahead of the interview, make it clear that they must be on camera. Audio only will give you less than 20% of all of the above benefits.
Remember that video shouldn’t replace an eventual in-person interview, but early in the process, video can provide a fairly complete picture of a candidate, saving you and your team time by bringing into the office only the best candidates, with fewer surprises.
