Why is it that the day always slips away before we can complete our to-do list? Sometimes it seems as though we need more hours in the day to have any chance of getting on top of our work.

I’m going to let you in on a secret; the key is to work smarter, and not harder. We don’t need more hours in our day, we need to utilise tools that assist us in reaching our goals in an efficient manner, such as pre-recorded video interviews.

So, what are video interviews?

Recruitment software platforms, like My Recruitment+, enable employers to ask multiple questions which require the applicants to respond with a video answer that varies between 30s to 2-minutes long (depending on the recruiter’s preference). The compilation of these video answers is then classified as a ‘Video Interview’.

Before we dive into content lets briefly outline what this article is going to overview with something more aesthetically pleasing than Arial size 12.

Now that you know the basics regarding video interviews and the 5 reasons they’re essential, let’s unravel these points in greater detail.

Reason #1- SAVE TIME ON PHONE SCREENING

Recruiters spend roughly 25% of their time on phone screening activities such as; getting in contact with the candidate, scheduling a suitable time to talk, asking questions to develop insight into the candidate’s personality, and then organising an interview. This process is lengthy and must be completed for every suitable candidate.

Imagine you have 20 candidates. What’s worse than a game of phone tag? 20 games of phone tag.

The time each recruiter spends going back and forth between candidates and on their phone significantly reduces the amount of time that could be put towards other important responsibilities or tasks that aren’t receiving enough attention.

We all know the feeling of getting home after a day’s work (or, in today’s world, walking from the study to the lounge room) and feeling as though you didn’t achieve enough and spent most of the day chasing other people.

Phone screening can be deflating, but if you utilise video interviews it doesn’t have to be!

Video interviews are situated next to the resume and allow the recruiter to unearth the candidate’s soft skills and personality.

The result of this?

Recruiters are able to determine who is more suitable based on the required; technical skills, work history, soft skills and personality. Thus resulting in a refined candidate selection. Through discovering what soft skills your candidate must acquire, this refined candidate selection is possible.

By creating a precise candidate selection, you invest time into a smaller pool of candidates, which results in less time consumed throughout the phone screening process.

What’s better than 20 games of phone tag? 10 games of phone tag.

Reason #2- SAVE TIME ON 1-TO-1 INTERVIEWS

For every job opening a recruiter is likely to interview 10 or so candidates that are seemingly well fitted for the position. Whether that interview be face-to-face or online, each interview will consume a minimum of an hour of the recruiter’s time.

Think of each interview like this; prior to the interview, the recruiter will look over the resume, conduct the phone screening tasks, make some notes and write some questions. Then the recruiter will spend an hour in the interview. After the interview, the recruiter will summaries their thoughts, make some more notes and finally make a decision.

We could allow this process to take a few weeks consume many hours of our time… or we could condense the interview phase.

The compilation of video answers is only a few minutes long and offer identical insights as live interviews do. They reveal how your candidate engage and communicates, as well as reveal their personality characteristics, soft skills and their qualifications. All of which add to the sum of your candidate.

Discovering who your candidate is and what they can do is the purpose of the live interviews, therefore by unearthing this information in the initial phase of the recruitment process the amount of live interviews will be reduced.

Thus, by utilising pre-recorded video interviews, hours of interview time will be saved and that saved time and effort can be re-directed to tasks that aren’t usually prioritised.

In fact, video interviews will reduce the time consumed by phone screening and live interviews by 50%. Yes, you read that correctly. By utilizing video interviews, recruiters will spend HALF THE TIME they currently do on the recruitment process.

Now that we have acknowledged how much time we can save with video interviews, let’s look at video interviews with a new lens and see how else they benefit recruiters and organisations.

Reason #3- USE VIDEOS FOR YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS

Although recruiters are responsible for interviewing candidates and determining who they believe is best suited for the position, recruiters have to demonstrate to their executives why they believe the candidate is the best fit. Explaining this to executives can be difficult because:

1. They weren’t in the interview and didn’t see the candidate present themselves
2. You can’t accurately picture someone based off adjectives written on paper

Thus, in order to clearly convey their thoughts recruiter’s will write explanations and reports discussing why candidate x is recommended over candidate y. This, again, consumes a significant amount of time.

This is the traditional way of carrying out this phase of the recruitment process, however, I have a solution that allows this phase to proceed with superior efficiency. That’s right, I can save you the finger cramps and reduce the hours you spend in front of a screen.

Video Interviews. This is the solution. Did you guess it?

Take it back to the beginning of the recruitment process where candidates are reading resumes and filming video answers. I know this seems so 20,000 seconds ago but these video answers are now crucial for this phase.

Instead of writing reports and attempting to explain what you saw and what you know, SHOW THEM. These videos are saved to your platform and can be accessed at any time, and from anywhere.

Once the recruiter has made their informed decision, they can show their managers and executives the videos of the candidate that convey their soft skills, personality, and experience.

Now that they can visualise the candidate, and know the basics of what attributes they entail, you can demonstrate why candidate x is more suitable than candidate y. You can compare videos, alongside the notes from the interview, and paint a picture of your potential employees. A picture is worth a thousand words, therefore stop writing reports comprised of hundreds of words and let a short video do the talking for you.

Reason #4- FIND GEMS IN THE ROUGH

We are currently living in an unfamiliar economic time, the unemployment rate in Australia has risen to 5.2% due to the mass effects of COVID-19. The result? Every job opening posted will have an influx of applications. In fact; 505,500 Australians (and rising) are currently looking for full time employment.

In order to combat this significant influx, recruiters will create a specific ideal profile in order to reduce the amount of applications and easily narrow the selection pool. Although this strategy is justified and has the potential to be effective, it has risks.

What are the risks? You risk missing out on the perfect candidate based on overly specific requirements and skipping candidates that seemingly don’t fit the profile. That’s a mouthful, so let’s look at an example.

Alright let’s see; I’m trying to fill the position of a school teacher in an all-girls private school. The subject is English. So my ideal profile might look something like this;

• English as a first language
• 4 Years work experience
• Bachelor of Teaching, Masters in English
• Preferably female
• Must have attended a private school

Let’s say we received 140 applications. Wow that’s a lot of time we need to spend reading through resumes, let’s just skip the ones that don’t meet the exact criteria shall we? 30 of them are male, 40 didn’t attend a private school, 40 are Australian citizens but grew up in another country. Since they don’t meet the profile let’s skip all of those. Now we’ve narrowed down our selection pool to 30, how great!

Is it though?

With the 110 candidates you haven’t given a chance to, you might have lost the ideal candidate that you didn’t know you needed.

What if the male you skipped displayed soft skills that teenage girls can relate to and would respond to? Or if that woman that grew up in Japan spoke excellent English and effectively communicated to young girls?

Let me clear a potential miscommunication in regards to hiring; being specific is good, and knowing what type of candidate you want is good, however, risks arise when you become too specific.

So, instead of skipping candidates to save time, what’s a tool we could utilise to implement a different strategy?

Yep, you guessed it; pre-recorded video interviews.

Video interviews enables recruiters to recruiters watch their candidates communicate which offers greater insight into their technical and soft skills than skimming through a resume. So, not only does it consume less time, but it also offers more information.

This strategy allows you to find gems in the rough; this means unearthing the skills and attributes of candidates that you assumed wouldn’t be suited for the position, but in fact alter the ideal candidate you developed by demonstrating skills that you didn’t know you wanted your candidate to have.

 Reason #5- UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

In correspondence to reason #4, unconscious bias is relevant to every hiring decision and can result in recruiters dismissing a candidate without being informed on their skills and potential.

Although we educate ourselves on the negative impact of unconscious bias and try to prevent it from interfering with decisions, it would be irresponsible to believe it doesn’t exist. This becomes an obstacle to finding suitable candidates because recruiters may believe a person doesn’t suit the ideal candidate profile, or unconsciously determine a reason to dismiss them.

The result? Candidates are dismissed without a fair chance, and the recruiter could miss out on finding their perfect candidate.

What’s the perfect weapon against unconscious bias?

Prerecorded video interviews. I know you knew the answer that time, you’re getting good at this.

Video interviews put a name to face and give candidates the opportunity to present themselves in the way they want to be seen and acknowledged. It’s easy for unconscious bias to take over when you’re reading a few words on a page, but when you see a real life person communicating it’s much harder for unconscious bias to be the leading factor in making a decision.

Video interviews offer so much insight that benefits;

1. the recruiter as they save time and develop a three dimensional image of the candidate, and
2. the candidate as they are able to convey their attributes effectively and in a manner where they can’t easily be dismissed without a fair chance.

As well as this, the video interviews can be cross examined by multiple recruiters, and executives, which enables the employers make a unanimous decision based off the same insights, which in turn minimises unconscious bias.

As you can see, pre-recorded video interviews are beneficial to organisations, recruiters and candidates as they save time and create opportunities for all parties.

Since we’ve already established a picture is worth a thousand words, and now that I’ve described the benefits and analysed the potential that comes with video interviews, trial them and their advantages for yourself. Work smarter, not harder.