Spotlight for Employment and Recruiting Professionals, February 2, 2011

Arup & Partners uses video interviewing as a tool of convenience and cost-savings.  

“We rely on video technology and use it a lot,” says Anna Sandoval, senior recruiter. “We are an international company, so we use it across our business. I’ve even conducted interviews from California with candidates in Abu Dhabi. Video interviewing has allowed us to do more, while being more conservative with our dollars.” 

After conducting on-campus interviews, Arup asks candidates qualified for a second interview to select their top three locations for work. For example, a civil engineering candidate might select Chicago, Seattle, and New York. 

The candidate’s information—including resume, interview feedback form from the on-campus interview, and recruiter’s notes—are sent to the candidate’s first choice location. For example, if the Chicago office is hiring a civil engineer, the hiring manager will look over the interview feedback notes to determine if he or she wants to bring in the candidate. If so, Arup will either fly the candidate to the Chicago office or, if the candidate is close to one of the firm’s other locations, have the candidate visit that office to take part in a video interview with the hiring managers in the Chicago office.  

Sandoval says the only downside to doing video interviewing is that it doesn’t allow the candidate to get a good feel for an area, office location, and people.  

“Video interviews can be a little impersonal—for instance, you can’t shake the candidate’s hand,” she says. 

Arup’s video interviews take anywhere from one to three hours. Typically, candidates give a short presentation and then meet with various Arup employees.  

“The effectiveness [of the video interview] depends on the employer’s interview strategy,” Sandoval says. “We greet candidates the same way we would in person and we use the same methodology interviewing in person as we do video interviewing. We use behavioral-based interview questions to understand how a candidate processes information and ask them to pull from specific examples from their past experiences. We also ask technical questions to ensure the candidates have the core foundation of knowledge in their discipline.” 

Each candidate is also asked to present a project that they’ve worked on or discuss work they have done during internships so they have a focal point.  

“This allows us to gauge the range of their experience and how much they actually know, and candidates tend to feel more comfortable talking about their own work than trying to come up with answers they think we want to hear,” Sandoval says. “Once they are in the zone in the interview they don’t really feel a difference in a video interview.  Being a global organization we often conduct many meetings in this fashion, we embrace this technology because it helps us be more efficient in our business.” 

Meanwhile, Dick’s Sporting Goods (DSG) uses video interviewing in its university recruiting program for less than 5 percent of interviews. As Kate Brown, DSG’s manager of university relations, explains, the company doesn’t “plan to use it, but it’s there if needed.” 

Such was the case last spring, when snowstorms blanketed the Northeast. 

“Our M.B.A. interviews were cancelled at one campus, so we did our first-round interviews via video,” Brown recalls. “The main benefit of video interviewing is being able to have a face-to-face interview when you can’t get the two people in the same place at the same time. We think it is more effective than a phone interview.” 

DSG also conducts several video interviews each semester with students who attend branch campuses of major universities. Brown says it is more convenient to interview these students via video than to have them drive hours to campus for a one-hour interview. 

“The interviewer would just step away from the interviewing room and go to the video interviewing room for that hour time slot,” she says. “We also have equipment at our headquarters, which is how we did the interviews in the spring.”  

Despite being a convenient option, video interviewing presents challenges. Brown says, in her experience, these include having connections work and getting used to the delay during the interview. 

To overcome the former, Brown says DSG always tests the equipment with the campus prior to using it. 

“It is challenging sometimes with our firewall, but we have learned that any issues are avoided if we test in advance and if we ‘call’ the campus instead of them dialing us,” she says. “You also have to get used to the delay. As an interviewer, you have to give the candidate time to answer. It’s not always an immediate response because there is a slight delay in what [the students] hear.” 

To avoid any hiccups, Brown recommends explaining the process beforehand and making candidates aware of the audio delay. 

In addition, Brown says many campuses only have one designated interview room for video interviews. 

“You often need to reserve that in advance,” she notes. 

Reservations for video interviewing rooms are more frequently becoming necessary because this format is increasing in popularity.