Four years after the global pandemic, COVID-19 hit the world, we are in a corporate era that mostly works virtually. It is a time when a company registered in the USA has a CEO from the USA, a CFO from UK, a CTO from the India, and staff from all around the world.
Therefore, in such a scenario where people from different locations are working in the same company, the employer ought to hire professionals through virtual interviews. The employer in the USA interviews a candidate in Itally to hire for a team whose all employees are working remotely.
What is a Virtual Interview?
A virtual interview is a type of interview that is conducted virtually or through online means. It can be conducted either through a video interviewing solution, phone or by using video conferencing software such as Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or Zoom allowing candidates and interviewers to communicate from different locations.
The format can vary from live video chats to pre-recorded video responses by the candidate. Virtual interviews have become increasingly popular due to their convenience, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to connect employers with a wider pool of candidates regardless of geographic limitations.
Although they are more or less similar to face-to-face interviews, it is better to conduct them only for a limited number of candidates after completing a candidate screening process. This is because, due to the technical complexities involved, virtual interviews can be a bit tricky for some candidates.
How to Conduct a Virtual Interview?
If you are an employer who wants to shift their mode of interview from physical to virtual, here are some simple steps to keep the process seamless.
Introduce a Skill Test before the Video Interview
In a virtual interview setup, time is a big limitation. Hence, you cannot really evaluate a candidate’s job-specific hard skills and soft skills during a virtual interview. However, with the introduction of a skills test before the interview, you can easily assess a candidate based on his or her technical as well as soft skills required for the job.
WeCP helps in evaluating candidates’ technical skills related to different coding languages and technology and soft skills such as problem-solving and decision-making. It not only provides an accurate result of every individual’s test but also ranks them based on their performance in the tests.
Choose a Reliable Platform
After you have shortlisted the candidates for the interview based on their performance in the skill tests, the next step is to decide which video interview platform you want to use for conducting the interview.
Choose a tool that is universally accessible, supports essential features like screen sharing and recording, and offers a stable connection. Familiarity with the tool's functionality among the interviewing team and test runs to ensure compatibility are essential steps for a smooth experience.
Check what goes well with your system and choose the platform for conducting the interview.
Check out how WeCP helps organizations streamline the interview process from end to end:
Want to know more on how WeCP can help you out? Try WeCP for free or Schedule a Call
Schedule the Interview
When you have finalized which platform to use for the interview, the next step would be to schedule the interview with the candidates. You can either choose a chatbot to check with all the candidates and the interviewers about their availability or discuss with each one of them manually.
When the interview gets scheduled, remember to share the link to the video call with both parties - the interviewer as well as the interviewee. Also, ensure that both parties conduct a small technical test with the video call platform at their ends for good-quality sound and video.
Be Prepared with Important Questions
As said earlier, video interviews have limited time. Thus, it’s practically impossible to ask all kinds of questions during this process. So, make sure that you have a list of important questions for the interviewer to ask from the interviewee.
For example, it’s better to skip the technical skills part because you’ll already have the skill assessment results. However, you might want to discuss the candidate’s cultural fit with the company or the work expectations that the company has for its employees.
Keep your Background Clean and Free from Distractions
When you begin your video interview, it is recommended that you take care of all the professionalism, as much as you would during an in-person interview. You must dress professionally, keep your surroundings, especially your background, that’s visible to the interviewee, clean, and ensure that there are no distractions in your background.
If your interview might require you to share your screen, it’s advised that you close all the irrelevant windows in your system so that none of the unwanted things are visible to the interviewee.
Record the Interview
As we have mentioned earlier, the best advantage of virtual interviews is that they can be recorded in order to maintain consistency of questions and evaluations across the board and to analyze candidates’ non-verbal cues once all interviews are done.
Another benefit of recording an interview is that the interviewer doesn’t need to note down any of the candidates’ responses. This makes the interviewers look more attentive towards the candidates and their responses.
End the Interview
The last step in conducting an effective virtual interview is to end the interview by asking candidates if they have any questions about the interview, their job position, or the hiring process.
If they should have any questions, answer them and inform them when can they expect a revert from your company or when should they follow up. Try not to leave any communication gap from your end, as an employer.
Benefits of Conducting Virtual Interviews
Virtual interviews are a win-win for both companies that want to hire employees and candidates who want to get hired for a specific job. And this is basically because of the nature of the process - virtual and remote.
Here are a few benefits of conducting a virtual interview -
Convenience
Needless to say, a virtual interview doesn’t involve the hassle of getting into your car, facing the traffic, parking the car, and reaching for the interview totally exhausted. In some cases, reaching the interview venue also includes taking a flight and checking into a hotel to reach the interview location the next day.
On the other hand, with virtual interviews, the candidate can simply switch on an electronic gadget, log on to the internet, start the webcam, and start with the interview. In this case, the candidate is not exhausted, and his whole focus lies on the actual interview, rather than the useless stuff.
Efficiency and Accessibility
Video interviews are not only convenient but also highly efficient than traditional in-person interviews, especially for job applicants who are not located in the town of the actual interview location.
In fact, it is also 100% correct to say that video interviews are much more accessible for candidates. Since no traveling is involved, virtual interviews are much easier, quicker, and logistically feasible to be scheduled and conducted as compared to traditional face-to-face interviews.
Flexibility
With the newly changing work dynamics, both the recruitment process as well as work culture have become flexible. Employers are free to post job applications on international job portals and hire professionals from anywhere in the world, working in any time zone and any conditions, simply by using virtual interviews to select them.
Even the interview timings have become highly flexible. For example, an employer sitting in South Africa can schedule an interview with a candidate sitting in Singapore, even when there is a time difference of 6 hours between the two countries.
Insightfulnees
Many employers prefer recording all their video interviews. These recordings help in two different ways.
Firstly, they help keep the hiring process consistent for all candidates. Whether the interviewer is the same or not, they can still ask the same questions, in the same sequence, and in the same manner. Secondly, these recordings can be very helpful in analyzing a candidate’s non-verbal cues, such as tone and body language.
Consistency
As mentioned above, virtual interview recordings help keep the consistency of the interviews of different candidates, irrespective of the interviewer.
Cost Savings
Virtual interviews are economical for both candidates as well as companies, especially if there are multiple rounds of interviews being conducted. The costs involved with traveling to the interview location for candidates and hosting interviews for several candidates in an office for companies, all become zero in video interviews, making them extremely cost-efficient.
Great Experience for Candidates
Since these interviews are so flexible, convenient, efficient, and inexpensive, candidates have a great time during such recruitment processes. Moreover, they can also apply for remote jobs, making virtual interviews a hit for candidates across the globe.
Conclusion
More than 65% of candidates today prefer virtual interviews over in-person interviews. So, it’s clear that these interviews are on the rise. However, due to the time limitation of a video call, it is always recommended that you know your candidates’ skillset inside out before starting out with the interview. And, this is possible if you have already evaluated your applicants on technical and soft skills through WeCP.
WeCP not only helps you evaluate each of your candidates on their skills but also gives you a cumulative report of who is better than the others. Through WeCP, you can easily shortlist your candidates for the video interview round with minimal human intervention.
Want to know more on how WeCP can help you out? Try WeCP for free or Schedule a Call with us.
