Video Interviewing Best Practice

It is important to note that video interviews are not a magical solution which will suddenly ensure you get great candidates through to your final assessment stage.  As the saying goes, you get out what you put in. You need to give careful thought and consideration to firstly the questions that you are putting into the software (which candidates will be required to answer) and secondly, to the way you are going to assess a candidate’s response.

Interview Questions

For any role, you firstly need a clear understanding of the success factors  - what skills/ behaviours/attributes does a candidate absolutely need to be successful in the role? Your interview questions should be written to gain evidence from your candidates of these critical factors.

Your questions should be written to be:

• Open (i.e. cannot be answered with a yes / no answer).  Open questions typically start with a ‘why/what/when/how/why’.
• Jargon-free - take care not to use organisation specific language that some candidates may not understand. 
• Linked to a job relevant skill or behaviour
• Non-leading - avoid indicating what you are looking for in a candidate’s answer within the question
• Accessible to everyone (i.e. not so specific that you make it impossible for some to answer)

• Identical for each candidate

• Transparent - ask a clear question rather than trying to trick candidates or trip them

For further information on how structure interview questions, click here.

Rating Criteria

You need clear rating criteria which link to the success factors you identified as critical to success in the role. This guidance, in a competency-based interview, should clearly outline the behaviours you require evidence of, to allow for objective and consistent decision making.

Structuring Ratings

Shortlister’s platform allows you to behaviourally define the competency you are asking a question about.  You can choose the numerical rating scale you use to assess candidate’s against that competency - up to a 12 point scale.  

An example is shown below using a five-point scale:

Competency being assessed = Collaboration

Rating Guide:

Listens to, encourages and supports others; works effectively with others to achieve common goals; resolves issues and conflict within groups

Rating Scale:

The important point is that the behaviours linked to job success are clearly outlined.  This guides hiring managers to make decisions based on these important and relevant factors and ensures that the right candidates are progressing through to later stages of the recruitment process.

Training Hiring Managers

In addition to considering your questions and your rating criteria, it is also key to successful implementation to ensure that you have given your hiring managers the tools they need to rate candidate’s interview responses fairly, consistently and objectively.  Training should include the following areas:

• Awareness of the competencies and specific behaviours required
• Practice using the competency framework
• Benchmarking exercises to ensure consistency across raters
• Awareness of biases and how to limit their effects  
• The legal principles which underpin recruitment

In addition, it is sensible to double mark Hiring Managers interviews as a quality check for those that are new to the approach. This is very quick and easy to do with video interviews as the candidate’s responses and the Hiring Managers ratings are visible in the software.