Assess Soft Skills Like an Expert Through Video Assessment Interviews

When you’re tasked with assessing and hiring a candidate, the pressure is on.

On top of the need to assess for technical qualifications, you need to make sure that the candidate has the soft skills needed to succeed at the job.

Elaborating further, when you’re recruiting for a role, you might tend to focus on a candidate’s role-specific knowledge and their ability to perform the job’s duties. But, candidates that stand out are the ones that have additional qualities. Like the ability to communicate clearly, work smoothly with others, and manage their time efficiently. Which are also known as soft skills or interpersonal skills.

After all, candidates that lack soft skills will not add great value or be as beneficial to your company as a candidate who has those added skills.

So is there an easier way to gauge these skills?

You bet there is!

Through video assessment interviews.

Video assessment interviews are a very popular method for screening candidates. Where candidates need to video record their responses to interview questions at their own time and convenience. This process makes it more fitting for candidates, and also easier for recruiters to gauge soft skills. So ultimately, it’s a win-win situation.

Soft skills are a crucial part of every candidate’s evaluation and can be very impactful on the future success of the business.

And the best part? Video assessment interviews help you assess them like a pro. Let’s see how.

They help you gauge soft skills through the right interview questions

First things first, it’s important that you evaluate all candidates objectively and fairly. And the best way to do that is by acknowledging the soft skills that are important for this role and preparing the right set of questions (in advance) to assess those skills. So for example, let’s say you’re looking to hire a Business Development Representative. Evidently, the soft skill you’re looking for is communication. After all, you need a candidate who can communicate effectively with all clients no matter the circumstances. So you can ask them the following video assessment interview questions if you want to gauge this skill:

• Describe a time when you faced a conflict with a client and how you addressed it.
• How would you calm an irritated and frustrated client?

Similarly, if you’re looking to unravel a candidate’s soft skills, you can also use hypothetical scenarios. These scenarios would be a good way to probe for instinctive behavioral insights. When crafting your video assessment interview questions, be sure to add a question like:

• If you’re presenting a few ideas during a meeting and your client seems disengaged, what would you do to get their attention?

When you ask such video assessment interview questions, you’ll be able to seamlessly test particular qualities that are needed for the role.

Now, to answer the lingering question on your mind: how can a video assessment interview assess these soft skills for you?

It’s simple.

Conducting video assessment interviews through EVA-SSESS, our video interviewing software, means that you can gauge a candidate’s soft skills and true potential through a model answer feature.

So… what exactly is this feature?

This model answer feature is mainly used by recruiters to filter out correct answers, identify ideal keywords, move candidates forward in a pipeline, and unravel soft skills faster than ever before.
Think of the model answer as a benchmark for the recruiter. When a recruiter is crafting the interview questions, they have the option to add a model answer for each question. In simple words, it’s the best answer that they wish to hear from the candidate.

EVA-SSESS will then compare your answer to the candidates’ answer and generate a relevancy percentage. This percentage dictates how close and relevant the candidate’s answer is to your model answer. So if a question got a relevancy percentage of 86%, you’ll know that the candidate nailed that question and has the soft skills that you’re looking for!

They generated scientifically-validated personality reports for you

Candidates are always on their best behavior when they first connect with a recruiter. In essence, they’re always responding to questions the way they “think” the recruiter wants. Even if they don’t believe in their answers. But when the honeymoon phase ends, and the candidate is hired – their true personality traits begin to emerge.

So since today’s video assessment interviews are user-friendly, engaging, and quick to complete – they’re used earlier in the application process to do the heavy lifting when screening candidates. And all too often, they include a personality assessment at the very end.

If you’re conducting a video assessment interview through EVA-SSESS, candidates are often required to complete a short personality assessment after they’re done recording their video answers. Then, a Five-Factor Model report will be generated for each candidate, which helps recruiters reveal more about the candidate through the following five traits: conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, openness, and emotional stability. They will also be able to tap into the candidate’s learning and communication style, performance in sales, programming aptitude, and the way they deal with clients.

So if a Sales Representative candidate scores high in agreeableness, you’ll know that they most likely won’t do great in outside sales. Simply because they’ll be too empathic with clients and lack the necessary closing abilities.

Whereas if they score high in conscientiousness, you’ll know that this trait is perfect for an outside Sales Representative because this trait means that the candidate is hard-working, organized, and dependable. In fact, conscientiousness is the most highly correlated trait with sales performance.

You see where we’re going with this? Video assessment interviews are a remarkable tool to unravel personality traits and the soft skills that are essential for the role.

They help get your whole team involved for a more collaborative approach

As with any other department in the company, getting input and feedback from the rest of the team can help you assess soft skills and hire the right person for the job.

Think about it this way, your team knows the day-to-day activities of the job very well, like the back of their hand and better than anyone else.  Meaning, they can seamlessly help you assess the soft skills required for the job. While this is easier said than done, without the right means, resources, or technology – team collaboration can sink as a result.

When conducting an in-person interview, it can be hard to involve your teammates and get their feedback on candidates. It makes it even harder to gather feedback and thoughts about candidates.
So why is team collaboration crucially important for assessing candidates? Simply put, determining cultural fit or soft skills can be a hit or miss if left to just to one recruiter. Therefore, team collaboration means that everyone works together closely, unconscious biases will cease to appear, and more perspectives will be taken into consideration.

The great news is; this is all made easier through video assessment interviews.

If you’re using video interviewing software to interview candidates, we have good news for you. Assessing soft skills as a team will become a breeze! Through video interviewing software teammates can share their feedback, leave comments, and evaluate video assessment interviews in one place. They can also engage in timely discussions and replay video assessment interviews at any time. By collaborating with teammates in one place, it will be much easier to reach a consensus and make better hiring decisions. This means that you and your team can rely on collaborative hiring to make important decisions, and shift to a culture of high performance.

They enable you to leverage accurate insights that mitigate bias

Have you ever interviewed a candidate and caught them rolling their eyes or crossing their arms? Did their body language give you some sort of implication of the candidate’s inner traits? Did you find yourself forming a biased – and unintentional – first impression?

Unconscious bias can cripple your hiring efforts. Simply because a whimsical biased decision can let unqualified candidates slip through the cracks and top talent slip through your fingers.

Instead, video assessment interviews allow you to use a standardized, fair, secure, and above all, unbiased approach to assessing candidates.

Video assessment interviews effortlessly standardize and unify the interview process. All candidates will be asked the same exact questions and in the same exact way. This means that no sneaky biases will creep in when evaluating candidates and their soft skills.

Of course, the final decision will be made by you and your team, but you can at least be guided by accurate insights and scientifically validated personality reports (as we mentioned above). In addition, video assessment interviews can be shared between multiple assessors, therefore reducing bias and increasing objectivity in the process. Each answer can be individually rated and compared to the answers of other candidates. As result, ranking candidates is no longer reliant on the handwritten notes of team members or on how well they remember the other candidates.

Wrapping up

At the end of the day, an overwhelmingly large number of candidates can apply to one single vacancy. So, make sure you won’t miss out on star candidates just because you weren’t able to assess their qualifications or soft skills accurately. With video assessment interviews, hundreds (or even thousands) of candidates can be assessed swiftly and accurately. This means that a larger number of candidates can be evaluated quickly and more efficiently as opposed to traditional interviews.

EVA-SSESS is a next-generation video interviewing software that enables you to pinpoint and hire top talent fast by testing and evaluating the key skills and abilities through secure and unbiased video assessment interviews. Start your 14-day free trial today and see how recruiting and assessing top talent couldn’t be easier!

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