How On Demand Video Interviews Help Recruiters Streamline Hiring

They say that time is money, but money can’t buy time. And you know what? They’re right.

For hiring teams, both sides of this proverbial coin can be quite painful. Resources—people and financial—are limited, and when roles go unfilled because recruiting processes are cumbersome, the work feels heavier, more expensive, and slower.

This is particularly true for teams seeking to fill roles in high-volume and/or high-turnover arenas. For instance, manufacturing and retail recruiters are often tasked with filling many open roles at once, including backfilling roles frequently vacated by talent on the move.

Balancing dozens of phone screens and tracking candidate insights accordingly can get overwhelming and disorganized quickly. Losing time to no-answers or no-shows is costly and, plainly, frustrating.

But, there’s an upside: this is an ideal environment for on demand video interviews, which can help give recruiters their time back—without sacrificing the candidate experience.

What Are On Demand Video Interviews?

Screening via on demand video interviews (also called one-way video interviews) is simple. Recruiters send candidates an invitation to participate in an interview via email or link. Candidates can then, at their convenience, jump into the interviewing site, where they find provided questions and are prompted to record themselves speaking their responses.

The candidate’s recorded answers are then logged for the recruiters via their recruiting platform, where they can review the videos, share with the hiring team, and record feedback.

From there, with hiring team feedback incorporated and stored in a single, secure place, candidates can be moved to the next step—whether it’s a live video interview, evaluation or skill assessment, or in-person interview—in significantly less time.

Why On Demand Interviews Save Time and Eliminate Scheduling Chaos

Video interviews help simplify the screening process for recruiters and candidates simultaneously by:

• Eliminating calendar coordination: Because candidates can complete these video interviews on-demand, there’s no need to slow things down by trying to align schedules.
• Minimizing phone tag: Sending invites, recording interview responses, and reviewing them all happen digitally—no missed calls or garbled voicemails.
• Offering greater ease of use: For both parties, connecting and sharing information is much simpler than over the phone—and the right video platform will offer an intuitive UI, from interview and review to collaboration.

And recruiters, specifically, can be confident in delivering a flexible, accessible candidate experience while benefitting from their own ability to:

• Review more candidates, faster: You can send out many invitations at once, then review responses as they come in—no need to try pack a dozen phone screens into one unscheduled afternoon.
• Deliver more consistent evaluations: Because all candidates are responding to the same standard questions, and their responses can be viewed in the same format, it’s much easier to keep track of each applicant and take an objective look at everyone.
• Facilitate easy collaboration: Within the video interview platform, recruiters can share candidate information with and make their responses visible to other members of the hiring team—and collect everyone’s feedback in one place. It’s tidy, it can be done asynchronously, and it’s a secure, centralized location to store all of this information for further reference.

Stand Out with a Candidate Experience That Works

Back to the candidate experience for a moment, because it matters. On demand video interviews may feel foreign at first, but they have significant benefits for candidates as well as recruiters.

For example:

• Flexibility: With on demand video interviewing, candidates can record their responses anytime, anywhere—between their current job schedule, time zone differences, caregiving duties, school obligations, or anything else that commands their daily schedule.
• Low pressure: During the video interview process, candidates are given time to prepare their answers before recording. Anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. And, if allowed, they can re-record to put their best foot forward.
• Respectful of time: This option for screening is a great way to show candidates that your company values their time as much as your own—not only because of the flexibility provided, but because it helps reduce time-to-hire. Many candidates will be thrilled with the ability to respond to a screening invitation quickly rather than waiting a week for a phone call.

Use Cases That Make On Demand Video Interviews a No-Brainer

Video interviewing is a positive, efficient, and effective recruiting solution in many situations—but there are a few circumstances where it really shines:

• High-volume roles: Filling roles for a new retail opening? Managing recruitment for a multi-location healthcare system? Bringing new, top talent into school district or customer service location? On demand interviewing is perfect for helping you source and screen a lot of candidates as quickly as possible.
• Campus recruiting: When you’re looking for interns or entry-level hires and on-campus recruitment is part of your strategy, giving promising candidates a link to a video screening is a great way to follow up immediately while their interest is high.
• First-round technical or behavioral screening: Recorded video interviews can be exceptionally valuable in delivering more holistic first impressions of candidates, giving you a chance to ask direct and straightforward questions in a consistent and fair manner.
• Hiring fairs and career events: Video interviews provide an excellent follow-up mechanism for candidates you meet at job fairs or career events. Instead of collecting resumes and losing momentum, you can immediately provide interested candidates with a video interview link, allowing them to complete their screening while the connection and enthusiasm from your in-person interaction is still fresh.
• Multi-location or remote hiring teams: Whether you’re recruiting from afar or placing talent in fully remote roles, on demand video screenings can help you attract and engage talent from anywhere.

Getting Started is Easier Than You Think

Moving from traditional phone screenings to on demand video screenings seems like a big paradigm shift. But the good news is that setting up a video interviewing system can be a guided, straightforward process. You’ll be able to quickly gather accurate and insightful impressions of your candidates, and with on-brand video intros and other customizable features, you can give them the same in return.

interviewstream, for example, is designed to help you hit the ground running:

1. Set up your account with company branding and team access.
2. Create an interview for the roles you’re hiring.
3. Add an intro and outro message to introduce candidates to your company and give them next step expectations.
4. Launch and start sending interview links to candidates.

Bonus: if you’re using an ATS, our team can help you set up the integration with your existing hiring system.

You’ll end up with a candidate experience that looks and feels like an extension of your brand, is tailored to meet the needs of your hiring process and team, and facilitates easy sharing and collaborating with internal stakeholders.

Jump into On-Demand Video Interviewing

Hiring doesn’t have to be a full-time firefight. Your work matters as much as the work in every role you find talent to fill. On demand video screenings can be an ideal tactic for minimizing logistical hurdles, helping you focus on the tasks that matter most, screen more efficiently, and make better first-round decisions.

To learn more about interviewstream’s platform, see Interview on Demand in action. You can also download the ROI of Video Interviewing eBook to dive deeper.

About The Author

Megan is an Account Executive at interviewstream and has been with the company since 2022. She loves spending time with her family and can rarely go a day without coffee and a good audiobook.