Today, we automatically assume that companies offer remote work as part of their policy. As work culture has evolved over a year, video interviews, too, should evolve and become automated. In this article, Benjy Gillman, CEO and co-founder, myInterview, talks about what role automated video interviews play in recruitment.
Over the past year of living with COVID-19, many job applicants have undergone their first automated video interviews (AVIs). While much of the world is returning to normal after living under coronavirus restrictions, these interviews aren’t going the way of mask mandates and social distancing requirements.
What explains their staying power? Providing job candidates with a vehicle where they can record their responses saves companies precious time, helps streamline the application pool, and enables a fairer, more objective interviewing process that limits recruiter bias.
Here’s what AVIs have to offer and what their growing role in recruitment means for the future of hiring.
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The Need for Speed
Scheduling, conducting, and evaluating interviews takes time — and lots of it. It’s even more of a drain on a company’s resources and productivity when decision-makers are forced to spend hours interviewing candidates who are ill-suited to the role but somehow made it to the interview stage.
With more job seekers in the labor market than before COVID-19, this problem has only been exacerbated at many organizations. But longer, slower hiring processes aren’t a brand-new development. From 2010 to 2018, the average time between a candidate’s first interview and an offer increased 84%Opens a new window . The longer a company takes to get back to a candidate, the more likely it is that they will find and pursue other opportunities, especially the most promising ones. This, in turn, leaves positions unfilled for longer, compromising workflows and requiring more time and money to be spent on finding the right fit, all the while having to compensate for an unfilled position.
Automation can help organizations turn this dynamic around. For companies that are not ready to move beyond the CV review process, they can start with smart CV screening solutions to help weed out some of the lesser qualified applicants. The real game-changer, however, is the new timeframe and convenience for companies to “meet†the candidates.
When the interview itself is automated, candidates can answer questions, and hiring managers can review them at a time and place convenient for them — no more squeezing in an interview when you want to be heading to lunch. Automating video interviews is an acceleration of the entire process, letting employers find not only the most qualified candidates but those who are the best personality fit for the role.
What’s in It for Candidates and the Company?
Not only can candidates complete an AVI on a more flexible schedule, utilizing their own home computer, tablet, or smartphone, but they can also enter the interview more confident, prepared, and poised, as they’ll know ahead of time what they’ll be asked.
But what about the free-flowing dialogue that often develops during a face-to-face interview? Isn’t that a better way of gauging how well a candidate would handle relevant tasks and fit into an organization? Research actually shows that the more strucOpens a new window tured an interview is, the more predictive it is of a candidate’s job performance.
By turning to automated interviewing, companies can save big, not only on costs such as for airfare and lodging for out-of-town candidates, but on their recruiter’s time, eliminating no-shows, an all too frequent and time-wasting occurrence, and letting them take control of their own schedules. An additional benefit? Remote work has empowered companies to attract top talent from across the globe, and automated video interviews are best poised to support recruiters on that mission.
Empowering companies to build a more diverse workforce is among the biggest benefits of AVIs. Companies with higher levels of gender, ethnic, and racial diversity tend to be higher-performing than more monolithic businessesOpens a new window . When built to be inclusive and diverse by design, automated hiring technology can help hiring managers recruit applicants from a rich range of backgrounds, including many who would have been harder to reach using more analog hiring methods.
Moreover, asynchronous video interviews provide a uniform interviewing structure. Everyone interviewing, regardless of their background or whether their family belongs to the same country club as the hiring manager, has a fairer chance. And instead of tailoring their answers to please the interviewer, candidates can focus on directly tackling the questions at hand and putting their best, most professional selves forward.
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 A New Era of Hiring
Post-pandemic, neither work nor recruitment will revert to the pre-COVID-19 status quo. A Conference Board survey of HR executives found that 88% are now willing to hire remote workers, up from just 52% before the pandemic.
As work itself becomes more remote, it makes sense that the interviewing process does so as well. What can companies expect as a result? Greater efficiency, substantial cost savings, expanded access to top talent, and a fairer process for applicants. The future of work is here — the future of recruitment needs to make sure that all companies can fully embrace it.