How to Conduct an Online Job Interview

Job interviews are an integral part of the recruitment process.  Now that both candidates and recruiters have to stay home, it is necessary to learn how to properly conduct an online interview to prevent disrupting your company’s talent management plan.

Here is some advice to help you make the most of a remote job interview. 

Read more: Will working from home become permanent post COVID-19?

Steps to conduct online job interviews properly 

1. Re-structuring the HR Process 

As the pandemic has made a great impact on every aspect of businesses, your HR team must come with better solutions for working. Recruiters today need to address new concerns, such as: 

• Does your business consider building a virtual work space aside from the ordinary office-working environment?  
• Do you need to recruit freelancers, virtual employees?  

Implementing different working platforms allows you to acquire more dynamic talents, making your company more adaptive to constant changes due to COVID-19 and the rise of modern technology, as well as ensuring your current and future employees have the greatest and seamless working experience.  

Read more: Recruitment automation - The 21st century way of acquiring talent

2. Choosing the Perfect Platform 

After reconsidering your company’s HR strategy, you should start building a brand new Online Interview Process, starting with choosing the right platform to implement the interviews. Currently, Zoom and Google Meet are the most popular online meeting software. Their helpful and easy-to-use features can ensure your virtual meetings always run smoothly as if it was face-to-face.  

Another factor to consider is free versus paid version of these conferencing solutions. While the free version is enough to conduct a basic online interview, the upgraded version may offer features that enable you to do more than just broadcasting your video. If your business constantly facilitates online webinars, conferences, you should consider upgrading your current software to improve efficiency. 

Learn more with TRG’s talk: MS Teams vs ZOOM vs Skype 

3. Staying Professional Anywhere 

Before the call, make sure you have the interviewee’s resume and list down all the questions you want to ask. You can log in a few minutes early to ensure your login information and the application is running well, thus, avoiding any interruption when the interview begins.  

If a face-to-face interview demands you to be polite and professional, an online one also calls for similar etiquettes. Whether the interview is audio-only or a video call, you should wear polite clothes, control your voice tone and facial expressions. This helps to build your confidence as well as your interviewee’s trust. 

When the interview reaches the end, remember to answer any question your interviewee may have and inform them about the next step. You should thank the interviewee for their time as well. This will leave the interviewee a positive impression about you and the business.  

4. Minimising Distractions 

While a remote interview can help eliminate a lot of inconvenience such as traffic, hectic schedules, health concerns, etc., there can still be unexpected issues. Since you and your interviewee do not stay in the same place, distractions in the surrounding environment are inevitable. Here are some tips to minimising them as much as possible: 

• Switch off or mute all of your alerts and notifications on your mobile devices. If you want to take any note, use a piece of paper or a notebook. 
• Reduce any movement or interruption. If you live with your family, you should inform them about your unavailability at the time. During the interview, you should stay in one place. Moving around will make both you and the candidate lose focus on the conversation, consequently affecting the interview. 
• Choose a quiet, indoor location to control ambient noise. Avoid noisy, high-traffic and crowded environments. If you live with your family or with roommates, it is preferable to schedule interviews when fewer people are active. 
• Ensure you have a good internet connection. Many applications offer features that help you check your Internet quality so that you can control your connection before and during the call. 
• Make sure you provide your interviewee with these instructions as well. You should include these guidelines in the Interview Invitation Letter sent to your candidate. In order to create a smooth process for later online interviews, all of these instructions should be presented using a standard template and include any Interview Invitation sent out. 

Read more: Improve quality of hire with psychometric assessments

Whether you execute the entire recruitment process online or offline, do remember that the HR Department represents your company, and these candidates are possibly your future employees.

Understanding and utilising suitable digital platforms will create a professional and high-tech image for your business. More important, technologies can create a competitive advantage and can help you to acquire higher-quality talents to help your company grow, even in the current tough circumstance. 

The face of recruitment is changing exceedingly fast. Download our whitepaper "Recruitment Reinvented" to stay on top of these changes.