As employers continue their efforts to optimize recruiting processes, an asynchronous video interview format has gained traction.
This unique interviewing format paves the way for recruiters to trim hiring costs, reduce the time to hire, mitigate unconscious biases, and gain deeper insights into candidates’ concepts and experience.
In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of asynchronous video interviews, how they’re conducted, and the best practices to facilitate a successful screening.
What is an Asynchronous Screening Video Interview?
An asynchronous video interview (AVI) or asynchronous interview, sometimes also called one-way interview is a screening format where the interviewer and candidate are not on camera simultaneously. Instead, applicants record their answers separately, typically via webcam or smartphone.
Meaning of Asynchronous Video Interview
Recruiters send pre-set questions to candidates and they respond with a video recording within an adequate timeframe. For this reason, candidates with busy schedules tend to prefer the one-way video interview process over other options. Employers benefit immensely as well, as a quick email or text can save them a tremendous deal of time, money, and effort compared to extensive recruitment campaigns.
Artificial intelligence, face recognition technology or even manual reviewing may be used to analyse a candidate's responses.
The interview gives insight into an applicant’s personality traits, problem-solving skills, and decision-making proficiency.
AVIs can be:
- Structured. These interviews follow a premeditated sequence where interviewers prepare a set of standard questions before the interview.
- Unstructured. This format offers candidates more flexibility as the questions are open-ended rather than standardised.
- Semi-structured. A blend of both formats consists of a set of predetermined questions with room for interviewers to improvise the structure.
How do Asynchronous Video Interviews Work?
- Create: The interviewer creates an asynchronous video questions set and specifies the time for each question or the entire interview test for the candidates to answer through video recordings.
- Share: The candidate receives a link getting to this interview session and after clicking on that link the interview opens asking for their details followed by the video test questions.
- Analyse: Once the candidate has submitted the video within the time period, the interviewer receives it promptly and choose to automatically or manually scan through all of them in their free time.
5 Benefits of Asynchronous Video Interviews
Better Candidate Experience
Delivering better candidate experiences is vital to improve your employer branding and incentivising top performers to apply. With asynchronous video interviews, you can schedule the session in a slot that best suits the candidate, even after traditional working hours.
In addition to the increased flexibility, AVIs improve candidates’ experience by:
- Eliminating travel times and costs.
- Allowing candidates to prepare effectively. They can rehearse using a webcam, headset, and digital whiteboard before taking the interview.
- Reducing stress by allowing candidates to take the interview in a comfortable environment.
Improving the candidate’s experiences helps recruiters evaluate applicants at their best.
Create an Inclusive Interview Process
Asynchronous interviews help employers accommodate applicants suffering from physical or geographical restrictions. With an inclusive interview process, you can expand your candidate pool with asynchronous interview by reaching people across borders and socioeconomic status barriers. By increasing the pool of qualified candidates, employers increase their chances of finding the best talent.
Reduce Bias and Improve the Quality of Evaluations
While recruiters can train themselves to eliminate conscious bias, unconscious biases may unknowingly slip in and hinder the authenticity of the hiring process. This problem is prevalent in traditional face-to-face interviews, but AVIs help mitigate unconscious bias.
With asynchronous interviews, employers can create a testing environment solely based on merit, as candidates are evaluated on information-driven factors. Additionally, hiring managers can shortlist candidates who objectively perform well in standardised tests to isolate the best talent.
Reduce Your Hiring Times and Costs
Reducing hiring times and costs is essential to build a sustainable recruitment funnel and avoid losing top talent to your competition. With AVIs, recruiters can trim recruiting costs by eliminating overhead and travel expenses. Additionally, since AVIs are one-way sessions, recruiters can schedule multiple interviews in the same timeframe and optimise bulk assessments, reducing hiring times.
Thus, an asynchronous interview is beneficial not only for your organisation but also for applicants.
Employ a More Rigorous Screening Practices
Leveraging asynchronous video interviews in the screening process helps recruiters evaluate candidates more comprehensively. Unlike live interviews, recorded formats allow recruiters to watch sessions at their own pace and note key factors like communication skills and body language.
Additionally, since AVIs are recorded, recruiters can share the sessions with other teammates to obtain different viewpoints. This practice also helps reduce bias from the interview process. Moreover, for tech roles, in particular, teammates have a clear idea of what skills new candidates should have, so their opinion is valuable for the screening process.
How can Employers do an Asynchronous Video Interview?
Here’s a rundown of everything you need to do to conduct a successful asynchronous video interview.
Step 1: Design Asynchronous Interview Questions Beforehand
To accurately evaluate candidates, recruiters should prepare a list of role-specific questions beforehand. These customised questions should assess a candidate’s suitability for the role; you can customise them based on information candidates share in their resumes or CVs.
Step 2: Prepare Your Video Recording Platform and Set Up a Schedule
Picking the right asynchronous video interview platform is important to ensure the screening process is seamless. In general, employers need platforms that facilitate bulk assessment functionalities and automatic scheduling features (like WeCP).
Step 3: Record the Interview Questions
A good practice is to first introduce yourself to the candidate, explain your role in the company, and briefly discuss the role’s requirements. You can then move on to asking role-specific questions.
Step 4: Invite candidates for the interview
You can invite candidates for the interview using your preferred recruitment platform. Ideally, employers should invite candidates at least 1-2 days in advance, so applicants have time to adjust their schedule.
12 Examples of Asynchronous Video Interview Questions
There are two main categories of asynchronous video interview questions – standard and personalised.
Standard questions are open-ended behavioural or situational questions that the interviewers commonly ask in an interview. The most common asynchronous interview example questions include:
“Tell me about yourself”
The question helps establish the nature and priorities of the candidate. It’s typically the first question an interviewer asks, mainly because it serves as an excellent ice-breaker. In addition, it gives employers insight into the candidate’s personality and cultural fit.
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
The question aims to understand the candidate’s plans for the future, goals, and ambitions. A five-year model shows the determination of the candidate and their strategic thinking in obtaining their long-term goals.
“How would you describe your ideal work environment?”
A straightforward question that helps determine whether the candidate will be a good fit for the company. Asking this question helps evaluate the candidate’s cultural fit
Personalised questions allow employers to learn about applicants’ personalities and skills by offering them optional prompts during the questioning process.
“What makes you the right person for this position?”
Interviewers typically ask this question nearing the end of the interview to establish the candidate’s qualities that can benefit the organization. It also provides background to any professional experience held by the candidate in the same position.
“What are your strengths and weaknesses?”
While the question may appear pretty straightforward, there’s more to it than plain strengths and weaknesses. Employers usually ask this question to determine the candidate’s self-confidence. A strong candidate can list both strengths and weaknesses but also shows an interest in improvement.
“How do you handle conflict?”
Conflict in the workplace is inevitable, which is why the ideal candidate must effectively resolve disputes. The questions help you understand the candidate’s tactics and if they’re only effective in theory.
"Describe a complex technical problem you've faced as though you are talking to a non-tech person.”
This question tests the candidate's ability to communicate complex ideas simply, a crucial skill in many technical roles. It also evaluates their problem-solving experience and creativity.
"If you could design a new feature for any existing technology product, what would it be and how would you implement it?"
This question allows candidates to showcase their innovative thinking, technical knowledge, and understanding of user needs and product development.
"How do you stay updated with the latest trends and advancements in your field?"
This question helps gauge the candidate's commitment to continuous learning and professional development, which is crucial in every role especially technical roles where technologies evolve at immense speeds.
"If you could automate one aspect of your daily life using technology, what would it be and how would you approach building this solution?"
This question encourages candidates to think creatively about applying technical solutions to real-world problems, while also revealing their technical knowledge and problem-solving approach.
"If you were tasked with improving our company's main product, what one change or feature would you implement and why?"
This question allows candidates to demonstrate their understanding of the company's products, their ability to identify areas for improvement, and their innovative thinking.
"Tell me about a project you worked on that failed. What did you learn from the experience, and how would you approach it differently now?"
This question assesses the candidate's ability to reflect on past experiences, learn from failures, and apply those lessons to future work - all important traits in an evolving field.
4 Tips to Conduct a Successful Asynchronous Video Interview
Tip 1: Start the Interview the Right Way
When recording your questions for an asynchronous interview, you also need to be mindful of the other person behind the screen. Instead of jumping into the technical questions right away, give a small introduction of yourself, the company and the position if required to make the interview a little more personal.
Tip 2: Do a Test Run
When conducting an asynchronous video interview, it is essential to take the necessary steps a few days prior to avoid stress and deliver a positive candidate experience. Set up an asynchronous video interview platform in advance and test your connection. It is also a good idea to prepare questions in a logical order to make answering them more convenient for the candidates. Using a high-quality camera setting and ensuring stable internet connections also add to a good candidate experience when attempting the interview.
Tip 3: Ask Personalised, Open-ended Questions
Personalised questions like: “Can you tell me about a time when…” or “Describe a situation where….” allows candidates to showcase unique personality traits, enabling recruiters to learn more about the applicants’ cultural fit, ambitions, and values.
Additionally, you can opt for open-ended questions to give candidates more room to showcase their experience. For example, questions like: “What did you find challenging about this task?” instead of “Did you find this task challenging?” allow interviewees to expand their answers without being limited to yes/no responses.
By asking the right questions, employers can better assess candidates based on deeper insights.
Tip 4: Pick the Perfect Spot
Picking the right spot to record the interview questions is important to improve candidates’ experiences. You should record the questioning in a quiet place without distractions, with good lighting, so candidates receive your video and audio clearly.
Make sure there aren’t any shadows or glare on your camera lens – this will cause poor lighting and bad image quality. Additionally, try recording in a professional setting to avoid distractions that may throw the candidate off-guard.
Tip 5: Share Instructions about the Platform
If you are using an external platform to record and analyse an interview, don’t forget to share instructions about how to use the platform with your candidates as well. This will ensure a smooth navigation for them and eliminate any stress which will contribute to an optimal interviewing experience.
Take Your Tech Hiring to New Heights by Leveraging Skill Assessment Tests
While asynchronous interviews have revolutionised the hiring process, there are certain limitations to it. For a technical job, it’s difficult to determine the candidate’s skillset using a video interview alone. Therefore, employers incorporate skill assessment tests in the hiring process.
Skill tests offer meaningful insight into candidates’ practical abilities. They also improve your hiring process by acting as a filter, ensuring only the top-performers are shortlisted.
Similar to AVIs, skill assessment tests are one-way and can be conveniently conducted online, in bulk. Advanced tech recruiting platforms like WeCP (We Create Problems) let employers assess thousands of candidates simultaneously across 12+ performance metrics.
Additionally, WeCP’s platform comes with integrated video screening software to incorporate an asynchronous video interview in the screening process.
Features of an Asynchronous Video Interview Software
- Asynchronous video interview software doesn’t require the candidate and interviewer to be on the interview session at the same time.
- It allows the candidates to record and submit their interview asynchronously based on video test questions asked in the interview test, in their free time. It also boosts confidence among the candidates as it helps them prepare for their interview well in advance, research on the company and Job Description very well.
How is an Asynchronous Interview Different from a Traditional Video Interview?
In Traditional Video Interview, the interviewer and candidate, both are synchronously communicating on the same video call at the same time.
But, with the growing digital world and immense number of job opportunities, people have started to pivot to asynchronous video interview tests especially when they have to conduct it for mass technical candidates.
Unlike traditional video interviews, it doesn’t require the candidate and interviewer to be present on the call at the same time. This also leads to unbiased candidate selection.
What is the Best Tool for Asynchronous Video Interviews?
Best tool for asynchronous video interviews has the following features:
- Allows both parties to be able to sit for an interview independently in a defined time period.
- Makes the work of recruiters and hiring professionals very easy (especially while hiring for the technical positions).
- Easy and automated mass recruitment for candidates and an unbiased scanning of videos submitted.
WeCP is the best tool for asynchronous video interviews for recruiters and hiring professionals to recruit in mass or for small groups.
→ Read More: 20 Top Technical Skills Assessment Test Tools in 2024
Methods for Assessing Asynchronous Video Interviews
Asynchronous video interviews assessments are done in two following ways:
- Automated Asynchronous Video Interview Assessment: Here, there is a reduction in the efforts and time taken by the interviewer to review, scan and go through all video interviews. Its automated feature works by matching the keywords from the answers spoken by the candidate against the ideal answer model prepared by the recruiter or hiring professional. Another technique is the Machine Learning technique to identify the behaviour of the candidates in the video and align or match with the defined model by the interviewers.
- Human Intervene Asynchronous Video Interview Assessment: Here, the interviewer takes an active part in the interview by asynchronously watch, reviewing and scanning through various kinds of asynchronous video test submissions done by the candidate.
WeCP is an all-in-one tech recruitment solution for tech hiring professionals and recruiters to not only assess skills, but also conduct mass interviews, review video interviews automatically or with human intervention and select candidates based on various KPIs set for the role.
Start acquiring the best tech talent with WeCP, an all-in-one tech recruitment solution now!
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