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Hiring
The Complete Guide to Video Assessments & Video Interviews
There’s more to an excellent remote work hiring process than simply re-creating your face-to-face processes digitally. An effective hiring process for remote jobs requires new, innovative ways to assess and engage candidates. That’s where video assessment tests and interviews come into play.
Incorporating video tools into your remote hiring process gives you opportunities you didn’t traditionally have when hiring in an office setting. Candidates can interact with video software in ways they can’t during in-person interviews and assessments.
Here’s how to incorporate video assessment tests and interviews with purpose and intention.
What Is a Video Assessment Test?
Video assessment tests are valid and reliable tests delivered as videos or via screen sharing. Candidates can access video assessment tests from anywhere they have a stable internet connection. Typically, candidates participate in these assessments and interviews asynchronously and on their own time, allowing for greater accessibility across time zones.
Types of Video Assessments
Video Interviews
Video interviews provide preselected, standardized questions to candidates. Aon’s video assessment solution is delivered asynchronously, allowing candidates to respond on their own time. Candidates can listen to the questions to ensure comprehension before recording and submitting their responses. The asynchronous format also enables hiring managers to review the recording without being influenced by a live one-on-one interview.
Situational Judgment Tests
In situational judgment tests, candidates are called upon to interact with colleagues, customers or other characters via a simulation. Video is a powerful format for giving candidates a glimpse of the role in a way that job descriptions simply can’t. Situational judgment tests help set expectations for the role and for company culture.
Live Screen Share
Some video assessments are delivered via live screen share. Aon’s coding interview assessments, for example, allow candidates to solve coding problems in real-time while interviewers observe. In lieu of traditional interview questions, these types of video assessments enable hiring managers to see candidates in action.
3 Elements of a Remote Work Hiring Process
Hiring remote workers requires changes in your hiring processes. Here are three essential elements of hiring processes for remote positions, as well as how video assessment tests can support your remote hiring strategy.
Virtual Accessibility
One of the primary benefits of a remote hiring process is that it opens access to fully remote talent. However, to reap that benefit, your virtual hiring process must be truly accessible for remote job seekers and optimized for remote-first delivery.
As you develop video assessment tests, keep regional laws in mind. Find a video assessment vendor who understands and can operate within regional jurisdictions across your hiring area.
Logistically, make your video interview and assessment software available via smartphones or other mobile devices. Not everyone has access to a desktop computer, and many candidates prefer to complete the hiring process through their mobile devices.
Intentional Human Connection
In an entirely remote hiring process, you need to incorporate intentional human touchpoints. In a face-to-face process, human interactions are incidental, not planned. Candidates speak to recruiters at job expos and come into the office for several rounds of interviews. Because remote hiring processes won’t create incidental human encounters, you’ll need to engineer them.
Video assessment, especially video interviewing, allows you to incorporate human connection in a way that makes sense and supports your hiring process. Candidates can watch videos from company leaders to get a feel for their personality, allowing candidates to decide whether they’d be a good fit for the company culture.
A Coherent Remote-First Strategy
Your remote hiring process should be part of a larger remote-first strategy. Align your goals for the process with your overarching strategic goals, and always call back to specific business outcomes.
As you design your remote work culture, for example, build these components into your hiring process. A remote culture that encourages employees to transparently show their work might benefit from incorporating a live screen share video assessment.
How to Add Video Assessments to Your Remote Hiring Process
Implement video assessment tests with intention. Here’s how to make the most of video assessments in your remote work hiring process.
Set Goals for Video Assessment Tests
Set clear, specific goals for using video assessment tests in your remote hiring process. Your goals should be time-bound and tied to clear metrics, such as raising the quality of candidates hired by 25 percent by the end of the next six months.
Video assessments are best for delivering situational judgment tests, live screen shares and interview processes. Determine the right blend of formats you need to assess candidates successfully and communicate your brand to applicants.
Think about your digital work-from-home processes. Prioritize video assessments that mimic real-life scenarios as closely as possible. Doing so allows candidates to experience what working from home at your company might be like and helps you determine whether that candidate is a good choice given how work is accomplished.
Think about your overarching hiring and talent goals, too. Do you intend to have a majority remote workforce by the end of five years? Do you need more candidates working remotely from around the globe to appeal to an international consumer base? Answer any questions that arise when your remote hiring processes intersect with your talent strategy.
Implement Assessments With Intention
Don’t implement video assessment because it’s trending. Be clear on what you’re measuring and how the data you gather this way supports your hiring decision.
Map out what traits, skills and competencies each role requires, and then evaluate video assessment options for pinpointing those qualities in candidates. Consider the qualities you need to determine whether candidates are a good fit for the company culture, work style, and structure.
By implementing assessments only when they serve a clear purpose, you can streamline your remote hiring process. Don’t require anything from candidates that doesn’t result in better, more objective decision-making.
Measure Your Success
Evaluate the success of your video assessment tests against the goals you set at the beginning of the process. Are the video tests you’ve implemented truly measuring the traits, skills and competencies you need in each role and your company? Is your video interview software producing the results you need from virtual hiring processes?
If you haven’t met your goals for implementing video assessment tests, step back and re-evaluate your objectives. You might need to update your goals to be more realistic or modify them to take your remote hiring process in a new direction.
3 Benefits of Video Interviews for Remote Hiring
Video interviews open new opportunities for your remote hiring process. You can connect with candidates across geographic borders and produce more objective hiring results. Here’s how video interviews support your remote hiring process.
Improved Hiring Outcomes
Video interviews give HR more control over the interview process. Live face-to-face interviews are especially susceptible to bias. Hiring managers who haven’t been trained as interviewers are at greater risk of going off-script and asking questions that could elicit personal information they don’t need to know.
A video interview, delivered asynchronously, relies on preset questions so that each candidate has the same experience. Since each candidate is answering the same questions, they can be scored objectively against each other — without the hiring manager’s interactions creating opportunities for bias.
AI-Supported Insights
Video interview software delivers recorded interview responses that hiring managers and other stakeholders can evaluate. Using AI-supported software, you can gain insights that would be challenging for human recruiters and hiring managers alone.
Aon’s video assessment solution, for example, converts video responses from speech to text and then applies a natural language processing artificial intelligence for scoring results. This process focuses on the content of candidate responses instead of factors that aren’t relevant to their ability to perform the job.
Better Candidate Experience
Providing an excellent end-to-end candidate experience, from career site to the onboarding process, is a powerful differentiator for your employer brand. Candidates are bombarded with employment choices, so companies that offer a positive or unique experience will stand out from the competition.
Video interviews support a better candidate experience. Delivering an asynchronous interview process directly to a candidate’s mobile device increases convenience. Candidates don’t have to access a computer to participate, and they can respond to the interview questions on their own time.
Prepare for the Future with Video Assessment Tests
More companies are using remote hiring and incorporating it into their talent strategies. Curating a hiring process for remote jobs today will prepare you to scale remote hiring into the future. And that sets your company up for success now and going forward.
Adding video assessments and interviews to your remote hiring process early in your remote work evolution gives you an edge over competitors in your industry.
Aon | Assessment Solutions
Aon's assessment solutions provides clients with powerful tools and insights to help them make better talent decisions at every stage of the employee lifecycle. This includes pre-hire assessments, identifying future leaders, screening for digital skills and agility, and AI-enabled solutions.