Top Tips For Using Video Interviews To Screen Candidates

By Tony Restell

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Leanne Goodwin InterviewI recently had the opportunity to interview Leanne Goodwin of Jobwise.

Now we've all had to get used to remote meetings these last months - and the job interviewing process is no exception!

But will we ever go back to face-to-face job interviews, or are the upsides of video interviewing so great that this will be a pivotal moment when this technology is adopted en masse?

Leanne's team have adopted and embraced video interviewing - and offered to share some of their experiences and tips for making the switch to video job interviews. Hope you get some great insights from this short video interview.

Watch the full interview

Here's the full video, a transcript of which follows underneath


Interview Transcript - TOP TIPS FOR USING VIDEO INTERVIEWS TO
SCREEN CANDIDATES

Delighted to be joined today by Leanne Goodwin, Managing Director at Jobwise and Leanne is going to be talking to us all about video interviewing tips and techniques.

So Leanne, thanks ever so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Tony.

Thank you very much for letting me talk today, much appreciated.

My pleasure.

Would you like to just tell people a little bit about yourself and your business?

Yeah, of course.

Jobwise has got 41 years experience within the recruitment sector.

I have been with the company for 27 years.

Been in my position as Managing Director for the last 12 of those 27 years, predominantly based out of the North West.

But we cover the whole of the UK, mainly white- collar employees.

Multi-sector, temporary and permanent staffing solutions.

Brilliant.

And you've been making a lot of use of video interviewing.

What have your experiences been of using that to screen candidates?

Yeah, absolutely.

We were catapulted into this new way of working remotely back in March and whilst we had adopted video platforms as part of our business service offering.

It was never featured as a main part, which obviously it has done since March.

But it's given us lots of exciting opportunity as well.

So you know when recruiting you're suddenly looking at a huge pool of candidates, potentially to fill a job rather than someone who can commute to an office or a place of work, all of a sudden in theory you could have anyone doing a job for you anywhere in the UK, and the World.

So the whole opportunity on offer to hiring companies is immense.

Absolutely.

If you were going to share some tips with other companies thinking of using video interviews, what would be some of the things that you would stress?

Yeah, absolutely.

Our new, we are offering a new called Jobwise Advantage offering, service offering which pretty much embraces new tech, and this is proving 60% more effective and cutting time to hire by 50% for our clients.

I think you know the whole concept of interviewing somebody like this over Zoom, or any platform makes it a lot easier, there's no commute, time-saving elements and also panel interviews you can have a number of people interviewing a candidate remotely... quite quickly and easily and rather than sending just a CV, a piece of paper that we did historically prior to the 23rd March.

We are actually sending clips of videos of each candidate through to the client to then short-list for a second interview.

So it's actually much more effective having it this way rather, than just sending a CV.

Interesting.

So that's actually allowing you to value add to your clients and speed up the hiring process as well do you think?

Without a doubt 50% faster and we've placed a number of people since

March using this platform and we're certainly very excited about it, and our clients seem to be very excited about it.

I think it doesn't necessarily take away the final stage of possibly meeting face to face, but we have had examples of actually candidates being onboarded remotely as well as interviewed remotely.

So the whole process can be done, you know it really can and people have proven to be able to do that.

Where needs must.

Absolutely.

So I guess one of the things that maybe puts people off using this kind of video interview format is thinking of what kinds of questions to put to candidates.

To get the kind of insights and be able to decide who to proceed with, who not to proceed with - any particular questions that you would throw out there that work really well?

Absolutely, obviously, that's why I've been asked on today, to talk about the questions that would be useful.

But I think before you get to the questions, I think preparation is key for both the interviewer and the interviewee.

So don't try to wing it, bit of a Northern saying that maybe, but don't try to wing it.

Prepare your technology. Have a backup plan.

Minimise distractions, look professional, come prepared. Just like you would for a normal interview.

You'd arrive 15 minutes early for a normal interview, the same goes online.

Be there early. Be the first on the meeting, ready with a glass of water and then obviously the questions that you would ask from the interviewer would be job related.

So if the job is working in an office, I see no reason to ask different questions than you would if you were doing a face to face interview.

So some really good questions, 'Walk me through your life so far.' Is always quite an interesting one to ask.

Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses, which is a bit typical so a different way of asking that could be rephrased as, 'What part of the job description or the role do you feel you might need more help with?'

'What training do you need?' And the typical questions like, 'Why do you want the job?'

'Why do you see yourself working here?', 'What can you offer us?'

I think a really good question that I always ask is,

'What is your biggest challenge that you have overcome in your work life but also your personal life?'

Because I think that indicates to me that they are problem solvers, or do they steer away from challenges?

Do you want somebody with that determined attitude that can overcome obstacles?

So that's a good question to ask.

But then, I think if you are interviewing for somebody to work remotely.

Drilling down on their experience of working remotely is really, really important.

So asking them questions such as, 'Have you got experience of working remotely?'

'What was it like?'

Because I think people, I've found that people like the thought of working from home or working remotely.

But the reality, sometimes is a bit different.

So you really need to find out, if they have thought about it.

Have they got an office set up at home?

Have they got any distractions?

Have they got good internet?

What are they going to do around the set-up?

I think that's really, really key.

And if somebody's got experience with that, I think that that's a great thing, because I think often the reality is different to the thought of it.

Absolutely.

Leanne some really helpful insights there today.

Thank you ever so much.

If people would like to find out more about your business or get in touch, is there a website address you'd like to share or phone number, anything like that?

Absolutely.

It's quite simply, jobwise.co.uk

I am on LinkedIn as well.

So, Jobwise, Leanne Goodwin on Jobwise and my phone number is 07968 751 066

Just as a final thing, if I may Tony.

Something that I didn't mention earlier is sort of asking them what side projects they're working on as well as working remotely can be lonely, so if they've got other interests in the local community, it actually helps them become less burned-out and less hermit-like, so I think that's also important.

I should have mentioned that earlier.

Some brilliant tips and advice, Leanne.

Thanks ever so much and have a great rest of week everyone.

Thank you, and you Tony.

Thanks very much.

Bye for now.

Bye.

About the company...

The team at Social Hire won't just do social media management. Our team work with you to ensure your business sees great value from the service and that your team gets tangible results.

We're a company that helps our customers further their social media presence by providing social media marketing on a monthly basis.

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