One-Way Video Interviewing Guide: Tools & Best Practices
Traditional, face-to-face interviewing has its place—but recruiters are quickly learning that it isn’t quite as essential as many believed.
One-way video interviews address a number of flaws by offering unmatched flexibility, increased recruiter capacity, cost-effectiveness, inclusive hiring, and a great candidate experience. But to take advantage of these benefits, you’re going to need the right tool.
At Willo, we’ve seen the power of one-way interviewing tools first-hand, with customers like WillowTree reaping massive benefits after switching to Willo from another video interview provider. In this guide, we’ll be offering some insight into the one-way interview process, along with some recommendations for tools.
What Is a One-Way Video Interview?
A one-way video interview, also called an asynchronous interview, is a digital screening process that involves inviting candidates to record themselves answering a series of questions written by a hiring team.
Recruiters can use the asynchronous interview method as a way to define a shortlist of best-fit candidates who will be invited for a live interview to directly engage with the hiring team. On the other hand, some organizations may prefer to use this method as their singular interview screening process.
Benefits of One-Way Video Interviews
Screen more applicants
When you need to screen a high volume of applicants, interview scheduling can be a nightmare, especially if you want to accommodate remote applicants. With one-way video interviews, you won’t have to worry about allocating time to screen individual candidates because you can just review their responses all at once.
Source: How MyTutor Increased Recruiting Capacity And Reduced Overheads
For example, MyTutor was able to increase recruiting capacity by 75% using Willo’s async video interviewing solution.
Improve the hiring team experience
One-way interviews can be a saving grace for your hiring team because it eliminates multiple hours of engaging and sitting through individual interviews. A comprehensive async solution is also beneficial in helping your team collaborate and share feedback to make better hiring decisions.
Source: How Willo Helped Packaly Do The Work of 4 Full-Time Recruiters
For example, Packaly used Willo to save 60 hours of employee time per week without compromising on candidate experience.
Improve candidate experience
As candidates can submit their responses at their convenience (within the stipulated deadline), they have more time to prepare for interviews and review their responses in real-time.
They also won’t be burdened with the nerves that accompany speaking in front of a group of intimidating hiring managers, ensuring that they feel more comfortable fully expressing their knowledge and experiences.
Gain better insight into candidates
In an async video interview, candidates have more flexibility to provide in-depth insights on their soft skills, personality traits, and attention to detail. This allows recruiting managers to better identify unique and relevant characteristics that are beneficial for the job opening.
One-way interviews are also more fair than live interviews because they standardize this screening step of the application process. Candidates get a consistent interview experience and essentially the same treatment, allowing for a more fair assessment that can be quantified with features like Willo Scorecards.
How to Conduct One-Way Video Interviews With Willo
Step 1: Preparation
Preparation involves creating and curating the questions your team will use to screen candidates in the interview.
You can create questions from scratch, seek inspiration in one of Willo’s interview questions guides, or use our question generator to generate questions tailored to the job you’re hiring for.
Once you’ve crafted your questions, use Willo to create async interviews. You can choose from a range of response-types (video, audio, text, and file upload) and configure options for time limits and deadlines. You’ll also want to create a scorecard for each role.
Step 2: Invite candidates
Next, it’s time to invite candidates to the interview. Willo will automatically generate sharing links for each candidate which can be sent via email, text message, or any other communication method. You can also integrate your ATS to automate this process entirely.
Step 3: Review responses & shortlist candidates
Once responses start rolling in, you can monitor progress and review submissions in real-time. With Willo, you can rate candidates on their responses using the custom scorecard you designed earlier.
We also offer powerful collaboration features like Showcase™, which allows you to gather feedback on async interviews from any internal stakeholder. Shortlist candidates and store notes for reference during the next step of your hiring process.
Step 4: Make a decision
The final step is to select your candidate(s). Whether you’re using async interviewing as a screening tool or as your primary interview method, once you’ve narrowed down your options, it’s time to make a decision.
Reach out to the candidates who you’re interested in hiring and let them know if they’ve been successful.
5 Best One-Way Video Interviewing Tools
- Willo
- HireVue
- Spark Hire
- Hireflix
- InterviewStream
1. Willo
Willo is a candidate screening platform that helps companies save time and make more confident hiring decisions.
Source: Software Suggest
Willo helps you easily set up asynchronous video interviews and screen up to thousands of candidates. You can collect video, audio, text, or file responses, set time limits and deadlines, and review responses at your own pace.
Relevant features
- Question Generator: When you’re struggling to think of relevant interview questions to ask candidates for specific roles, Willo can automatically suggest them for you based on what you’re looking for.
- Showcase™: Willo makes it easy to create shortlists and share promising interviews with any internal stakeholder. Use their feedback to add as much context as you need, and make sure every hiring decision is made with consensus.
- Identity Verification: Willo’s IDV features ensure that each of your interviewees is eligible to work for you. Integrate digital right-to-work and background checks into your assessment process, and you’ll receive a certified report supported by the UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (UKDIATF).
- Scorecards: Willo is rolling out a feature that enables you to build multiple, customized Scorecards in your Willo dashboard. From there, you can assign a Scorecard to a specific interview, making it easier for your hiring team to rank candidates’ performance and compare performances across candidates (either as a group or 1:1).
- Integrations: Link Willo with other tools in your recruitment stack (like your ATS or calendar). Willo’s integrations make sure that no data is lost in the transitions between platforms, and that you can add async interviewing features to your existing tools.
Pricing
Willo has a free-forever plan that supports one job and up to ten responses monthly.
All our paid plans—Launch ($68/month), Growth ($187/month), Scale ($299/month), and Enterprise (custom)—support unlimited responses.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Simple process of writing and organizing interviews
- Easily accessible to your candidates
- Over 5,000 integrations including ATS’s like Workday, Greenhouse, and Teamtailor
- Fully browser-based and works on any device
- Customizable to your brand
- Designed to be scalable enough to handle growth
Cons
- Free forever plan is limited to 10 responses
2. HireVue
HireVue is a video interviewing software that’s tailored to large enterprises with frequent hiring needs.
Relevant features
- Interview builder: Built-in automated interview building tools provide you with structured interview questions, templates, and evaluation guides.
- Virtual assistant: HireVue offers an AI-powered virtual assistant that can perform an initial screen of candidates and leave messages for them via SMS and WhatsApp.
- Interview assessments: You can include game-based and technical assessments in your live and pre-recorded interviews to enhance engagement.
Pricing
HireVue offers two pricing plans. The Essential plan is priced at $35,000 per month for a company with 2,500-7,500 employees and the Enterprise plan is custom pricing for companies with over 7,500 employees.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Great video quality
- Seamless video interview storage
- Digital videos are easy to share with other stakeholders
- Reliable support team
Cons (based on TrustRadius reviews)
- Pricey and built for large teams with at least 2,500 employees
- No place to make notes on individual candidates
3. Spark Hire
Spark Hire is a video interviewing solution that supports one-way interviews.
Relevant features
- Live video interview recording: Spark Hire supports live video interviews which can be recorded and re-watched by other hiring team members.
- Interview evaluation features: Team members can rate and comment on candidate interviews, as well as document rejection reasons within the platform for easy collaboration.
- Collaboration: With a branded interview landing page, you can share interviews with an unlimited number of hiring managers and collect instant feedback. There’s no need to log in, and all candidate information is anonymized.
Pricing
Spark Hire offers three paid pricing plans. The Lite plan is priced at $149/month (unlimited interviews for 1 job), the Pro plan is priced at $299/month (unlimited interviews for 5 jobs), and the Growth plan is priced at $499/month (unlimited interviews for 10 jobs).
Pros & cons
Pros
- Easily create text-based or video-based questions
- Instant notifications when a candidate completes an interview
- Integrates with scheduling platforms like Google, iCloud, Outlook.com, for live interviewing
- Over 40 integrations with ATS’s
Cons (based on TrustRadius reviews)
- Could use a captions feature and translations to make it more inclusive
- Not enough control in candidate communications
4. Hireflix
Hireflix is a minimalistic and user-friendly tool that exclusively focuses on one-way video interviews. It doesn’t require any logins and works worldwide on all browsers and all devices.
Relevant features
- Record questions: You can record intro and outro videos for your interviews, as well as add a video for each question if that’s your preference.
- Customize timing: Hireflix allows you to set timers for candidates to think about and answer your questions. You’ll also be able to set the amount of retakes each candidate is allowed.
- Automated communications: Hireflix automates email, SMS, and WhatsApp messaging, so you can quickly notify candidates about their interview results.
Pricing
Hireflix offers a 30-day free trial on all plans.
The Small plan, for companies with less than 50 employees, is priced at $150/month, and the Medium plan, for companies with 50–250 employees, is priced at $300/month. If you prefer to be billed annually, the monthly prices are reduced by 50%.
A custom plan is available for recruitment agencies and organizations that need to hire at scale.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Include videos in your questions
- Individual and bulk shareable links
- Multi-language options
- Easy to use
- Reliable customer support
Cons (based on TrustRadius reviews)
- Could use more personalization options in the communication emails
5. InterviewStream
InterviewStream is a video interviewing software that offers capabilities for both live and async interviews.
Relevant features
- Pre-interview tests: Make sure candidates are well-prepared with pre-interview practice tests and recording tests.
- Re-attempt questions: Allow candidates to re-attempt specific questions (useful for technical interviews).
- Customizable branding: Add your company’s branding to pre-recorded interviews.
Pricing
You’ll need to contact the sales team for pricing information.
Pros & cons
Pros
- Easy to use with useful integrations
- AI question suggestions
- Invite internal and external raters to access interviews
- Support team is reliable
Cons (based on GetApp reviews)
- Email invitations could be more intuitive
- Mobile app is outdated
Experience the Power of One-Way Interviewing With Willo
Move forward beyond traditional hiring methods by incorporating helpful and powerful asynchronous video interviewing tools (like Willo!) into your recruitment process. You’ll be able to make data-driven decisions, increase recruiter capacity, improve candidate engagement, and choose better candidates.
Take your candidate interviews to the next level. Sign up for free today.
