As artificial intelligence has stepped into many areas of our lives in recent years, working life has gone through important shifts as well. One of these shifts is the active use of artificial intelligence in hiring and promotion processes. AI-assisted video interviews — used during the early-stage assessment of candidates — are a striking example of that shift. So let’s take a closer look at this AI-assisted video interview tool, which is making hiring and promotion processes more practical and fairer.
Three core models stand out in video interviewing: the asynchronous human-evaluated model, the AI-assisted evaluation model and the fully automated AI model. In the asynchronous human-evaluated model, questions are sent to the candidate in video or text form; after a set preparation time, the candidate records their answers as video responses, which are then assessed by the evaluation team. In the AI-assisted evaluation model, the candidate’s video responses are analysed by AI and reported against pre-defined criteria. In the fully automated AI model, AI runs the entire process — it can be thought of as a two-way interview with AI, where AI asks the questions, collects the answers and produces a detailed report at the end. Given these functions, a natural question arises: “Are AI-assisted video interviews a threat to the HR workforce?” Experience so far shows that AI’s purpose in these interviews is not to replace people but, on the contrary, to make the process more efficient, easier and more objective — supporting HR professionals by lightening their workload.
What Does AI Support in Video Interviews Do for Us?
Video interviews are essentially a pre-assessment step for candidates. The system gives assessors the chance to form a general impression of the candidate before the live interview, helping the interview itself run more productively. It also helps candidates who are eliminated at the pre-assessment stage avoid the need to travel to a physical location — saving them time, transport costs and other place-related expenses. Removing constraints such as access difficulties further raises the practicality and accessibility of the method.
Bringing AI support into video interviews makes the assessment process easier and more functional than traditional hiring methods in many respects. It allows candidates’ technical skills, competencies and fit to the role to be assessed against objective criteria. It also removes the difficulties of interview scheduling and delivers efficiency in both time and cost.
Another important advantage is the opportunity to evaluate candidates on equal terms. AI-assisted assessment tools support fair analysis under the same set of criteria. This minimises human error while making a fair and impartial pre-assessment process possible. There is, however, a critical point that deserves attention: the potential bias that comes from the data AI learns from. The example of Amazon’s hiring algorithm, which disadvantaged women candidates, is striking in this context [1]. When AI is trained on biased data sets, its outputs may reflect those biases. For this reason, it is critical that the final decision always sits with HR professionals; AI can act as a decision-supporting tool and is best treated as a pre-assessment step.
Make Hiring and Talent Management Easier with the HRPeak Smart Video Interview Application!
HRPeak brings an innovative approach to hiring and talent management through its AI-assisted video interview tool. The HRPeak video interview tool is also effective in promotion processes, not just hiring. With question sets that measure both technical skill and broader competencies, the tool delivers strong cues about the candidate’s likely job performance. The fact that elements such as preparation time and recording time can be customised contributes to a personalised candidate experience while making the assessment process more flexible. Giving candidates freedom in time and place, granting access to the interview transcript, and offering a rich question pool across categories such as general interviews, technical interviews and competency-based interviews, the HRPeak Smart Video Interview Application makes the process more practical and digital while letting the HR team share the workload.
[1] Dastin, J. (10 October 2018). Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight-idUSKCN1MK08G
