9 benefits of asynchronous video interviews.

What are asynchronous video interviews?

Asynchronous video interviews – also known as pre-recorded video interviews, offline video interviews, and on-demand video interviews – are interviews where candidates record themselves answering pre-determined questions. The questions you ask might be written, audio, or video and they’re usually tailored to your industry or role.  

Answers are typically then analysed using AI and machine learning – for example, to prioritise top performers – before recruiters and sometimes hiring managers step in.

Asynchronous video interviews were already popular before COVID-19, often as an alternative to traditional phone screening. They’ve long been a mainstay for volume recruiters and graduate recruiters.  

Read more: What roles do video interviews work best for?

Now they’re a mainstay for many more businesses, thanks to mass adoption of virtual recruitment software during the pandemic. Even where teams are now transitioning back to face-to-face interviewing, more than half of employers say they’ll keep using video interviews.

Let’s look at why that makes sense.

9 benefits of asynchronous video interviews

In essence, asynchronous video interviews give you a richer perspective on applicants, more quickly. So you can hire better, faster.

1.  Hire faster - Video interviewing is much faster than live interviewing because it involves much less input from recruiters.

Look at high volume recruitment, where you might have hundreds of applicants for each role. Without offline video interviews, you’d have to run heaps of telephone interviews to get beyond applicants’ CV, each of which might take 20-minutes plus endless scheduling admin. Plus collating and discussing feedback on each.

With video interviews, you develop one set of questions upfront and then issue to every applicant you want to hear more from. If your video interviewing platform comes with an editable question library and templates, that process is even faster.

2.  Improve quality-of-hire - On average, recruiters look at CVs for only seven seconds. Of course, when you eventually make hiring decisions you’ve spent much longer assessing candidates. But those seven seconds determine who’s in consideration or out.

Do you back yourself not to miss good people, in seven seconds? Not to make decisions based on CV formatting skills, rather than talent? And what about understanding all-important soft skills?

Asynchronous video interviews give you much richer data than a seven second CV skim, with barely more effort. Ultimately so you can improve the quality of people you’re bringing into the business.

3.  Improve fairness - Pre-recorded video interviews give you time and space to consider your interview questions fully, then standardise them. That means you’ve got a better chance of creating fair, inclusive questions to start with – and you deliver the same questions consistently to everyone, which helps reduce interviewer bias.

It means you’re not relying on individual interviewers to deliver the right questions in the right way – in the same way – for everyone. It’s a much fairer and more objective way to interview.

4.  Enable remote hiring - One of the biggest impacts of COVID-19 has been the seismic shift towards remote work. McKinsey predict up to 5x more remote work could happen post-pandemic than pre-, for example. This’ll demand sweeping process and technology change, and recruitment isn’t exempt.

Investing into asynchronous video interviewing technology is a simple change that enables remote hiring.

5.  Expand talent pools - If you only interview (or hire) candidates who’re located geographically close to you, you’re limiting your talent pool dramatically. Given more than 90% of employers say they’re struggling to hire because of skills shortages, that’s a major constriction.

Remote recruitment means you explode your talent pool across the world, to anywhere with internet and computer access. It’s not a magic bullet for skills shortages but it’s an obvious step.

6.  Improve accessibility - Asynchronous video interviews open your recruitment process to people who might struggle to attend a physical interview. For example, to candidates with financial difficulties who might struggle with travel expenses or candidates with disabilities who might find video interviewing easier than face-to-face.

Remote interviewing is an opportunity to evaluate your hiring processes and assess whether they’re truly accessible.

7.  Boost candidate engagement - 92% of candidates say they like asynchronous video interviews – that’s pretty definitive. Video interviewing is convenient and affordable, allowing candidates to interview as suits them, without taking time or spending money to travel.

Read more: How to boost the candidate experience in high-volume recruitment

Now pre-recorded video interviews are mainstream, there’s also widespread candidate awareness that they’re usually an addition to CV screening. Not a replacement for face-to-face interviews. With that comes an appreciation for the chance to make an impression beyond the seven second CV scan.

Depending on your software, video interviewing can also pack a powerful employer branding punch. Look for end-to-end branding and welcome videos included, to give candidates a real flavour of working with you.

8.  Collaborate better - Great recruitment teams are great collaborators. Remote hiring tech typically comes hand-in-hand with better collaboration, so you can easily compare candidates to one another, against your most important competencies.

Good asynchronous video interviewing software doesn’t make decisions for you – but it makes making the right decisions easier.

9.  Save money - When you hire better people, faster, retention goes up and recruitment costs go down. Not to mention you avoid the associated and exponential costs of making bad hires in the first place.

Sounds like the Holy Grail of recruitment to us.

‍Better, faster, cheaper, fairer recruitment: that’s the benefit of asynchronous interviews. Little wonder they’re so popular. Thousands of employers have conducted millions of video interviews with Tazio Interview: Find out why.