Video interviews are a way for employers to assess job candidates on their qualifications, soft skills, and more during the hiring process.
Video interviews are usually implemented as a preliminary interview meaning that the final hiring decision isn't made until later in the process.
There are two main types of video interviews: one-way and live video interviews.
A one-way video interview is an asynchronous video interview in which job candidates record video responses to interview questions on their own time.
One-way video interviews are also referred to as pre-recorded video interviews or on-demand video interviews because they don’t require the interviewer to be present.
One-way video interviews give companies a consistent interview experience which puts all candidates on a level playing field.
When setting up a one-way video interview, the interviewer has the ability to customize specific parameters such as:
You’ll also have access to functionality that allows you to personalize the one-way video interview such as:
Once job candidates submit their one-way video interview, the recruiters and hiring managers at the company can watch the interview at their earliest convenience. Need to collaborate on a hire? Video interviewing makes it easy, by allowing you to share one-way video interviews with all hiring stakeholders. With video interviewing, the hiring process can work around your schedule – not the other way around.
Before you start using one-way video interviews, you’ll be able to brand your candidate experience with your logo, colors, pictures, videos, and more. Next, one-way video interviews typically work as follows:
Determine the interview experience that your candidates will go through
Invite your candidates to complete the interview
Candidates submit video responses to your interview questions
Watch, evaluate, and share the completed one-way video interview
The end result: you’ll make better decisions about which candidates make your shortlist in a fraction of the time.
If you’d like to learn more about one-way video interviews, we suggest requesting a live demo of Spark Hire to get a tailored presentation on how they can benefit your organization specifically.
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A live interview is a real-time interview in which an interviewer connects with a candidate face-to-face via webcam. These interviews work just like their three-dimensional counterparts – minus travel costs and all the time it takes to schedule a traditional face-to-face.
Miss the interview but still want to weigh in? Live video interviews are recorded so they can be played back at any time. It’s video interview collaboration made easy and convenient.
Typically, organizations use live video interviews as the step just before or as a replacement to the in-person interview for non-local candidates.
A dedicated live video interviewing solution differs from video chat (e.g. Skype, Facetime, Google Hangouts) and video conferencing (e.g. Zoom. GoToMeeting, WebEx) in a variety of ways. For instance, live video interviews are:
In addition, you’ll have access to a dedicated account manager and a 24x7 technical support team for you and your candidates. Spark Hire even offers live video interview concierge services in which we’ll connect with you or one of your candidates for a test interview.
Live video interviews provide a custom, private, virtual room to conduct an in-depth interview. This type of interview allows organizations to connect with their candidates face-to-face before paying to bring them into the office.
Select a date and time to meet with your candidate
Invite your candidates to the interview
Conduct the live video interview with your candidate
Watch, evaluate, and share the completed live video interview
If you’d like to learn more about live video interviews, we suggest requesting a live demo of Spark Hire to get a tailored presentation on how they can benefit your organization specifically.
Request demoDepending on the nature of your business, video interview can fit in different parts of your recruiting process.
Employers frequently use one-way video interviews as a better way to screen candidates earlier in the hiring process (as a replacement or complimentary piece to a phone interview) and live video interviews to connect with non-local candidates.
Common hiring challenges that lead employers to look into video interviews include, but are not limited to:
In general, employers find that video interviews help them:
Staffing and recruiting firms mainly leverage video interviews to a) screen candidates more efficiently and effectively before sending them to clients and/or b) improve how a candidate shortlist is presented to clients.
Common reasons that staffing and recruiting firms start looking into video interviews include, but are not limited to:
In general, staffing and recruiting firms find that video interviews help them:
Want to see if video interviews are right for you? Get a live demo of Spark Hire’s video interviewing solution today!
Request demoOrganizations of all sizes and from all industries are successfully using video interviews to reap benefits specific to their recruiting processes.
Below are the main benefits for both employers and staffing and recruiting firms.
Video interviews are not meant to be a replacement to the in-person interview. Their purpose is to help you make better decisions about which candidates you invest time and effort into during the hiring process.
As an employer, the exact benefits for your organization will vary depending on your industry, the types of jobs you’re recruiting for, and more.
Ultimately, the two metrics that employers mainly see improvements in are quality of hire and speed to hire.
Screening job candidates can take a huge chunk of your time and hiring budget. Video interviews make the process much less of a chore by enabling you to connect with candidates face-to-face – without having to fly them in. When it comes to screening candidates, save time and avoid scheduling headaches with one-way video interviews.
Considering 60% of hiring decisions were made within the first 15 minutes of an interview, according to a recent study by researchers from Old Dominion, Florida State, and Clemson, why bother with lengthy phone interviews? With one-way video interviews, candidates can record their answers to your questions on their own time, and you can view them on yours. It’s a win-win addition to your hiring process.
Anyone can sound good in a phone interview. Video interviews, however, allow you to pick up on visual cues that can impact your decision. See much more of the candidate earlier in the hiring process, from their facial expressions and body language to their personality and professionalism. Never be surprised in an in-person interview again!
When it comes time to screen candidates or bring them in for an in-person interview, not everyone needed can always be present. And interview notes and recollections aren’t an accurate representation of a job candidate. With video interviews, interview recordings can be shared with colleagues. On top of that, colleagues can comment and rate candidates so the whole team can come to a better hiring decision. After all, multiple heads are better than one.
Using Spark Hire, we were able to take a 45 minute scheduled phone interview and replace it with a 15-minute one-way video interview. The videos are completed by the candidate in their free time and then reviewed by the hiring team at their convenience. This change has saved us countless hours in the screening process, and also given us the insights to only focus our time on the best applicants.
Amy Hargrove
All Web Leads
Once implementing Spark Hire, we experienced HUGE savings. The one thing we realized a year later is: the first people to do their video interviews are our most engaged and passionate employees. They love our company and you could see it from their first Spark Hire video interview.
Dustin Gordon
Breakside Brewery
We’ve compiled some resources to help you learn more about video interviews for employers.
Learn how to properly implement video interviewing at your business and how it can help you make better hires faster than ever.
Has learning more about video interviewing been on your “to-do list” for a while? Get the recording of our webinar to learn everything you need to know about video interviews.
To learn more about video interviews for employers, take a look at this page or get a demo with a Spark Hire product expert and they’ll personalize the conversation to your hiring process.
Request demoIn today’s race to find and place top talent, staffing and recruiting firms need to embrace the latest trends and technologies to finish first. Video interviews provide staffing and recruiting firms with a distinct competitive advantage and improvements in KPIs including, but not limited to:
Sending a video interview recording to supplement a candidate’s resume not only makes the candidate more appealing to clients, but it also makes you and your firm more appealing. Instead of having to blindly trust you, clients can see candidates for themselves, before investing valuable time and money to meet with candidates in person.
Help candidates put their best foot forward by coaching them throughout the interview process. Review their answers in a one-way video interview, point out what they can improve on, and have them re-record, if necessary. Practice makes perfect, after all. And by being able to coach candidates along the way, clients can trust they’ll be seeing the best a candidate has to offer.
Supplying clients with interview recordings makes it easier to collaborate over potential hires. It allows them to outline exactly what they like or don’t like about a candidate – even more so with a candidate showcase feature. The feedback that you get from clients can help you provide top-notch candidates moving forward.
Having a growing talent pool is an essential resource for recruiters and staffing professionals. Building and tending to an internal database of candidates ensures quality talent is readily available when it’s time to fill a new position. With video interviews, if a candidate doesn’t work out for one client, you’ll still have their video interview on file for a future job order.
Using Spark Hire, we have made over 1,500 candidate placements. Video interviewing was integral to helping us improve our submit to hire ratio by 80% while also increasing our placement speed by 50%. We quickly noticed that we were not only placing candidates in a fraction of the time but also that we were making more money on every candidate we placed. Because of the amount of time we are saving, we are now able to push resources to other areas of our business. This has helped make our business much more profitable.
Ray Isaac
The Altara Group
The results with Spark Hire have been incredible. I have clients that specifically give me more job orders because of the technology. 50% of my clients won't see a candidate if they haven't completed a video interview. Since I started with Spark Hire, I have had a success rate of over 85% with placements and a retention rate of 95%.
James Harman
Snap Talent International
Learn the what, how, and why of video interviewing and its impact on your recruiting process.
Have you ever wondered how other staffing and recruiting firms are using video interviews to drive more revenue? Get the recording of our webinar and you'll learn their secrets.
To learn more about video interviews for staffing and recruiting firms, take a look at this page or get a demo with a Spark Hire product expert and they’ll personalize the conversation to your recruiting process.
Request demoVideo interviews offer many benefits to your candidates that are important for you to know about.
Hiring managers are the ones that participate in final round interviews with candidates. Ultimately, they are the people that make the hiring decisions. Video interviews give candidates the chance to get in front of and impress hiring managers earlier in the process because their video interview is shared with them.
By eliminating scheduling conflicts and allowing the company to complete more interviews faster, video interviews not only speed up the process for companies, but also for candidates. Candidates don’t want to go through a lengthy process and video interviews significantly cut down on the time from the initial application to a hiring decision.
Candidates have a story to tell. The video interview makes sure hiring stakeholders get to know the real candidate vs. just reading a piece of paper. A report on video statistics found that people retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text. The video interview gives candidates a platform to further discuss their background and expand on key aspects of their work experience that make them a great fit for the position.
Since launching in 2012, Spark Hire has become the fastest growing and most popular video interviewing solution in the world. Here’s why:
With more than 6,000 customers in over 100 countries, Spark Hire has significantly more customers than any other provider in the video interviewing industry.
Spark Hire is known for being simple to learn and easy to use so your team can get up and running fast.
Pricing plans start as low as $119 USD per month so companies of any size can give it a try.
Customer service is ingrained in Spark Hire’s company culture. You’ll have a dedicated account manager plus access to a 24x7 technical support team for you and your candidates.
Spark Hire has more ATS integrations than any other video interviewing platform. In addition, Spark Hire has a Google Chrome Extension which lets you use Spark Hire alongside any ATS. Plus, Spark Hire’s Zapier integration empowers you to build custom, automated workflows with thousands of apps including Slack, Google Sheets, and more.
Spark Hire is the highest rated video interviewing solution on the market and consistently wins every award in the video interviewing categories on popular software review websites.
For a more in-depth look at how Spark Hire differentiates, we created this guide to help you compare video interview software providers.
Getting started with video interviews should be simple and Spark Hire is the video interviewing platform that will deliver for your organization.
To get started with video interviews, you have a couple options with Spark Hire:
We've made video interview bliss accessible to everyone, with transparent pricing and flexible plans to meet your needs. All plans come with unlimited video interviews and premium support.
If you’d like to discover how video interviews can benefit your organization specifically, connect with a Spark Hire product expert for a screen-share demo of our solution. We’ll answer any of your questions and present ways that Spark Hire can make a big impact on your recruiting.
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