Six ways to create an enjoyable and comfortable on-demand interview
A vast majority of candidates we polled reflected that interview process is very stressful to them. They felt even more stressed about an upcoming video interview. This was because they did not know what to expect, given this format is fairly new. Additional stress was due to the lack of feedback during a one way video-interview.
So we decided to share some tips for making EasyHire.me video interviews more comfortable for your candidates.
- Create a clear branded image of the hiring team using customization options!
You can add your company logo, corporate colors, the email signature to all emails that are sent to candidates. This feature is available on the Teams page – Customization tab.
Ask your hiring team to fill out their profiles and add their photos.This will significantly increase candidate’s level of trust and confidence.
Profile photo can be specified by clicking on the profile drop down and selecting the Settings option.
Each team member can easily specify their title, position and responsibilities in the “About Me” section of their profile.
- Compose a friendly email invitation to the interview!
Easyhire.me allows hiring managers to customize emails that will be sent to candidates on behalf of the team. This option is available on the Team page, the Email Templates tab. Often candidates get acquainted with a vacancy from an invitation to the interview – create your perfect invitation!
- Add a welcome video message.
Take the opportunity to greet your candidates by creating video messages. Candidates will see the welcome video before they start interviews. This is a great way for a hiring manager to introduce themselves, share exciting facts about the company and team, provide more details about the position and the interview process.
You can record one video introduction and use it for all your question sets, or record an unique introduction to each set.
- Be creative when composing a question set!
In order to diversify question set you may use any combination of the following types of questions:
- Video questions
- Quiz questions
- Text questions
- Technical questions with the code runner
- Questions with attached images
Our candidate surveys showed that when candidates see a video question, they feel less anxious about their own video recording. Therefore we recommend creating at least one video question.
One good way to create such question is to ask several of your colleagues to record a video question. You can then combine these into a single question set. As a result, candidates would get to know their potential future team before the formal on site interview. This way they are more likely to be excited about the position and have a much higher chance of a more positive outcome of the interview process.
For Default questions use the editor to create a question, attach a picture or insert a link.
Add time to prepare to your questions so that candidates get the opportunity to fully understand questions and think about the answers before being recorded. This will result in more complete and detailed answers.
- Begin the interview with simple and open-ended questions, for instance:
«Tell us about yourself»
«Why are you interested in the role?»
«Describe your current (or most recent) position»
and then add more complex questions.
- Thank the candidate for taking the interview.
Add «Thank you» video-message to your question sets. In this video, you can thank the candidate for the interview and explain to them what next steps will be taken if they will be approved or rejected.
We wish you good luck in finding and selecting suitable employees, and Easyhire.me will make this process easy and fast!!!
Make your video interview more friendly and special!
It is very important to make the video interview process easy and comfortable for the candidate. Easyhire.me took care of the usability of the platform and in order to make the interview more comfortable for the candidate, we give managers the opportunity to record a video introduction and “Thank you” message for on-demand and assessment interviews.
The video could explain to candidates in a simple and positive way how to take an interview. The survey showed that such videos relieve stress before the interview and help the candidate feel more comfortable while recording video.
In this article we will explain in more detail how to do it.
In your introduction video you can share with candidates information about your company, greet him/her or advise how to behave in an interview. You can create new question set or add a video introduction to old question set. Open the menu and click on Configure button.
In order to thank the candidate for the completed interview and tell how feedback will be provided you should configure “Thank you” message. Record your own video or add a link from YouTube.
Easyhire.me recorded a special video for Practice Interview. We are confident that it will help candidates to quickly master the video interview and enjoy the process! Take Easyhire.me Practice interview, watch the video and record your unique Introduction and “Thank you” video for candidates.
New Practice Interview Features for Candidates Rolled Out!
Practicing before a big interview can give you an edge and prepare you well to land that job. Good news! We’ve rolled out a couple of features that would make practicing for that position a breeze. Keep reading to know what they are.
We’ve made it very easy for candidates to nail interviews and created questions especially made for the type of job they are applying for. Here’s a list of those different kinds of interviews that you can take:
Each type of job has top questions that are being used in interviews that are relevant to the said job. For each question, you are allowed a few seconds to prepare and then a few minutes to answer. There’s a timer right at the corner of the screen so you know how long you have answered. Each of these practice interviews is recorded and you can retake them once you review them and feel that you could have done better. You can choose the difficulty level in order for you to prepare well for questions that are meant for higher positions. Plus you can give us your feedback regarding the whole experience. Let us know what question you think worked best for you and how we can improve the new features.
By practicing through video interviews and reviewing the recordings, candidates can ensure they are confident and satisfied with their overall interview performance. They can take it to the next level by asking for feedback and comments.
And if you feel like you just need an interview practice with generic questions that you can answer and record, we have a free practice interview to try out. Through this, you’d have a better idea of how this technology works and be prepared if you have to undergo such an interview! Go here https://easyhire.me/for-candidate to take advantage of our new features.
4 Ways to Increase Candidate Engagement in Higher Ed
Don’t miss out on a Nobel because of bad process
Higher education institutes have always grappled with long hiring processes. Of course we’d like it to be faster, but we also recognize the search process as inherently longer because of the nature of the position. Each search is conducted with careful consideration and the hope that taking time to make the right decisions is mutually beneficial for new hires and the institutions. That said, it’s difficult to maintain candidate engagement throughout lengthy decisions. Here’s a few ways to cut down on the “black hole” effect. Don’t lose your hires because of bad processes because you’ll be kicking yourself if you lose a candidate and see them winning a Nobel prize at another school a decade down the road.
1. Be thoughtful when building an application process.
Ensure your application process is flexible and includes only the information necessary to make a decision. Too much information required upfront can discourage some of the best candidates from applying. For example, references are often not required during the initial round of review. Requesting more information from candidates who are qualified later in the process will keep them engaged if they see your process as logically sequenced and relevant. Essentially, don’t push away smart candidates with dumb process setting.
2. Manage Expectations!
Be upfront with your candidates about the timeframe. You may have a period of when applications are accepted before anyone at all gets reviewed. You may have expected delays such as breaks or other known periods where the hiring team will be busy or unavailable. Look at your calendar, assess, and establish a realistic timeframe for your candidates by attaching dates (or date ranges) to each application step and review.
3. Communication is your friend!
According to a recent hiring survey conducted by Robert Half, “when faced with a lengthy hiring process, 39 percent of survey respondents lose interest and pursue other roles, while 18 percent decide to stay put in their current job.”
Use your institutions marketing software or the thousands of free or paid tools you can find on the internet to set up an email sequence. Letting candidates know you are still interested in them as well as providing more details about your Institution and community to keep them engaged. In the final rounds or if it comes down to the candidate choosing your institution rather than you choosing them, hosting events and tours can be another great way of keeping candidates engaged.
4. Have a personal touch
Sending updates via personal secured video messages are easy and cost effective – sometimes free! Vidyard Go Video for example is sleek and simple way to communicate with candidates or employees via a personalised video.
Simply record a quick video that personal and effective. This tool also tracks when candidates or employees actually watch the video and how many times viewed.
Check out EasyHire.me – by far the best platform for integrating video interviewing, live or recorded, into your hiring process for faster acquisition times and consistently higher quality candidates.
Jeremy Hoffman
Vice President, Sales
EasyHire
Scaling Fast? 3 Questions HR Can’t Afford to Forget
Don’t forget the essentials – especially in times of fast-and-furious growth
Job interviews can be a jarring, if not a downright anxiety-provoking event for many, especially when it’s not for a mere ‘job,’ but for the brave next step in a candidate’s career. Depending on the position, interviews can be high stakes for candidates and hiring managers alike. With recruiting agencies, advertisements, time spent on training, cost of low productivity, possible upfront moving costs and even hiring bonuses, the wrong decision on a hire can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Unstructured interviews with a lack of consistent questions can sometimes have HR and hiring managers forgetting the most basic questions:
-Can you do the work?
-Will you like the position and bring your best in every day?
-Will you fit in with the company?
These are, of course, the very basics. There are thousands of articles and blogs containing the words: “Top Interview Questions” and most questions do assess one of these things. However, companies of every size need to be cognizant that gaps can start growing if they lack quality HR processes. Make sure to having screening tools, consistent interview techniques, and collaboration processes. For example, an enthusiastic ‘thumbs up’ from the department head should not be the ultimate decider in the hiring of a candidate.
Finally, I’d be an irresponsible blogger if I didn’t mention EasyHire. Which, by total coincidence has sponsored this blog space (too weird!) This software is used by HR departments and staffing professionals to screen large pools of candidates with intuitive video interviewing technology.
One last thing: for job seekers reading this, I think these questions are just as valuable. If you don’t know the answers to these questions with regards to companies you’ve applied for, maybe you should find out!
–The EasyHire Team
How Well Do Your Candidates Interview?
Grill candidates with video interview prep to cool their nerves and increase confidence on game day
Whether you’re working in a search firm setting or a corporate environment as a contract recruiter, think for a moment how much of your time you spend sourcing, screening, and recruiting candidates. A lot. Now think: how much time do you spend preparing your candidates for actual interviews?
Before in-person interviews are scheduled between the candidates you’ve recruited and the companies you represent, it goes without saying you’ve already done a whole lot of work developing the matches, the “good fits.” However, understanding the role and its context within the company and confirming a genuine candidate is great due diligence, but is it enough?
Question for you: “How well do your candidates interview?” If you don’t know, you need this article.
Preparing candidates for real-life interviewing is critical to your success. Using a video interview platform allows candidates to comfortably practice on their own time and gives you the opportunity to review and provide feedback where needed.
1: Record, Review, Refine…
In the few days, hours, and minutes leading up to the interview, everyone gets nervous. No matter how much coaching you provide, it’s simply how we’re wired. Video interviews can help simulate some of the same pressure felt in in-person interview. Additionally, get used to curveballs. Prepare candidates for questions they may not have thought of candidate can be asked questions they might not expect. Being able to practice this scenario over and over will create flexibility in candidates’ responses.
2: “Why do you want to work here?”
The well-prepared candidate should know the company he or she is interviewing for better than their own resume. If candidates don’t prepare for this question, it will not only be obvious, it may be a dealbreaker for their candidacy. Asking this question and reviewing it in a recorded video interview will help your candidate avoid the longest most awkward silence ever.
3. Ready, Set…
Video interviewing platforms such as Easyhire can simulate the challenging interview environments by prompting candidates with similar questions in a live or pre-recorded scenario. Alongside timed assessment, multiple-choice, extended text, including coding / whiteboarding windows, written response, and others, you can be more confident in your rockstar candidates on their big day.
4. Go with confidence!
Even with years of experience and qualifications a candidate may have, don’t take chances and assume your candidates will do great until you’ve seen it with your own eyes. Some may be ready to go off the bat. However, many candidates may have been out of the market for a while or are entering a new industry. With new technology, preparing candidates with video interviews may be innovative to some, but it’s really just common sense.
-Jeremy Hoffman
VP Business Development
EasyHire
SHRM 2018 Annual Conference
SHRM 2018 is sure to be an exciting an eventful opportunity for the HR Community come together to reunite, network, learn and grow professionally. I’m sure it’s something that all of us should attend if possible.
However, there are always circumstances that arise that prevent us from attending such as personal matters like a wedding. Or maybe professional obligation such as a project that you’re in the middle of that needs your immediate attention. So if you’re currently experiencing FOMO, here are some ways you might be able to keep in touch with what’s going on in Chicago. Although, getting some of that famous Chicago deep-dish pizza would be worth the trip alone.
Use the hashtag to search Google Facebook or Twitter for #NOTATSHRM. Several well-known bloggers and influencers in the HR community will be live blogging and do facebook lives streams or periscope as well as youtube live streams.
This is being used by attendees to discuss what’s happening in Chicago. From SHRM staff to bloggers and special events put on by vendors this is an easy way to find relevant content.
Started in 2017 by Jessica Miller-Merrell this group is designed to keep you up to date on what’s happening at the SHRM annual conference without having to be there. Click here to find the group on facebook and request to join.
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The SHRM e-learning library
Attend SHRM digitally for just $199. With a pass to the SHRM e-learning library you can get access to all concurrent sessions slides as well as audio. Not only will you get 2018 but every year since 2015 with over 500 courses and sessions. Though you won’t be able to enjoy the live speakers, collaborative breakout sessions, or visiting the exhibitors in-person, you’ll have the advice of top HR Tech experts in the industry at your fingertips.
And remember: there’s always next year!
GDPR Checklist for Compliance
We’re sure you’ve seen a bulk of emails from different websites mentioning their changes in their privacy policy due to GDPR. But if you haven’t seen one yet and has no idea what GDPR is, then let us explain. GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation is a global data protection law passed by the European Union that shifts the ownership of customer data from the organizations that use it to the individual customer. All eyes are on the appropriate protection of customers’ private information and to comply is a must! But if you’re at a lost on what you need to change to be GDPR compliant, read on for a checklist of what you need to sort out.
Explicit Customer Consent
It’s now a must to ask customers first before processing or storing their data. The request not only needs to be clear and see but it also must be done so in a straightforward way by using easy to understand language. Silence or inactivity from the side of the customer should not be taken as a yes and companies that use their info must be able to prove that they received approval. Also, your customers now have the right to withdraw consent upon request in a reasonable timeframe.
Get A Data Protection Officer (DPO) If You Can
Hiring someone who specializes in data protection can save you a lot of worries. Your DPO is your point person to ensure GDPR compliance. This is especially important for companies larger than 10 to 15 employees that process personal data on daily basis and in sheer numbers. But what does the DPO role actually do? The role entails:
- Regular and systematic monitoring of data on a large scale
- Processing on a large scale of special categories of data
Conduct A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
You’ll definitely need to conduct a data protection impact assessment if your company stores personal data in a permanent storage. This should be done before any project should be carried out and it’s basically an audit within the company that will allow you to measure the effectivity of safeguarding the privacy of the individuals whose data you store. The DPIA aims to achieve these three:
- Compliance with applicable legal, regulatory and policy requirements
- Establish the risks and effects
- Evaluates protections and alternative processes to mitigate privacy risks
Data Breach Policies
There will always be substantial risks when it comes to storing data. And Data Breach policies ensure that your customers’ trusts will be kept intact in case of the worse scenarios – which is data breach. The GDPR requires companies to notify local data protection authorities of any data breach situation within 72 hours of discovery. And yes, this means that every company will need the kind of technology that will allow them to detect and address breaches within a certain timeframe. Note as well that this is one of the stricter GDPR requirements and you may have to overhaul your internal data security policies for this.
Giving Them The Right to Opt-Out
Deleting personal data not only minimizes the amount of data each company has to keep but also gives customers the freedom to choose. So if a certain data is not needed or has been requested to be deleted, then the answer is yes delete it. And as mentioned, customers have every right to request to be taken off email lists and other such lists that a company may have that they store for marketing or other such purposes.
There you have it, a proper checklist for all your GDPR compliance needs. By the way, we’ve also updated our own Privacy Policy for our own GDPR compliance you can check out the updated version here.
We’ve Updated Our Privacy Policy!
We value our users’ privacy and know that the GDPR is aimed at making people know that their personal data are safe and not being used in some way that they do not approve. So here’s a quick rundown of what we changed to be GDPR compliant.
Check out our updated Privacy Policy here. We would love your feedback and feel free to contact us if you have any questions.