Video interviewing is a common feature of full-service recruitment systems used by the world’s largest companies. But there are standalone video interviewing software solutions for those who either can’t afford an all-inclusive HR behemoth or who just want something simple and easy-to-use to plug into their existing process.
In this article, we’ll show you how to find video interviewing software to suit the needs (and budget) of your company, including:
Which features the best video interviewing software has and the questions you should ask when shopping around
What you can do with our platform, Vocal Video (the most affordable and user-friendly solution for asynchronouse video interviews)
Other HR software options to help your company find and recruit top talent
Try out a video interview now on a free Vocal Video plan, or upgrade to Pro to start interviewing candidates for more open positions today.
How to Choose the Right Video Interviewing Software
At their core, video interviewing solutions help recruiters compare candidates efficiently and reduce the time it takes to find the best person for the job. But, since many interview platforms have a lot more to offer, you can start by asking these questions to find out whether the software is the best fit for your business.
How Do You Want to Compare Candidates?
Asynchronous video interviews (also known as one-way interviews) let recruiters consider candidates fairly and objectively. The recruiter writes a set of questions specific to the role they’re hiring for. Then, they send the questions to all the candidates so everyone starts from the same baseline.
These remote screening videos are far less likely to get sidetracked than an in-person interview. The focused questions create a structured interview that’s easy for recruiters to compare, so they can be more confident in deciding which candidates to advance to the next stage.
At their heart, video interviews can be enormous time savers by removing the back and forth of scheduling a live interview and by screening out candidates who aren’t willing to take a few minutes to record a video.
Check out this example video interview which was requested, recorded, and stored 100% with Vocal Video:
Do You Need One-Way Interviewing, Live Interviewing, or Both?
Pre-recorded video interviews are convenient for recruiters and job candidates, and they’re much more time-efficient than scheduling video calls or phone interviews. However, live interviews are still important tools for companies with a remote workforce or for the end of the interview process when you want to ask more detailed questions to get a better sense of how someone will fit in with your existing team.
Some video interview tools are tailored to either live or asynchronous video recording, while other platforms take care of both. What’s more, live interview software may include options for panel interviews similar to video conferencing platforms like Zoom, or it may simply facilitate two-way interviewing between the recruiter and the candidate. But, if you only need to screen candidates virtually and plan to sit down with them face-to-face for the second round, you don’t necessarily need a tool for live video interviews at all.
Vocal Video is hassle-free one-way video interview software for companies of any size.
How Do Video Interviews Fit Into Your HR Workflow?
If several people are involved in your company’s hiring process, it’s important to think about ease of use and how your interviewing software will help them to discuss the candidates. Some full-service recruiting programs include messaging, ranking systems, and tools to automatically advance candidates to the next round of interviews and notify them.
Larger companies with dozens or hundreds of open positions may benefit from a full Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that includes video interviewing functionality alongside these other features. But others simply need an integration that lets them share the videos through the software they already use.
Vocal Video paid plans include Zapier integrations and an API to integrate video interviews with your existing tech stack and the messaging platforms you use to make hiring decisions with your team.
A full Applicant Tracking or Human Resources Management System that includes a video interview tool can be a massive investment. These systems come with dozens of extra features like interview booking, video messaging, onboarding, and careers page hosting, but, for smaller companies, this would mean paying a lot for features that you don’t get the chance to use.
Vocal Video is the most affordable video interviewing solution on the market. Find out more about Vocal Video pricing.
A smooth and convenient interview process that makes the applicant feel valued is an essential part of finding the best candidate. Job seekers want to use simple and reliable software that reduces their stress and lets them answer questions that focus on their strengths, personality, and career goals.
Vocal Video interviews can be recorded on iOS or Android. Your candidates simply have to click a link, record, and send.
How to Conduct a One-Way Video Interview with Vocal Video
If all you need is the asynchronous video component, Vocal Video’s intuitive collector system, customizable video interview templates, response library, and integrations mean you can set up a video screening process that keeps both HR and new hires happy.
Here’s how to get started:
Set Up a Video Collector
The backbone of any Vocal Video interview is the video collector. This is where you welcome your candidate, give them the questions you’d like them to answer, and tell them about the next steps. Video collectors can also ask candidates for information like their preferred name and title, which our automatic editing process will apply to the interview video before it arrives in your library. When the videos are ready to view, we’ll send a handy notification.
The easiest way to set up a video collector is by customizing one of our 46 industry-specific templates. For example, the Video Job Interview template includes the questions…
- Can you share why you’re interested in this role?
- Can you briefly share about your relevant experience?
- Where do you see yourself in five years?
In the questions section of the video collector, you can adjust these questions for your company or include extra prompts. For example, if the role requires a specific certification or several years of experience, you could ask the candidate when they qualified and how they’ve applied their knowledge at work since then.
Our video collectors also keep the candidate's experience in mind. In the “Welcome Page” section of the dashboard, recruiters can also add a pre-recorded video to introduce themselves and help the applicant to feel at ease.
You can also customize the thank you page to let the candidate know what will happen next. Here, you can include the closing date for applications, an idea of when they can expect to hear from you, or information about who to contact if they have further questions.
Send the Collector to Your Candidates
When the questions are ready, we’ll generate a video collector URL for you to send to the applicants you want to screen.
Your candidates will be able to open the link on their device without downloading an app or creating a Vocal Video account. They can then respond in their own time in an environment where they feel comfortable. With a Vocal Video Pro plan, interviews can be up to 20 minutes in length, so they can go into detail about why they’re excited about the role and why their skills make them a strong candidate.
Get Unlimited Video Responses to Consider
Every Vocal Video collector can gather unlimited responses from your candidates. With our paid plans, you can also set up additional collectors to get on-demand video interviews for more current vacancies at your company.
Once the candidate is happy with their recording, our automatic editing process creates a polished and easy-to-manage video which can include…
- The position they’re applying for as an opening slide.
- Their name overlayed on the first response.
- The questions they’re responding to as handy interstitial slides.
We’ll store the responses in your video library so you can compare potential candidates or discuss the responses with hiring managers. With a Pro plan, up to 5 users can access the library, and we’ll give you the API key you need to integrate Vocal Video with the other platforms your team uses to communicate.
More Ways to Use Vocal Video for Recruitment
The asynchronous videos you can record with Vocal Video can do so much more than just screen candidates. With our platform, you can collect videos to enhance every part of your recruitment strategy. When you use Vocal Video to request and collect testimonials and video content from across your company, you can use the clips to…
- Create employee testimonials to add to your job postings.
- Show your organization is a great place to work with recruitment and company culture videos.
- Get candidate feedback to help improve the interview experience for future applicants.
- Welcome new hires by collecting employee bio videos to introduce your team members.
- Onboard with videos explaining the origin story, mission, and values of your organization.
- Motivate employees by sharing sales success stories with your team.
For example, Optimizely collected employee stories to showcase in an interactive testimonial carousel gallery.
Find out more about embedding Vocal Video testimonial galleries on your career page.
Beyond Asynchronous Interviews: Other Software Options to Explore
Vocal Video is the most affordable option for one-way video interviewing, offering high response rates, a great candidate experience, and opportunities to get feedback to improve your hiring process in the future.
If video screening interviews are the only tool you need and you have other systems in place for the rest of your HR tasks, Vocal Video ticks all the boxes. But, if you have a larger budget, or you're looking for an all-in-one solution, there are plenty of other software options to explore.
Remote interviews include candidates no matter where they’re based. When you want to attract the best talent regardless of time zone or geography, a dedicated remote interview platform that takes care of real-time as well as asynchronous interviews can help.
Spark Hire
Spark Hire manages one-way and live interviews in one piece of software. As well as recording and cloud-based storing for interviews, Spark Hire also has systems to discuss the candidates with hiring managers, including star ratings, comments, and tracking the reasons why a candidate was rejected.
This platform also includes interview scheduling features and lets you send video messages to candidates, helping you to streamline and personalize the recruiting process.
VidCruiter
VidCruiter is designed to simplify video interviews. It’s also structured to help reduce hiring bias.
As well as video interviewing, VidCruiter lets you set up “pre-screening” skills tests. You can use these tests to save time by advancing only the qualified candidates to the next round. VidCruiter also includes detailed rankings features to help you discuss the live and asynchronous recorded interviews you receive.
myInterview
myInterview bills itself as a video interview solution that prioritizes the candidate’s experience. It includes all the features you need to record and review interviews and create candidate shortlists collaboratively. It also allows the hiring teams to introduce themselves with short bio videos. This gives the applicants an idea of who they might be working with and a deeper understanding of your company culture.
Recruiting Software Gathers More Data About Candidates
As well as enabling remote interviews, full-service hiring platforms can keep the administrative tasks of recruitment in one place and track the applicants as they advance to the next stage. The extra analytics data you get from these platforms can help you enhance everything from the way you market jobs to the way you onboard new hires.
Greenhouse
Greenhouse offers “data-driven recruiting” as it tracks candidate progress from their initial application to onboarding. If you regularly hire new staff, or if you receive a lot of applications, Greenhouse also includes messaging automation and interview scheduling tools to streamline the repetitive tasks that recruiting teams have to complete every day.
Although Greenhouse doesn’t come with its own video interview system, it integrates with platforms like Willo, Spark Hire, and our own Vocal Video, so you can still include video screening or live interviews in your hiring process.
Jobvite
Unlike Greenhouse, Jobvite includes native video interviewing as well as an Applicant Tracking System. It also comes with a set of features to automate onboarding and make sure that the newest members of your team have everything they need to get started on their first project.
As well as helping you to source and interview external candidates, Jobvite also has internal mobility features to help you identify the best candidates within your organization. This helps you to invest in your existing employees and support their career development.
iCIMS
The iCIMS talent cloud is a recruitment platform that covers video interviews, applicant tracking, and candidate relationship management (CRM). It also includes an AI digital assistant so candidates can complete skills assessments and schedule their video interviews. Like many of the other recruitment platforms out there, iCIMS has features to help with onboarding once you’ve found your ideal candidate.
Read our in-depth guide on how the iCIMS video studio compares to Vocal Video.
A Full HR Management System Gives Insights into Future Talent Needs
Global brands with hundreds of employees and a bigger budget for recruitment sometimes choose a full HCM (Human Capital Management) or HRMS (Human Resources Management System). As well as storing information about your entire staff — including payroll and benefits — several of these platforms also have features to support talent acquisition and internal hiring.
Some HRMSs offer a full package of features, whereas others are modular, allowing you to set up the stack of features you need as your company grows. Either way, for software packages this extensive, you’ll have to get in contact with the sales team to compare your options.
Here are some of the features to look out for:
Career Page Builders
Sage HR and Workday are two staffing software systems that can also power your website’s careers page. This makes it easier to accept detailed job applications online and gives you a professional-looking portal to add to job postings on LinkedIn and other third-party job boards.
Employee Mobility Projections
Because HCM systems are primarily focused on your existing employees, they also collect data that can inform you about the best internal candidates to recommend for a promotion or a transfer. When it comes to forecasting your future recruitment needs and knowing when it’s time to hire, Oracle is a platform that excels.
Compliance Features
Hiring is an area where you have to make sure that your business is in line with the latest legal requirements. An end-to-end HRMS like Oyster offers support with global confidentiality, hiring, and payroll regulations to help you hire compliantly.
Offboarding
Because these full-stack HR platforms keep all the information about your employees in one place, they also make offboarding easier when an employee’s time with your company comes to an end. For example, Bamboo HR can help with the final administrative tasks of managing security clearance and calculating an employee’s final salary and benefits payments.
Focus on Virtual Interviews to Hire the Best Candidates in Less Time
Adding recorded interviews to your hiring process can help you to attract more job applicants, get to know them better, and make your company stand out from the crowd. When you include video interviews and company testimonials at every stage of the process, you increase your chances of finding and hiring the best possible applicants.
Use Vocal Video to collect effective screening interviews for every open role at your organization. Getting started is as simple as…
- Setting up a video collector with interview questions tailored to the role you're looking to fill.
- Sending the collector to your applicants so they can respond at a time that’s convenient for them.
- Discussing the automatically-edited interview responses with your hiring team.
- Integrating Vocal Video with platforms like Slack or Greenhouse to add video interviews seamlessly to your recruitment strategy.
Optimize your hiring process by recording and reviewing video interviews using Vocal Video. Sign up for your Vocal Video account today.