When filling an empty seat, the first step of the interview process is traditionally asking a few basic interview questions on a phone screening. However, this antiquated early screening stage takes a significant chunk of time.
Have you tried blocking out your schedule for a 30-minute call when convenient for you, the recruiter, and the candidate? Now, try doing that for tens or hundreds of job applicants. It’s an impossible feat that can sometimes take weeks to accomplish. Not to mention that many recruiters and hiring professionals typically know after only a few minutes if a candidate should progress to the next stage of the recruiting cycle.
The solution to this tedious and lengthy process? One-way video interviews.
One-way video interviewing tools allow hiring teams to spend significantly less time screening candidates, without sacrificing valuable screening insights. Keep reading to explore the top 10 questions you should ask in a one-way video interview to ensure you are learning the most important information about a candidate during their initial screening.
Table of contents
Top 10 One-Way Video Interviewing Questions
Key Takeaways
- Efficient Screening: One-way video interviews save time by allowing candidates to respond to pre-set questions, streamlining the candidate screening process without sacrificing valuable insights.
- Insightful Interview Questions: It’s essential that you take the time to craft the right questions to meet your business objectives. Well-crafted questions can reveal key skills, cultural fit, and candidate motivations, helping hiring teams make informed decisions earlier in the process.
- Faster Decision-Making: Eliminating interview scheduling conflicts and providing valuable context for each candidate allows hiring teams to move more quickly and confidently to in-person or live interviews.
To gain the most valuable candidate insight during a one-way video interview, the questions you craft are critical. Your interview questions should be high-level enough to get a good read on candidates’ skills and experience and illuminating enough to clearly show how each candidate fits into your company culture.
Candidate screening also requires a meeting of the minds of hiring decision-makers. Your interview questions and evaluation process must satisfy the needs of the position and team while being fair to all candidates.
Consider using these carefully crafted 10 one-way video interview questions.
1. What skills have you mastered in a former role that will help you most in this position?
This question shows the depth of candidates’ understanding of the open role and sheds light on their work history. Were they constantly bombarded with requests and gained efficient time-management skills? Or maybe they developed strong communication and collaboration skills by working with colleagues around the globe.
2. Tell us about something you’re great at and how you developed this unique skill set.
Here, candidates can cover something that may not be related to the open position. Instead, it shows a candidate’s motivation as well as how they attack a large problem. Do they work piece by piece strategically, or do they just dive in and learn along the way?
3. What is the most recent book you read and why?
Use this question to gain better insight into the core of a candidate’s personality. Are they a learner? Do they love the nuance of science fiction or a fun romance?
4. Describe the work environment in which you will most effectively be able to contribute.
For many, this question can make or break an interview. The candidate’s ideal work environment should match your team’s, so if a candidate prefers to work alone but the team they would join is highly collaborative, it may be a misalignment to move them forward.
5. What is an example of how you’ve become more productive at work?
The answer could be any resource like a calendar, time-blocking, or other time-management tools. The real insight for the question is whether the interviewee already considers their work productivity. High-performing employees work to find better ways to get their work done to improve not just their work but the whole organization.
6. What was a work project that you feel proud of?
What makes this question different is its ability to pull a story out of the candidate and “sell” the experience. It’s also an opportunity to anticipate the team’s needs and demonstrate how they match the open position.
7. Tell me about your favorite working experience. Why was it your favorite?
Not only does this question shed light on another position on their resume, but it also gives the candidate a chance to explain a real work environment from the past. You will learn so much about a candidate’s cultural preference by understanding their likes and dislikes.
8. What did you learn about us from our website?
This should be an easy question for candidates to answer, but it might surprise you how many candidates haven’t done their homework before a one-way video interview. If the candidate is really interested in working with your team, they take the time to research and learn all they can from the website. It also gives you the opportunity to see how candidates interpret your employer brand and communicate it back to you.
9. Tell me about a time that you received coaching and feedback at work. How did you grow from it?
This question uncovers how teachable a candidate is. Many positions require employees to improve as they continue with the organization. Discovering how a candidate handles constructive feedback gives a good indication of what a future performance review looks like with your team.
10. What’s something we didn’t ask that you want to tell us?
The open-ended nature of this question allows candidates to reflect on their one-way interview and provide additional information that will make them stand out. This might be a formative experience from early in their career, or a skill not even listed on their resume.
Unlock Hiring Efficiency with One-Way Video Interviewing
Inviting candidates to submit one-way video interview responses to carefully calculated questions ensures candidates are vetted accurately and quickly before spending time in in-person or live video interviews.
Adding more context to your shortlist allows hiring managers to make better decisions about who advances to the later stages of your recruiting process, and, since one-way video interviews don’t require coordination of anyone’s schedules, the speed of the entire recruiting process improves, allowing you to hire the most qualified and best fitting talent for your team every time.
Ready to gain more insight on your candidates in a fraction of the time? We’re excited to help you scale up and build a more efficient and effective hiring process. Book a demo of our video interview tool today!
