Busting The Most Common Myths About Video Interviews

Misconceptions abound, but here are the Facts about high-tech recruitment tools

Covid-19 accelerated the adoption of digital technologies in just about everything, including hiring. Video interviews are nothing new—recruiters have been using them to screen candidates for about 20 years—but the practice became more widespread last year. The shift started in the early days of the pandemic.

In April of 2020, Gartner found that HR leaders at 86% of organizations polled were already incorporating new technology to interview candidates due to Covid-19. By October, Criteria was reporting that the use of video interviews had increased by 159% over the year before.

What all this means is that, in many ways, video interviews are a part of the “new normal”, and will be around long after the pandemic has faded into the rear-view mirror.

When adoption of any technology skyrockets, myths about the tech tend to rise right along with it. In the case of video recruiting, the trepidation some job applicants may feel is rooted in misinformation. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions about video interviews—and why they’re wrong.

No one wants to think that they are being judged by an algorithm, but many job seekers fear that this is exactly what happens when they participate in a video interview.

False. Artificial intelligence is not taking over the hiring process, at the expense of the human element. At my own company, VidCruiter, we don’t use AI because it’s still very much in its infancy and has some serious downsides.

A better approach is the structured digital interview. Similar to traditional hiring best practices, structured interviews ask all job applicants the same questions in the same order. With pre-defined, reliable scoring criteria baked into the process, structured interviews ensure all candidates are evaluated objectively.

Most reassuring to candidates, however, is the fact that the interviews are evaluated by people, not by a machine. The decision-making power is still in the hands of a human recruiter. Yes, video interviewing is designed to help organizations reduce costs and turnaround times for new hires, but not at the cost of autonomy. In other words, they keep the human in human resources.

Hiring bias can occur at any stage of the talent acquisition process. It can even pop up in the initial screening stages. A candidate’s name might suggest or reveal a particular gender, race, or age bracket, and those factors might not jibe with a recruiter’s preconceived notion of the type of person they are looking to hire. Bias can also rear its ugly head at the interview stage, and it can arise whether interviews are conducted in person, by phone, or by live or pre-recorded video.

The good news is that the interview process can be intentionally designed to minimize common hiring biases. The sort of structured interview I mentioned earlier can play a key role in this, making it much less likely that an interviewer will ask off-topic, biased questions that have nothing to do with the job.

This is where video can prove invaluable, especially in an organization with a suitably diverse hiring committee to review candidates’ interviews. Recognizing that hiring stakeholders often have different ways of thinking (based on their cultural background, education, and other factors), some organizations will have interviewers rate only one interview answer from each applicant. This can help diversify the evaluation.

Another benefit of recorded video interviews is their value as a data trail—a permanent record of an organization’s hiring history. Reviewing these videos allows the organization to assess patterns, help identify if interviewers are consistently making biased hiring decisions, and take further steps to eliminate that bias.

Any interview is only as cold or impersonal as the person or organization conducting it. When bringing hiring online, recruiters can maintain that human touch by personalizing their approach. They can do this by using candidates’ names to create rapport from a distance. Or, in the case of pre-recorded video interviews, one might record themselves asking questions and embed that video for applicants to watch (rather than just include plain-text questions). This makes for a more participatory experience, and it’s also a chance to showcase a bit of the company culture.

The truth is that digital interviewing doesn’t just provide advantages to hiring teams. Applicants benefit, too, by being able to interview from the comfort of their home, where they won’t have to deal with the extra nerves that can come from trying to navigate a new space. With pre-recorded video interviews, candidates also have the convenience of being able to interview at any time of the day.

Over the past year, we have all become accustomed to communicating with each other via Zoom, Google Meet, and other platforms that have made the shift to remote and hybrid work models relatively seamless. Digital recruitment software and video interviews are just more tools in that toolbox. The most effective way to dispel the myths and misconceptions that have sprung up around this technology is to assure job seekers that there is always a human being on the other side of the screen, and that it’s a person making the hiring decisions, not a machine.