Video Interviewing
People and Culture

Why Use Video Interviewing In Job Recruitment?

Gary Zurnamer

November 1, 2021

time

mins

According to HR consulting firm Aptitude Research, in February 2020, less than 60% of US companies surveyed planned to use video in their recruitment process. By October 2020, this had increased to 89% of businesses using video interviewing, according to a Gartner survey.

Of course, it was early 2020 when we experienced the pandemic's start. Every industry and business had to quickly adapt, including recruitment teams, who started turning to video interview platforms to screen and interview potential candidates.

The rise of a remote workforce.

With Covid, the doors opened for a remote workforce, and virtual interviews for job seekers became normal.

A remote workforce has many upsides. In particular, many companies weren't limited to their own cities. HR teams could start building their talent pipelines with a talent pool from around the world. Being able to screen candidates also got a lot easier, and Zoom made the biggest waves in the tech space since Skype back in the day - especially as a meeting and video interviewing platform. 

The challenges of a remote workforce.

With a remote workforce also came new challenges, like managing time zones and hours lost to Zoom interviews, just a couple of the headaches of hiring a global team. Teams didn't really understand how many Zoom meetings they were on - and it skyrocketed in many companies.

It's where tools like Vouch started to shine, an asynchronous video platform. With Vouch, you can record video updates any time, any day, and your team can digest them when they are up and working. It makes life a lot easier and avoids wasting time.

Tools like Vouch also gave rise to one-way interviews, where candidates could record a short video and HR teams could access them in their own time - a necessity with global timezones.

As the pandemic accelerated digital transformation globally, approaching 2024, the tide is shifting towards new ways of screening and hiring talent.

Benefits of Video Interviewing in 2024.

Asynchronous one-way video today, like Vouch, gives hiring managers the tools to scope out the field and find the best person for the job in their own time. Plus, it allows candidates to let their skills and personality shine in more than just a written cover letter.

Often, an asynchronous one-way video is a first step to a Zoom or in-person interview, streamlining the interview process for busy SME companies. If you're looking to make better, faster decisions when hiring, it's worth looking into the move towards video interviewing for businesses and how it can impact your recruitment process - be sure to check out Vouch for Recruiters here.

The benefits of asynchronous (one-way) video extend beyond recruitment and into employee branding to attract top talent. More on that later!

What are one-way video interviews?

No matter what role you're hiring for, hearing from the candidate is typically a part of the selection process. Whether you're recruiting locally in other geographies, the quality vetting process can take hours out of your week if you're running real-time interviews.

Comprehensive candidate evaluations can take many hours, so one-way video interviews are a popular option as a first step in recruiting.

With tools like Vouch, You can set up and capture the answers you're looking for by setting up questions to suit your hiring process then send the link to any candidate you want to interview. Candidates can respond via the camera on their mobile phone or desktop computer at a time that suits them - removing many recruiting tasks while creating a smooth user experience for your candidates.

Many hiring managers opt to use a video interviewing app (or web-based platforms like Vouch) to streamline this process. Once you input the interview questions, you can share a single magic link to candidates collect interviews at scale and help speed up your screening process.

Once you're ready to review these responses, all these conversations are recorded and ready to play on-demand. With each candidate's video saved in one place, comparing, vetting and shortlisting talent can happen on your terms before moving onto a phone or real-time Zoom-like interview.

The benefits of an asynchronous interview are numerous.


How video interviews can jump-start your hiring process

Reviewing hundreds of resumes, lining up meetings, and shortlisting candidates are just some of the reasons hiring managers don't have enough hours in the day.

While video interviews only eliminate some of the demands of recruitment, they can help remove some of the biggest points of frustration, especially when it comes to remote talent and online interviews for your job candidates.

- Capturing the insights you need on each candidate's experience: set up role-specific questions to drill into their experience or tailor questions to learn more about why they're moving roles and how suitable they are for your job opening. You can also include standardized questions used by your internal HR team for your wider candidate pool to cross off the standard responses you need. 

- Giving candidates the chance to give the best answers: letting applicants record and submit their responses on their terms gives you a clearer picture of what value they could bring to the table with honest, authentic video content. The questions you create also lead to more structured interviews for your candidates. Video is the ultimate hiring assistant for common interview questions and those high demand interviews that require in-depth responses and applicant skills.

- Saving time on initial screening calls: video interviews help you to narrow down your shortlist faster and allow you to see the faces (and personalities) of candidates, not just their resumes. The future of talent acquisition is becoming increasingly automated, with automatic talent matching tools and AI to match candidates with the right roles. Of course, we are talking about people still, so even the most intelligent hiring platforms that can handle high-volume hiring, like Vouch, need to remain human for now. You need to treat every candidate's responses with care and keep the tools from getting in the way of finding the perfect applicant.

- Allowing more employees to be part of the hiring process: video interviews allow you to easily share candidates' responses with the whole hiring team without asking a candidate to present to a whole (potentially intimidating) boardroom of people. Creating an optimal candidate experience is increasingly important as we compete globally for the best talent.

The collaborative hiring features in Vouch can be a game changer for internal HR and recruitment marketing teams. The digital interview process is exciting; you can use these tools to work with your current recruitment process or create entirely new recruitment funnels.

How to run video interviews with Vouch

We built Vouch to be perfect for remote teams hiring across the globe. Vouch is a video interview software platform that can manage a big chunk of your process - and can be used in other areas of your company, like building customer testimonials and growing your employer brand.

If you're considering getting started with asynchronous video interviews, here's how the Vouch platform works and helps you find qualified candidates. You can use the below steps to screen candidates at scale, too.

Here is the interview experience when you use the Vouch video interviewing tools:

1. Choose from the video interview formats and add questions that suit the role at hand. You can choose to share general screening questions or build sets of custom questions for different roles, and if you need inspiration, there's a question library to choose from. You can also set time limits, which can be handy for panel interviews where multiple people are needed to review the candidate's video.

2. Share an invite link with your candidates that gives them everything they need to jump in and film their best answers. You can choose to email this to applicants or embed the link into your job listings. Vouch also has an intelligent applicant tracking system so you can see the status of your candidate videos.

3. Watch and listen like you're in the same room and play each candidate's answers question-by-question. This is great if your hiring team wants to collaborate remotely to make better, faster decisions on the initial screen. You could save hundreds of hours a year reviewing applicant feedback and videos.

Would you like to try an asynchronous video interview tool?

Vouch is one of the easiest ways to get started, with a highly intuitive platform and inbuilt artificial intelligence (AI) that can further assist your internal team and speed up a lot of manual work. Some companies that use Vouch include Canva, Atlassian, Mentorloop, Culture Amp, Airwallex and more.

Recruitment technology is forever evolving to streamline the entire hiring process and make life easier for everyone: you and your candidates. You'll love Vouch for your current - and future hiring needs.

Like to try Vouch?

Loved by companies like Canva, Nike, Cisco, Stryker, HubSpot, Amazon and more, tools like Vouch make leveraging video in your business remarkably easy.

Be sure to book a Vouch demo today and chat with a video content expert.

Gary Zurnamer

Gary Zurnamer

Co-Founder and CEO of Vouch.

Lights. Camera. Traction

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