Some candidates love this and other others have questions why we do this. We wanted to provide some color so you can understand our rationale.
In our interview recordings, we do have a question where we ask candidates about their questions about the company and we try to respond to all of these questions via email after we watch the videos. Also, it's important to note that we DO NOT ask everyone to record these interviews. Depending on the particular job post, we only ask 10-15% of applicants to complete these video interviews.
Reasons we do a first round video screen:
- We get to understand how candidates communicate and explain their own experience in their own words - we wanted this to be a part of the process very early on rather than just having candidates do some kind of technical skills assessment
- It is a less biased and equitable approach than short phone screens
- We aren't relying solely on our memory to compare answers
- We are able to get to more candidates
- We understand that some candidates might have a full time job
- We aren't relying on the judgement of individual interviewers who might have shown bias to one individual over another.
- With this tool we have multiple engineers go through and watch the videos to decide if we want to proceed to the later rounds.
- How someone does small talk doesn't color how the interviewer thinks of whether or not they have the knowledge required to contribute meaningfully to our product
- It allows more members of our team to evaluate candidates asynchronously and earlier in the process than relying on a recruiters' assessments of candidates. This helps us get a better read on who will be a better fit earlier and not waste your time with more interviews if we know you don't have the baseline knowledge for a particular role
- It's more convenient for us and for candidates: we realized that the toughest part of the interview is sometimes scheduling, and some candidates have full time jobs. Therefore, this asynchronous way of interviewing is our way of providing flexibility.
- It's faster for candidates to respond than writing. We don't allow retakes in this tool and we don't want you to prepare! We are okay with mistakes and are looking to get to know you.
As a fast growing company, we are trying to balance doing all we need to do in 24 hrs and finding the fit for the best folks to come join us! We're leveraging technology to do this asynchronously.
We're always open to feedback, and just like how we're always iterating on our product and solutions to deliver the best experience for users, we're trying to do the same with our hiring practices.