“We have been able to improve the quality of applicants invited to face-to-face interviews while at the same time reviewing a larger number of good applicants via the video interview”

-A recruiter

This spring we asked recruiters across the globe to share their experiences in video interviews for our 2019 Recruiter Survey. One of the questions we had was how video interviews improved their work performance, if at all. The overwhelming majority of the recruiters emphasized the increased quality of hire and shortened time-to-hire. This might sound contradicting, as generally being slow to hire is associated with a higher chance of recruiting the right one, but with video interviews, companies can kill two birds with one stone: achieve both fast recruitment and improved quality of hire.

We have previously discussed how video interviews can save you time (and about why fast recruitment matters), so this time we will focus on why you should consider using video interviews to improve the quality of hire:

Reason 1. Meet the person behind the CV

A CV might be a good representation of a candidate’s skills, yet certainly not of their personality.  Video interviews, however, allow candidates a chance to show more of themselves than what is on paper and give you a clear picture of who they are. This makes it easier to assess whether they are a good fit for the company and the team. Expertise can be taught, but the cultural fit is either there or not, and video interviews are a great way to test that. Remember, hiring for personality rather than for expertise can significantly improve your employee retention and keep people with you for a long haul.

Reason 2. Expand your talent pool

In today’s talent shortage, expanding your talent pool is more important than ever. With video interviews, you can reach non-local jobseekers, already employed candidates and those who are looking for flexible arrangements. Since there is no scheduling in video interviews needed, candidates can record their answers whenever and wherever it is comfortable for them. This is particularly useful for universities as they rely a lot on international talent. For example, our client, University of Helsinki, used RecRight to hire researchers to The Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) in collaboration with Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT), and they received 250 strong applications from 27 countries! That’s a lot of great talent who otherwise might have not been considered, if not the convenience of video interviews.

Reason 3. Reduce your bias

Asking all candidates the same set of questions - that is the ones that you’ve recorded - is a proven way of minimizing bias. Unstructured interviews, despite many recruiters favoring them, are notorious for their subjectivity, and by extension - bias. In unstructured interviews, the likelihood of asking everyone different questions is very high meaning comparing the candidates' answers will be hard or nearly impossible for you.  Plus, because unstructured interviews have no set format, a recruiter will base the questions on their view of what's important, and not necessarily on what we know are the best predictors of success. Not to mention that there is so much room for non-job-related questions that will feed into a recruiter’s bias, and as a result, a candidate with the best predicted on-job performance will be outshined by someone else because of a recruiter’s bias. The point is, you should opt in favor of structured job interviews - such you can conduct them through video interviews - instead of unstructured interviews.

There you have it - the three biggest reasons why video interviews increase the quality of hire. Other things to mention here are time-efficiency and transparency. As video interviews save 60% of time spent screenings, you as a recruiter will have more time for other tasks and be less stressed at work.Less stress means better decisions! And by transparency, we mean that with video interviews, you can involve more people in the hiring process (your fellow recruiters and hiring managers) and share candidates with them! This way, you and your team can evaluate the same candidates and their answers, making the process overall more transparent and reducing unconscious bias.