Recruiters have been regarded as the pillars of talent sourcing, sifting through many resumes and conducting interviews only to find the right talent for specific roles. But even as competition for jobs continues to increase, the number of applications received can be such that early-stage screenings can be extremely frustrating. For most recruiters, live video interviews— typically used in assessing candidates— have been a bane and a blessing. They enable users to determine a candidate’s character and soft skills but do not add much value to the complexities of the entire strategy as they are time-consuming.
This is where automated video interviews step in, aiding recruiters in transforming the way they do initial candidate screenings. They remove the bounds of location and time and allow the recruitment teams to do what matters the most— find the most talented individuals who would suit the organization best.
The Challenge: Time-Intensive Initial Interviews
When recruitment is well underway, the next phase requires reviewing multiple, even hundreds of applications amongst interested parties. When candidates are shortlisted, the stage requires recruiters to conduct live video interviews to evaluate the candidates’ communication skills, cultural fit, soft skills, and overall fit and experience. While valuable, this process comes with significant challenges:
- Time Drain: Most times in the day, recruiters’ focus is on scheduling and conducting live video interviews of multiple candidates which is resource-dependent and time-consuming. This doesn’t allow recruiters to focus on more valuable activities such as talent strategy formulation and employer brand-building activities.
- Scaling Problems: As the number of candidates increases, it becomes impossible to coordinate live meetings for every applicant.
- Missed Opportunities for Deep Analysis: Recruiters may often spend time administering routine, repetitive tasks that eat their bandwidth and prevent them from leveraging candidate data to gain meaningful insights and make data-driven decisions.
Automated Video Interviews: A Game-Changer for Recruiters
Automated video interviews are transforming the way early-stage candidate screening is conducted. Automated video interviews replace live interviews with pre-recorded candidate responses, allowing the interviewers to utilize their time more efficiently, while still obtaining essential relevant information regarding the candidates.
- Flexibility for Recruiters and Candidates: The ease of automated video interviews is perhaps their most prominent advantage. It is now possible for candidates to record their answers whenever they like, therefore, removing the complex, and lengthy interview scheduling process. Likewise, such recorded videos are also watched by the recruiters when convenient for them, allowing them to manage their time efficiently.
For instance, a recruiter handling a high volume of candidates can review pre-recorded video responses when it is less busy, so the other critical activities are not affected. This flexibility enhances effectiveness without putting the screening process on the back burner. - Standardized Screening for Objective Evaluation: Automated video interviews administer the same set of questions to the candidates, which makes the screening as uniform as it can get. This reduces bias and creates a more level playing field for candidates. Recruiters can assess and evaluate the same pool of applicants on equal grounds which translates to more impartial choices for hiring in the first place.
- Time Savings at Scale: Automated video interviews may be self-recorded by the clients on their own time which is perhaps the single most revolutionary aspect of this form of interview. Rather than having to spend hours in live interviews, recruiters simply watch recorded responses with little effort. A lot of recruitment automation platforms even include features such as keyword tagging, AI-based highlights, and sentiment analysis, helping recruiters identify the most promising applicants quickly.
For instance, in the past, a recruiter may have used thirty minutes for a live interview, but now they simply need ten minutes to watch a pre-recorded response. If we apply this same reasoning to many other candidates, the time savings become significant. - Enhanced Candidate Insights: Automated video interview platforms offer meaningful and actionable candidate insights to recruiters, leading to best recruiting practices. More than what candidates say, their body language and tone of voice can also be evaluated. All these screening methods make it easier to assess not only the professional skills of the candidates but also their suitability to the company’s values.
Addressing Concerns Around Automated Video Interviews
Despite the benefits that come with automated video interviews, some recruiters and candidates may not be willing to adopt this technology however addressing these issues is critical for successful adoption:
- Candidate Experience: Pre-recorded interviews may leave some candidates feeling that they are not engaged with the recruitment process. To avoid this challenge, the recruitment team or companies need to ensure the aim of the automated interview is understood in the context of elevating the efficiency and fairness of hiring practices.
- Bias in AI Features: If AI-powered recruitment platforms are used for conducting automated video interviews, recruiters should be very careful about the occurrence of hiring biases. They must ensure regular audits and be transparent about AI models would help build trust among the stakeholders.
- Training and Adoption: Most recruitment professionals are not technology savvy and may take time before they become used to automated video interview tools. Properly defining and implementing a change management system, offering knowledgeable training at regular intervals, and demonstrating the benefits of automated video interview tools can ease this transition.
Beyond Screening: The Strategic Potential of Automation
Recruiters can strategically allocate their time to other activities since the first step of interviews is automated. This is how a recruitment process can be supplemented by automation:
- Proactive Talent Sourcing: Recruiters can find sufficient time and dedicate it to developing and managing talent pools that will provide sufficient candidates for future vacancies.
- Data-Driven Decision-Making: Analytics dashboards that have become common for all automation tools enable visualization of applicants and recruitment KPIs. Such meaningful and actionable insights enable recruiters to focus on enhancing job descriptions, sourcing methods, or recognizing stages in the recruitment funnel that cause high drop-off.
- Improved Employer Branding: A hiring firm with a complex recruitment process does not benefit the organization’s image. By automating a major chunk of the recruitment process, recruiters can focus on building a strong employer brand that candidates would associate with a smooth recruitment process and an enhanced candidate experience.
The Future of Candidate Screening
Automated video interviews are already widely used and will continue to expand in the future. They reduce the time taken to screen candidates and ensure that the screening process is effective and unbiased. With NLP, AI tools will have superior capabilities in understanding candidate responses. Also, other AI-powered recruitment tools, like pre-screening chatbots or predictive analytics, will provide a holistic recruitment experience.
For recruiters who are looking for a smarter way to improve their hiring processes, impress.ai offers the most advanced automated recruitment solutions addressing the prevailing recruitment problems. From automated video interviews to AI candidate matching, our platform enables you to shorten and reduce the time to hire, discover great employees, and enhance the candidate experience. Contact us today to find out how we can change your recruitment process.
