What would you say if we told you that you could interview job applicants without actually talking to them? This might sound like a recruiter’s dream, since meeting with candidates can be a tedious and time-consuming task, but thanks to new technology, it’s now possible. Read on to learn how automated interviews work and whether they may be the secret ingredient you need to enhance your company’s hiring process.
Understanding automated interviews
Technology and automation have become valuable tools for streamlining recruitment processes, including screening, interviewing and hiring candidates. But what exactly is an automated interview?
In an automated interview, the employer uses software to pre-record or establish a list of interview questions for a particular role. The job candidate receives the pre-recorded questions or written list and then records their responses. When they’re finished, the platform automatically sends the recording to the employer for evaluation.
Automated interviews are an asynchronous form of recruiting that can be done over the phone or by video. While formal job interviews are best conducted in person, automated interviews can be a good option for streamlining the initial candidate screening process, especially for businesses that need a way to manage high candidate volumes. Instead of dedicating HR staff and time to traditional interviews, HR professionals can stop showing up for job interviews and use automated technology in their place.
Technology has become so integral to HR that 70 percent of talent professionals believe virtual recruiting will become the industry standard, according to LinkedIn data.
Advantages of using automated interviews
If implemented properly, automated interviews can be advantageous to your business. Here are a few of the common benefits you can look forward to.
It enhances scheduling flexibility.
Scheduling candidate screenings can be tough, especially for organizations looking to hire across multiple states or countries. The asynchronous nature of automated interviews means you’re no longer faced with the struggle of managing various time zones and being limited to particular time frames. Candidates can submit their responses whenever they’re available, allowing you to receive applicant submissions sooner and without adjusting your own schedule.
The flexibility of automated interviews is also beneficial for evaluating passive candidates, as it gives them the flexibility to respond to interview questions on their own time.
It speeds up the hiring process.
One of the most noticeable ways automated interviews can benefit your business is by speeding up your hiring process. For starters, your HR team is no longer inundated with the time-consuming task of scheduling and attending phone screen interviews. Instead, staffers prepare the questions and candidates can submit their responses as soon as possible.
Once candidates send in their recordings, you can review and filter the responses to quickly eliminate unqualified candidates and narrow down your top picks. Speeding up the initial screening process can help you find the best applicants in your hiring funnel before they’re scooped up by the competition. Plus, since they no longer need to spend so much time scheduling and attending so many interviews, your HR staffers have time back in their days to focus on other responsibilities.
Ideal, a company that produces artificial intelligence technology to assist with resume screening, found that 52 percent of talent acquisition leaders believe the toughest part of the recruitment process is screening candidates from a large pool of applicants. See more hiring challenges small businesses face.
It makes candidate evaluations more consistent.
If you’re interviewing multiple candidates over a long period of time, it can be tough to fairly evaluate each applicant against one another. However, with certain automation technology, you can compare candidate responses by watching or listening to one person’s response after another’s. This can help you make an apples-to-apples comparison of candidates throughout the interview process and improve overall consistency. Fair and consistent candidate evaluations are critical to improving diversity and inclusion in the workplace and avoiding discrimination.
It reduces unconscious bias.
Unconscious bias occurs when someone has social stereotypes or beliefs about a specific group of people without consciously being aware of it. Everyone has some level of unconscious bias, so it’s vital that your HR team members are trained on how to recognize and manage their own biases. In addition to employee education and awareness, automated interviews can help reduce the effects of unconscious bias during recruitment.
When only one recruiter or staff member screens a candidate, you make yourself susceptible to their unconscious biases affecting that candidate’s ability to move on to the next step in the hiring process. For example, if the recruiter has an unconscious bias against single, working mothers, that might lead them to remove a single mom from the candidate pool because they are unwittingly blinded by that bias.
With automated interviews, however, you can have more than one person on your team review the candidate’s interview responses. In the example above, additional people who evaluate this single mother might lead the hiring team to progress this applicant to the next round because the evaluation wasn’t limited to a single recruiter’s unconscious biases. More people reviewing candidates leads to more diverse opinions and that could lead to hiring more diverse candidates. [Read related article: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the United States: An Examination of 680 DEI Statements]
Disadvantages of using automated interviews
Although automated interviews can be beneficial to your recruitment process, there are some possible downsides to be aware of.
You can’t assess as many nonverbal cues.
Automated interviews remove some of the human element from candidate screenings. This could be an advantage in some ways, since humans are prone to errors, but since automated interviews don’t allow you to engage with the candidate in real time, you might miss nonverbal cues, which make up the vast majority of communication.
Technical errors can cost you valuable candidates.
When an employee physically conducts interviews, they can assist candidates with any technical errors that arise (like Zoom audio problems) and offer to reschedule interviews if needed. But if a candidate isn’t very tech-savvy or has a problem submitting their interview responses during an automated interview, then they might be unfairly eliminated from contention. Also, automated interviews typically have time limits, which means candidate responses may be cut short if they don’t answer within the allotted window.
Candidates can’t ask questions.
Automated interviews are essentially one-way conversations. If a candidate has questions during the interview, they can’t get them answered by the pre-recorded interviewer. This may be a turnoff for some candidates who want more information before moving on with the process. However, you can supplement automated interviews with other communication methods to give interested candidates a way to contact you. [Check out the questions job applicants are scared to ask.]
You might get scammed.
Job scams are alive and well, unfortunately. Although they typically affect job seekers, employers can also fall prey to schemes such as resume fraud. This is especially true as the development of artificial intelligence makes it easier for someone to hide their true identity. It’s possible that automated interviews could lead to inadvertently hiring a deepfake. To avoid this, it’s best to formally interview candidates in person at some point in the hiring process if possible, even if your hiring process starts with automated screenings.
Tips for conducting automated interviews
If you’re interested in using automated interviews as part of your recruitment process, here are some hiring tips to help you succeed.
- Choose the right automated interview software. Various free and paid programs exist that can facilitate automated interviews. Do a little research to find the solution that best meets your company’s needs. For example, some platforms can be integrated with applicant tracking systems and highly rated HR software. Others have significant customization options.
- Create step-by-step instructions. When implementing automated interviews for the first time, take the time to ensure the process is fully functional and easy to understand for candidates. If you want submissions from the best applicants, you need to make the process as seamless as possible. Unclear processes and technical malfunctions are surefire ways to make applicants drop out of consideration.
- Carefully record interview questions. Your automated interview process will reflect on your company’s brand, so you want to be sure it’s done well. Have your recruiter (or whoever will be providing the questions) record a friendly introduction and ask the interview questions slowly and clearly. After recording, go through the automated process as if you were the candidate to ensure it sounds the way you want it to.
Adding automation to your recruitment process can be beneficial when done correctly. However, as with automating any HR process, it’s essential that you conduct regular process audits to ensure it’s effective and non-discriminatory.