• 4 min. read

5 tips to Make the Most of Pre-Recorded Video Interviews in Recruitment

Video interviews are an important add-on that helps recruiters to screen candidates more efficiently in the early stages of the recruitment process.

Written by Daniela Costa

We’ve talked previously about why pre-recorded video interviews can improve your company’s recruitment process, how they turn it more cost-effective and how big an impact they have on both the candidates and the recruiters. These one-way video interviews are not meant to replace the CV or face-to-face interviews. But they’re an important add-on that helps recruiters to screen candidates more efficiently in the early stages of the recruitment process.

Matching a CV against a job’s requirements it’s not enough to help recruiters decide whether a candidate would be a good fit for a specific role. But by allowing candidates to show themselves beyond their CV, through a pre-recorded video interview, recruiters get valuable additional insights. At the same time, it creates a great opportunity for candidates to stand out from others on the applicant pool and provides them with a better candidate experience.

Essentially, using pre-recorded video interviews gives recruiters a better chance of identifying the top talent on their pipeline and only invite the best candidates to in-person interviews, saving time and improving the quality of hire.

But for this to work for both recruiters and candidates, there are some aspects that must be taken into consideration when implementing one-way video interviews in the recruitment process. So, here are some guidelines to help recruiters make the best use possible of pre-recorded video interviews in recruitment.

5 tips to make the most of pre-recorded video interviews

  1. Choose a user-friendly video interview tool. To make the most of pre-recorded video interviews in your recruitment process you cannot simply send an email asking candidates to record themselves and email you their answers back. You need to include the video interviews in your workflow and make it a part of the recruitment cycle. This means that it’s better to find a video interview tool that you can seamlessly integrate with your recruitment software, so that candidates feel they're participating in a unified process and recruiters have only one access point to all the candidates' information. So, when choosing such tool, it’s of the utmost importance to look for a software that is user-friendly for both recruiters (backend) and candidates (frontend).

  2. Define at which point of the recruitment cycle to use the pre-recorded video interview. It’s important to define when should the one-way video interview be used. Should every candidate that applies with CV for a position immediately answer the interview questions? What if someone doesn’t match at all the job requirement’s in terms of education and experience? Will it make sense in that case to lose time reviewing the interview? After analysing these aspects, you must define at what stage of the recruitment cycle and for which candidates must the pre-recorded video interview be solicited.

  3. Set a structured interview process. Provide every candidate with the same pre-determined set of interview questions for a specific position, so you can evaluate candidates equally against the required and desired criteria. This means that every candidate is asked the same questions and is given the same assessment. By using a structured interview process and evaluating all answers with the same criteria you have a better chance at objectively identifying the candidates that best fit in terms of skills and culture, ensuring a more diverse recruiting process as well.

  4. Provide the best candidate experience. Using the pre-recorded video interviews as a step of your recruitment process will cause an impact on your candidates, for sure. Your company will be perceived by the candidates as being innovative and challenging, but for that perception to stand by the end of the process it’s important to ensure that the one-way video interview step is easy to complete. Aside from choosing the best tool, you yourself must test the process so that adjustments can be made for the video interview to work seamlessly.

  5. Promote collaborative hiring within your company. Collaborative hiring helps making fairer and more diverse hiring decisions. Additionally, it boosts recruitment productivity and speeds up the whole process. Given that with a proper ATS you can assemble candidate profiles, to which you can add the pre-recorded video interview, you can easily share them with other recruiters and hiring managers, so they too can review and evaluate candidates in order for hiring decisions to be made collaboratively.

Pre-recorded video interviews are a great add-on to your recruitment process. Use our tips to make the most of their use, speeding up the initial stages of your recruitment and improving the selection process.

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Skeeled offers you the perfect opportunity to bring innovation and digitalisation to your hiring. Check our website or our LinkedIn and Facebook pages for further information.

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Your team here at skeeled

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