“Advancements in VoIP and Digital Video Platforms are making the task of acquiring candidates, quicker, more targeted, easier and far more convenient for employers as well as candidates.” – EmployerTube.com Experts in Video Interviews
The ability to analyse multiple data sets that you would otherwise miss out on via conventional telephone based interviews, this includes things such as body language, tone and pitch of voice as well as facial expressions help recruiters make decisions on candidates in a much more expedited and effective way. And of course it’s much quicker to use this technology than to wait for people to come into the office.
Adding to it is the reliability quotient that arises from validated evaluation through tech based standardised and structured interview workflows that are helping to eliminate unconscious bias in the process of hiring.
Some of the more advanced platforms give you the ability to choose if the interviewer gets instantaneous AI-driven automated feedback on behaviour on the basis of human ratings through technologies like video analytics, NLP, machine learning and deep learning.
Although while we are immersing ourselves in these tools, we tend to forget about our humanity, our nervous ticks or our vocal tones. These tech based assessment tools aggregate all of this information and any of the human qualities that we could end up ruining our chances of selection during tech based interviews.
This gets especially bad when we are so conscious of someone watching, assessing and recording our every move.
When candidate interviewing via video rather than in person, people become overly conscious of their normal and distracting habits. These flair up more often when we are facing a big challenge and as such manifest themselves at the most inconvenient of times and ruin the assessment scores
Even if there’s a super tech savvy person, still the chances of success may not be guaranteed as lots of preparations for online interviews are required vis-a-vis in-person interviews. Moreover, now that more and more companies have turned to Video Based interviewing techniques for first round interviews, getting picked for that second round has become much harder
Make sure you stay calm
The first thing to always remember is; everyone can be nervous, everyone thinks.
Am I fully prepared?, Will they like me?. This is natural as everyone at some point feels nervous about a job interview, just calm yourself down, control your nervous ticks, such as touching your head when nervous or twirling your hair, excessive tapping of a digit on a table or taping your foot. In fact some of your little habits that you even may not be aware of needs to be rectified, hence watch yourself on camera for practicing to break your nervous habits.
Make sure your technology / tools are set up well
Make sure you have a list of the software, apps or plugins that you will need for the interview. Is it Skype, Slack or Teams based?, If it is a multi person chat do you have to do anything in particular.
Make sure that you have updated your computer and disable notifications that may pop up on your screen. This could include emails, IMs or website notifications.
See if you can do a trial run first, have one of your friends or family contact you via the platform that you are using, check the lighting and sound quality of your devices.
If your login name is CuteBunnie92 think about making a more professional one, such as DaveSmith
Be mindful of your body language
It can be easy to forget that your body language is easily viewed by the interviewer, so be conscious of this, act and sit how you would if you were in the same room. Use pauses to try and convey your sentiment on a topic.
Take time before answering another question, if there is a poor connection your content maybe confused with a previous answer, being conscious of video interview, we often forget to maintain the pace of our conversation with almost no pauses or taking excessive long pauses in between. The pace, tonality and pitch needs to be practiced before you appear for a video based interview.
Stick to the core interview basics
Although we all believe we know what the basics are, we often tend to ignore or overlook the minor things, Yes we are on a video interview but we should still follow the core dress code.
Something smart, that looks good when you sit down, avoid too bold colors and make sure you start with a smile, but not too much.
You should put out an enthusiastic, confident and genuine persona, this should be reflected in your smile.
Eye contact should not be intense, look at the interviewer but not too intently, show you are listening and keep to the 5 second rule
As we progress with technology sooner rather than later Video Interviewing will be seen as a core skill, so get as much practice in that you can.
This will also help to further your skills, as teleconferencing and video conferencing are on the rise and being able to show a well honed set of skills in these disciplines could be the difference of selection or not.
So, next time when you have received an email for video interview, harness the latest advantages in this human-machine partnership. Don’t forget to keep in mind these tips to create your own success stories. Best of luck for your next interview!