I am drawing upon the negative comments and questions I have received over the last year at conventions and online to present to you five reasons why people dislike video interviewing.
Reason #1 – Video interviewing is discriminatory. My managers will more likely discriminate against candidates earlier in the interviewing process.
To my knowledge no webcam or mobile phone manufacturer currently has artificial intelligence installed in their software packages to determine the race, gender, ethnicity 
etc. of the person on screen. All sarcasm aside, if you have discriminatory managers then you have a big problem! If they are discriminating against candidates during the video interviewing process nothing will stop them from doing so when the candidate walks into their office. Additionally video interviewing can actually counter discrimination and screen candidates into to the process who might otherwise have been rejected based on their resume alone. Not to mention that the EEOC has ruled video interviewing is not inherently discriminatory.
Reason #2 – Video interviewing is not in our budget.
According to some studies, phone screening, which we all agree many hiring managers frequently conduct, can take as much as 30 minutes just to schedule. Imagine paying someone to spend 30 minutes scheduling the phone screen and then another 30 minutes to conduct the phone screen which is far less revealing than video? This doesn’t include the time taken to reschedule cancelled phone screens, a problem that is avoided with automated video interviews. Automated interviews allow the candidate to conduct a video interview on their time and at their convenience which eliminates the costs of scheduling and re-scheduling interviews. To learn how much you can truly save check out this cost calculator.
Reason #3 – Video interviewing will disrupt our current hiring process.
Does your current hiring process more or less look like this?
Find candidates → Phone screen candidates → Interview candidates in person.
Yes, that looks simple. Here is what it will look like with video interviewing.
Find candidates → Video interview candidates → Interview candidates in person.
Doesn’t look much different does it only now you can take the recorded video interview rather than hand written phone screen notes and share the interview with other key decision makers.
Reason #4 – What if our candidates don’t have a webcam?
In 2011 according to PC World, webcam penetration reached 79%. I’m confident that number is higher today especially since webcams now come standard on most laptops. Additionally a number of video interviewing vendors now provide mobile video interviewing apps so that job candidates can conduct video interviews over their tablet or mobile device. So all in all candidates are pretty much covered.
Reason #5 – “What’s video interviewing?”
This is an oversimplification of the question and surely doesn’t indicate hatred on the part of the prospect. I find many people who still either have no clue what video interviewing is or simply don’t get it, dislike what they don’t understand. I call them, “late adopters”. Late adopters for example are people who still have their flip phone clipped to their belt. With lips curled back over snarling teeth they proclaim, “I don’t want a smart phone, I don’t need a smart phone!” Many people are just hesitant to embrace innovation and mask their fear with dislike for new technologies. With video interviewing the hesitation and apprehension is no different.
For you rotary phone users who are ready to take the video interviewing plunge this buyer’s guide will help you better understand all the terms and technology out there.
So there you go! Five reasons why you’ve wanted to lay the “smack down” on video interviewing and five reasons why you should give it a hug instead.