.svg)
Video interviewing breathes life into applications! It really helps you learn about a candidate’s soft skills, without the expensive interviews. This is why video interview software is so important.
In fact, HR can reduce about 80% of their interview time and save tons of time and money. I would argue that a 1,000-people organisation, can save about $75,000 / year on interviews and achieve better quality recruitment i.e. better matched new hires.
But understanding the features that you want, and the real cost for your business is critical in making sure the product you’re thinking of buying is both affordable and will meet your vision.
Here are 5 tips for choosing the right product with the right price!
Tip #1 – Recorded Interviews (the real video interviews)
Video interviews are recorded interviews – not live interviews – that’s something else – see the next point!
What you want is having the answers already there for you – we’re not talking about all the organising hassle to secure a live face time chat. You want to see recorded answers (video interview) sitting right next to the resume in your ATS and ready for you to want to watch it. So as soon as you want to assess an application… you can instantly start playing video answers and understand the soft skills and emotional intelligence of the candidate.
Tip # 2 – Live Interviews
There are so many tools that you can use these days to have a face-time / conference call with a candidate! You don’t need to buy one!
Also with live interviews… you still need lots of time to organise them and sit through them! Especially if you have more than one person conducting the interview.
As a matter of fact, I don’t think that live interviews save recruiters time at all. They might save candidates lots of time… but not the recruiters.
A Video Interview (Recorded interview) would cost a recruiter: 30 seconds.
A Face-time / Conference call interview would cost a recruiter: 1.5 hours.
A face-to-face interview would cost a recruiter: 1.5 hours.
Tip # 3 – Configurable number of retries vs. a single raw cut
There are mixed opinions about this feature – should you let the candidates record as many takes as they want until they’re satisfied they’ve presented themselves and their answer in the best way possible? Or should you give them a single or at most a limited number… of retries to ensure their answer is relatively speaking, more genuine and reflects their personality and belief?
We at MyRecruitment+ think that it’s unfair and unrealistic to expect that an average candidate would feel comfortable enough to deliver and submit their answer in a single take! You will end up losing lots of good candidates!
Tip # 4 – Configurable maximum recording time
I personally believe that the best approach here is to have many questions, but expect short answers. I just don’t think that you want to them to record more than 30 seconds. And, I mean, are you really going to watch that much video time? Many questions X a few minutes for each question X many candidates = TOO MUCH TIME SPENT ON WATCHING VIDEOS! It’s just not going to work! You’ll end up finding it all too hard, and unwatched videos start to pile up!
Keep questions snappy to watch – 30 seconds should be more than enough for a question… and try to ask for up to 10 questions, each covering a different aspect of the soft skills and situational skills that you’re trying to discover.
Tip # 5 – Pricing model – what’s the real damage??
Pay per interview? Per job? Per active job? or simply an unlimited-usage model?
Which pricing model of video interview software is the right model for you?
My goodness… some providers make it absolutely impossible to work it out! And they also make it so you’re always open to going over the limit and get hit with expensive penalties. Please watch out for that and analyse the pricing model really well before you commit!
How do you want to use it?
Do you want every application to have video recordings? or do you want only a small proportion of the candidates who apply to be invited to complete video interviews?
During the application process
If you want your application form to contain one or more video questions… then you should consider the unlimited usage model. Because any other model will end up costing you too much. The unlimited-usage model will most likely be the most cost-effective model for you.
NOTE: Not every video interview software product is going to allow you to plug video questions in your application form – most of them have limitations and will only allow you to send an invitation to the candidates to record their video interviews after they’ve completed the application process. Not the best way of doing it, and so you need to make sure you understand how it would work for you.
In our MyRecruitment+ platform, for example, we’ve deconstructed the Video Interviews capability and made it very agile and flexible for users to plug this capability i.e. gather video interviews… throughout the various stages 0f their recruitment process. You can, for example, add 3 video questions on page 2 of the application form and 1 question on page 3 and of course mix them amongst the rest of the questions on your application form such as drop downs, text and others.
At a later stage in the recruitment process
If you want to be more selective about it and only allow a candidate who progresses down the recruitment process to record a video interview, then your volume will be a lot less and perhaps the pack approach might be more cost effective for you.
What’s the penalty when you go over the limit of your package?
Some providers have so many different limitations all at once that makes impossible to work out which one gives you exactly what you need – actually it’s impossible – they engineer their packages in such a way that there is a high chance that you will go over your package limits and then: you start to pay the penalty – this is the extremely high rate that you get charged for the interviews that you use on top of the limit of your existing package – you’ll find that their model is designed where most of their profit margin comes from those penalty rate videos. Say you chose the “5 active jobs” package and for whatever reason, you need to open a 6th job… you’ll be paying for the 6th one at such a high rate that your standard monthly spending could double just for that one extra job.
So be careful – there are some very tricky models out there.
Use Video Interview Software for your business
If you’d like to find out if video interviews make sense for your company, then you’re welcome to start a free-plan account in our platform and have a play at your own time.
The MyRecruitment+ free plan gives you full access to the “Video Interviews” functionalities! So start an account and you’re absolutely welcome to reach out to me or to support if you need a hand discovering how to use it.
Until next time!
Blog comments