Advanced Video Interview Tips for Job Seekers from an Executive Recruiter

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If you find yourself being interviewed online for a job, you need to know more than the basics (“Keep your pets and children out of your room” and “Make sure your Internet connection is reliable”). My business-communication students and the job candidates at my executive-recruiting firm have asked me to provide some advice, as well.

To help them, I have put together tips for increasing engagement through enthusiasm, structure, and humanity on the basis of my experience running my recruiting business and teaching business communication to undergraduate and graduate students.

These tips also work well for video meetings, which I’ve used frequently in the executive-search business for the last five years, as well. They might also help if you find yourself suddenly conducting lessons or services like speech therapy by video, too.

The big challenge: It’s harder to keep people’s engagement and excitement about you over video than in person.

All of my suggestions focus on helping people stay engaged with and excited about what you’re saying — about yourself, your experience, your goals, and your ability to contribute to the employer.

Tip 1: Use extra enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is, for whatever reasons, harder to see and hear over video calls than in person. As a result, you’ll want to amp up the enthusiasm more than your usual level if you are able, both in tone and content.

1A: Use extra enthusiasm in your tone.

Some people have a naturally more excited-sounding tone and pitch of voice with lots of natural variation; others sound a little flatter. If you are more of a less of an Infomercial salesperson, try to find something about the job that fires up your inner excitement. Dial up the variation in your tone and pitch as much as you can without utterly changing your personality altogether.

Chris Lipp, a colleague at Rice University, has suggested that spending five minutes writing about your most deeply held values before an interview helps to connect you with your power, which would likely also be helpful in connecting with your inner enthusiasm.

1B: Use extra enthusiasm in your content.

Over the 1,000 or more interviews I’ve conducted or facilitated in 20 years in different roles, the worst interview I’ve ever taken part in contained the following exchange:

Search committee: Why are you interested in this position?

Candidate: My wife tells me I have to get a full-time job.

I’m so grateful that my video and audio were off after setting up the call as its facilitator. The candidate and committee could not see or hear my reaction, saving all of us from embarrassment. The search committee members’ reactions, while professional, were immediate. The candidate’s interview was done before he even got started.

In my experience, the important question in any interview is, “Why do you want this job?” Employers want to know that you will apply yourself with enthusiasm to their role if hired, of course, and that you were diligent enough to prepare for the interview.

You need to do your research about the company, the role, the location, and the colleagues before the interview in order to have an informed and enthusiastic response to the “Why do you want this job” question.

• Review the job description in detail, highlighting the parts that resonate with and excite you the most. Focus your answers and thinking on the parts that help you feel and sound enthusiastic. (Don’t worry; every job has parts you won’t love.)
• If possible, ask questions prior to the interview and then follow up. Will the interview be screening, technical, behavioral, or case? Prepare accordingly. Do you mind if I ask who will be interviewing me? Then follow up to learn more about them on LinkedIn. (We’ll talk more about this part in the section on humanity.)
• Make note of the mission, vision, and values of the organization in their materials and website prior to the video interview. Consider the extent to which they apply to your values.
• If you know people who work at the organization, talk with them about the company’s work culture, projects, and hiring process prior to your video interview. Consider the extent to which you might fit in and contribute to them.
• Visit Glassdoor and Vault to learn about the organization from anonymous insiders.

One nice thing about video interviews is that you can keep notes next to your phone or computer. Making sure that most of your eye contact is directly at the interviewers, you can glance periodically at your notes or write as you speak. If you do use notes, do tell the interviewer so they aren’t confused or distracted. “I’m going to write something down so I don’t forget” is fine — and humanizing. More on humanizing below.

If you are using these tips for a meeting or lesson rather than an interview, you’ll amp up your enthusiasm in content by expressing genuine excitement about people’s work, progress, input, ideas, or other contribution. One of my students prefaced every question or comment with an expression of appreciation of some kind. It works well in real life and really well online.

Tip 2: Use extra structure.

Rambling and unstructured responses are the next-most-common way to lose your listener after a lack of enthusiasm. If you can’t remember what the question was when you’re done talking, chances are good that you didn’t answer the question. Even if you did, you may have exhausted the listener in the process. Here are some approaches to structuring your answers in video interviews:

• In a behavioral interview question, use the STAR Model: situation, task, action, result. If you find yourself moving back and forth in time while telling a story about your past experience, chances are high that you’re rambling.
• In a case interview, use the SPEAK Model: State assumptions, Pick an approach, Estimate (do some quick math), Assess your answer to see if it makes sense, and Keep exceptions in mind, letting your interviewer know if there are situations that would render your result incorrect.
• In technical interviews, ask questions first, then use a modified SPEAK model. Think out loud when permitted. If you find part of the problem interesting, say so. If you have dealt with a similar problem in the past, mention it while solving this one. If you can use visual aids like working on a screen, use that opportunity to implement visual structure, as well. “I’m going to break this problem down into three parts,” for example, or “There are three ways to solve this problem.”
• In all interviews, use as much verbal structure as you can. Video interviews are an especially great time to use the, “There are three reasons I made that decision” structure in the conversation. Continue with “The first reason was,” “That was the first reason,” “So, those were the three reasons I made that decision.” The more structure, the better.

If you are using these tips to teach violin or have a group strategy session online, it’s easy to add structure. You can create a timed agenda in Google Slides, keep a screen share of your outline-formatted meeting notes, recap each section verbally, and use email to send the follow-up to-do list with numbers, due dates, and task owners on each.

Tip 3: Use extra humanity.

We pay more attention to — and are more likely to hire — those who we perceive as being similar to us and those we like. Improve your chances of being hired by making a human connection with the people you’re interviewing.

• Start with a personal connection before the work gets started. It’s easy now to ask where people are located, how they’re handling working from home,
• Connect on a shared area of interest. If you looked up your interviewer(s) on LinkedIn and Google prior to the interview, you may find that you went to the same high school or college, that you have similar hobbies or volunteer interests, that you had the same major or some shared employer in the past. Additional similarity triggers the cognitive bias of in-grouping, which leads to greater affinity and persuasion.
• Use authentic language. Avoid corporate buzzwords as much as you can. Speak in plain English. Make it easy to follow along.
• Smile if you are able. These are difficult times, but you are one of the lucky ones having a job interview. Spend a moment relishing the opportunity and smile at your interviewer as much as you earnestly can.

Humanity works just as well in meetings and online teaching as it does in interviews, of course. Keep notes about the human issues facing the people you meet with. One time, someone I had spoken to once or twice remembered that it was nursing a very elderly dog back to health after a serious neurological incident. I felt so touched that he would have thought of me and my dog that I remember it months or years later.

With enthusiasm, structure, and humanity, you have optimized your chances of taking advantage of your video interview to be one of the lucky ones in this time of extraordinary uncertainty.

Lydia is the founder and president of Tradition Search Partners, an executive search firm, and a former faculty member at the Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business. A resident of Houston, Texas, she is also the mother of four. Lydia has written two books: Become an Ideal Head of School Candidate and Hire an Ideal Head of School.