Digital interviewing has become more commonplace in modern hiring practices. Many aspects remain the same, but there are some nuisances for interviewers going from an in-person practice to a virtual one. Luckily, some tools and elements help with these nuisances and give further insight into candidates for better hiring practices. The first step is answering the question: What is a digital interview, and what elements keep a seamless and thorough digital interview?
Digital interviewing involves assessing new hire candidates via a remote position. The candidate usually sends in a digital resume and completes a take-home test. Once reviewed, they move on to an interviewer if qualified. This interviewer schedules a digital interview where the candidate and interviewer meet over video. The interviewer would proceed with the assessment as if it were in person, with a few exceptions.
Overall, interviews are stressful for both the candidate and the interviewer. While everyone understands the stressful nature of interviews for candidates, not everyone is aware of how interviews can be stressful for interviewers. Interviewers need to be prepared, confident, and give good first impressions.
Digital interviewing can remove many stressful elements from interviews for interviewers, but it can also pose new stressful elements.
If an interviewer is not comfortable with digital environments, it’s hard to navigate the interview. Interviewers need to adapt to digital environments to understand the full assessment.
If the interviewer is assessing a software engineering position, understanding the technical aspects of the coding environment can help them understand the candidate's train of thought. If the candidates use different integrated development environments (IDEs), the interviewer may be unfamiliar with the features and integrations. Therefore, if part of the interview identifies that the candidate understands how to debug code, the interviewer may not be sure what features are in the IDE debug code or if the candidate is using them.
To fix this problem, using specialized coding environments and other testing environments specifically for interviewing makes it easier for the interviewer. Using these IDEs, interviewers will evaluate the candidates equally, as each candidate has the same tools for their coding experiences.
It’s also possible that candidates are expecting to be given environments to work within for the interview. If the company does not provide these testing environments for the candidates, it leaves them scrambling last minute, leading to penalizations that may not necessarily reflect their true abilities. It could also seem that the company is inexperienced and unprofessional. Therefore, even if the candidate is the perfect fit, they may not feel confident accepting the position.
Environments that may be necessary for testing a candidate's qualifications:
Body language can give great insight into the candidate's soft skills but unfortunately, body language is not necessarily easy to read from video-chat.
If the candidate's body language is closed off, this could suggest that the candidate is not truly confident in themselves and their abilities. If the interview is for a sales position, confidence is key. This candidate might not be the best fit.
During a digital interview, seeing the candidate's body language is not possible since the standard camera framing during virtual interviews is from shoulders up. So how are interviewers supposed to assess soft skills?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is used for digital interviews to identify soft skills from resume screening. This data-driven recruiting technology is meant to help interviewers identify soft skills that may not be noticeable during digital interviews.
Communication will also be different for digital interviews. Take-home tests are just as much a part of the interview process as the face-to-face interview.
It may be hard for candidates to answer written questions during take-home tests. It may also be difficult for the interviewers to assess the candidates' answers if the answer is sporadically written, which often happens with timed tests.
Using a platform for take-home tests that support recorded answers helps candidates answer questions thoroughly and quickly.
Using automatic grading functions can also aid interviewers when weeding out candidates and assessing which progress to the next round.
Oftentimes, candidates who are underqualified for a position will embellish their resumes to make them seem more desirable or qualified. To avoid faulty qualifications and identities, having the candidate sync their information from LinkedIn, Github, or other platforms can prevent interviewing candidates who misrepresent themselves.
When most people ask, “what is a digital interview?” they expect only benefits compared to in-person interviews. Unfortunately, with this attitude, interviewers will learn the challenges of virtual interviews the hard way. While there are many benefits to digital interviews, interviewers face many pain points with a remote hiring process. However, Filtered is here to help your digital interviews continue running as smoothly as if it was in-person.
Filteredis a leader in skills-based hiring. Our end-to-end technical hiring platform enables you to spend time reviewing only the most qualified candidates, putting skills and aptitude at the forefront of your decisions. We’ll help you automate hiring while applying objective, data-driven techniques to consistently and confidently select the right candidates. To get started, contact our team today or register for a FREE demo.
