Conduct More Effective Video Interviews With These Brilliant Questions

With location no longer a limitation for many roles, video interviews will remain essential to foster better connections between candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers.

Remote work is less of a trend and more of an expectation for an influx of job seekers as people are choosing (and asking) to work remotely.

Video interviews can help you accelerate hiring, streamline processes, and improve the quality of hire. However, to keep hiring moving, you need to review your processes regularly. Reevaluating how your interview can help you create meaningful engagements.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when reviewing your processes – and ways to improve:

Are Interview Formats Set Up Equitably?

If every recruiter conducts video interviews differently, you could be allowing unconscious bias to creep in and might exclude some great people from joining your workforce.

Not only are structured interviews more effective, but they allow you to focus on the right criteria when evaluating candidates.

Our solution: Create a library of standardized, approved interview questions. By asking every candidate the same questions in the same order, you can create a more equitable hiring environment.

Are You Capturing The Candidate’s Interest In Video Interviews?

Are you waiting to introduce the hiring manager to the applicant after the initial screening? Consider making the hiring manager part of the screening to help create a culture of communication and transparency and allow the applicant to get more familiar with your company. Three out of five employers say it’s harder to align company culture and values, making it more important to get your employer’s value proposition across at every stage.

Our solution: With video Interviews, hiring managers can record interview questions and potentially make a strong connection with the candidate right away.

Are You Providing Enough Flexibility To Candidates?

Over 70% of workers today want some form of flex work. You can help meet that need with your interviews. Scheduling interviews outside of traditional work hours can not only open your pool of candidates but can show a flexible work culture and respect for the candidate’s time. With on-demand interview formats, you can reduce the hassle of scheduling and eliminate the need for your candidates to take time off from work or caregiving.

Our solution: You can set up video interviews and leverage on-demand video interview formats to give candidates the freedom to record their answers on their own time.

Our Additional Tips To Follow

• Be funny. To help interviewees relax, try to bond with them. Small talk is good; entertaining banter is even better. If you make them laugh, it stimulates them mentally and emotionally, so they’re ready for an enjoyable dialogue. Even if you’re not a natural comedian, any attempt at levity is usually welcomed by them because they want to get over their pre-interview anxiety.

 

• Maintain eye contact. When the interviewee is talking, it’s important to keep your eyes locked on theirs the entire time. If you glance down at your notes to be ready for the next question, you risk signaling that you’re not really interested in what they’re saying, so they might assume their answer is not interesting and abruptly stop. You can lose a quotable sound-bite that way.

 

• Look fascinated. Eye contact is not enough. If you like what they’re saying, your facial expression should let them know that you are really intrigued by their thinking and empathetic to their feelings in video interviews. Part of the role you play in an interview is to coach and coax — by being supportive and encouraging.

 

• Don’t ask questions. If you want sound-bites that stand alone – so you don’t have to include the question in the video – do not put a question in the form of a question. You don’t want them to sound like they are replying to unheard questions. Instead, be declarative; say something like, “Talk about blank.”

 

• Give them time to think. When you are posing a question but can tell that the interviewee doesn’t know what to say in response, keep talking about the subject. Talk about it from different angles, or use different words, in hope that the interviewee will think of something to say. If that doesn’t work, help the interviewee save face by saying something like, “That’s not an easy question, so let’s return to it later.”

Closing Thoughts

Video Interviews can accelerate and streamline how you share and review candidates. Plus, you can leverage videos beyond the interview stage by showcasing your employer’s brand and culture, engaging with candidates throughout the hiring stages, or building an inclusive onboarding program. We also have the perfect video interviewing software for you!

EVA-SSESS is the perfectly scalable video interviewing software for businesses of all sizes and shapes. It transforms the hiring and assessment process with inclusive one-way video interviews. Enabling decision-makers to attract and cultivate a more talented workforce, through a seamless video interviewing process that reduces hiring bias and makes interviews easily accessible to everyone.

Request a free demo and see how our video interview platform can help you save time and make recruiting painless and hassle-free.

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