Google, LinkedIn and Amazon have cancelled all on-site interviews and are now doing all their client-candidate meetings completely online. The obvious trigger for this is the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, which has made face-to-face interviews functionally impossible in most countries.
While another consequence of this virus has been a large-scale freezing of hires, there are still many companies out there who need to fill out critical roles. With a sudden glut of high quality candidates in the market, and a deep strategic need to up-level existing teams, the response from recruiters has been to pivot to video interviews.
Although mainly driven as a response to the requirements of social distancing, there are still benefits to be had from video interviewing when hiring that can extend across “normal economies” too.
The Benefits of Video Interviews
Qualitative pre-screening
If you’re using quantitative testing as part of your pre-selection process, then the natural extension of that is to use one-way virtual interviews to gather and incorporate qualitative data. When it comes to assessing intangible skills which can’t be easily assessed in a written format, or judging if a candidate has oversold themselves in their CV, video interviews offer a great solution to effectively evaluate a potential employee.
Reduce time to hire by 50%
Streamlining the interview scheduling process and eliminating phone screenings can reduce the time to hire by a up to 50%. It’s a substantial advantage when you’re working in a crisis which makes virtual interviews a great tool. By bulk scheduling candidates in a narrow window for example, you can move onto the next hiring stage much quicker.
Record and save interviews
With permission from the candidate, video interviews can be a great resource to a hiring team. On the one hand, a recorded interview makes it easier to improve the performance of interviewers and add continuous improvements in the recruitment process. It can also accelerate future hiring decisions by allowing you to instantly assess a previous candidate for a new role that might come up.
Reduce unconscious hiring biases
Diverse workforces add a variety of extra value to a company’s bottom line, but unfortunately recruiters and hiring managers often mismanage the early stages of their hiring process by not addressing the consequences of unconscious bias. Video interviewing provides an excellent opportunity to counteract this with a strong, consistent and standardised interview process. Creating universal formats for assessing all interviewees gives them a greater chance to make a compelling case as to why they should be hired.
Calendar-friendly global outreach
One-way video interviews can be delivered and reviewed whenever time permits, while conducting two-way interviews from candidates in different time zones and geographies is obviously much easier when occurring online. For anyone embracing a distributed and remote workforce, this means that you can truly act globally to secure the best talent in an agile way.
Improve the cost-per-hire
When done right, video interviewing can save time and effort when it comes to things like manual screening efforts. If you’re looking to screen numerous candidates within a short time frame, then video interviews have a dramatic effect on the overall efficiency of the hiring manager, which in turn translates to real savings on the cost of hiring.
Improve quality of hire
As a combination of all the above factors, you can also be confident in getting a better quality of candidate. By identifying deal-breakers and pre-requisites early in the process, and being able to make better comparisons among the potential employees, you can reduce the possibility of making a bad hire, and losing money.
Make sure you do it right
When done right, video interviewing extends business benefits that go beyond the current crisis. Recognition One has direct experience in making remote hiring as smooth as possible having been working as a completely distributed workforce for over 7 years. Download our guide on the benefits, challenges and best-practices for video interviewing, or contact us to find out how to apply it to you talent acquisition strategy.
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