Much has been said about the mythic importance of videos, its monolithic standing in our lives, and how it’s - without a shadow of a doubt - the progenitor of all forms of virtual interaction. However, the real stormbringer could very well be holograms; but that is a conversation for another day, another decade.
The concept of video calling is not radically new; some iteration of it has existed in our lives throughout the last few decades. Its widespread adoption by industries to conduct interviews is, however, a new development. As is the seamlessness in transmission, crystal-clear clarity of video and audio, easy accessibility, and high-speed connectivity. Thanks to the situation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, video interviews are now moving away from being an ‘alternate option’ to being the only choice available. But why do developers seem to think video interviews should be the only option when it comes to technical interviews? Let's find out.
Whiteboards are a far cry from modernity and belong to a whole different era altogether.
Even though the recent pandemic might have triggered a large scale integration of video assessment tools in interviews -- especially tech interviews -- it's anybody's guess that after having seen all the amazing benefits that video interviews offer, it would be incredibly futile to regress to conventional hiring practices. A fitting comparison could be drawn to the invention of the wheel - in an era where you had to walk miles just to get to the nearest watering hole. It’s abundantly clear that the advantages far outweigh the trials that come with straying away from the norm.
Adapting to new technologies has been instrumental in the advancement of any industry, and it’s not any different with tech recruiting, where the concept of video interviews has really picked up steam lately. According to most recruiters, it’s transformed cumbersome technical interviews into an immensely pleasant experience.
Pair-programming, known as an efficient mode of interviewing developer candidates, has become even more convenient and useful with the addition of a video interface. It’s become a lot more candidate-friendly when compared to typical whiteboard assessments, which can sometimes get rather intrusive. Remote interviews, on the other hand, offer candidates their much-required space and allow them to perform at their personal best.
The problem with whiteboards is that they don't allow candidates to perform at their best. Imagine that you’re at an interview, and you are given a difficult programming challenge to solve. With all the pressure and nerves that go into an interview, a whiteboard is the last thing any developer candidate would want to draw up a solution. To the uninitiated millennial, it just feels plain unnatural. How developers wish whiteboards came with a good ol’ ‘Compile’ button.
What developers stand to gain:
Now, let’s move over to the other side of the spectrum and understand how developers stand to gain from this new mode of candidate evaluation. Here are a few reasons why candidates have begun to increasingly prefer remote interviews to onsite interviews:
A large scrumptious chunk of their time and energy.
To a lot of coders, freedom means choosing their own time to code.
Imagine a world where we can nonchalantly swipe companies the way we swipe products on online portals; where we can casually interview for prospective jobs from the comfort of our homes; where we can do all of this while still being plugged into our current commitments. Well, guess what? We needn’t imagine anymore; we’ve arrived.
No longer does one have to embark on grand arduous journeys to the company in question and be subjected to sitting in nerve-wracking waiting halls for what seems like an eternity, before being shown to a seemingly complex problem that's been hurriedly scribbled onto a tacky whiteboard, desperate to be solved.
In 2020, you can be virtually teleported to the continent of your choosing, let alone a simple job interview that’s across the city or country. The number of hours wasted in setting up and commuting - if you add them up - is dizzying. In all honesty, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that all this could just as easily be done remotely and more efficiently.
Staying in their flow state: To each ‘his or her’ own creative process.
Many developers swear to be at their prime when alone and undistracted.
We have to face facts. While you might have liberally used words like ‘rockstar’ in your job description, you can’t expect the likes of Mick Jagger to come waltzing into your office. So, please consider the acute possibility of welcoming fantastic coders, who are rockstars in their own right, but not necessarily in the overly traditional sense that you were expecting.
Not every coder comes with the innate ability to instantly tap into their flow state. Shifting states is really not as easy as it sounds and needs an immense amount of effort and practice to hone. Even fewer can transition into such an optimal state in a completely new and alien environment. So, in this regard, video interviews are a cross between a personal and professional approach to assessing candidates, especially for technical roles. This way, you’ll never have to miss out on a great hire again due to interview-room jitters. It only takes the average person a few days to get used to a new environment and start performing at their peak levels.
While it’s indeed great to have bold, eccentric developers who could code wonders even in the midst of a fierce storm, it doesn’t mean that you should simply ‘compile’ other coders off your list just because they seem a little more humble and pragmatic in their approach. At the end of the day, you need perfect and novel solutions to a problem, and both contenders are engineered (however differently) to deliver.
Choose interview tools ‘by virtue of natural selection’.
Ever heard of natural selection? Well, that’s what it’s come down to. Communication tools and channels have cascaded down through the years and have finally brought us here. A place in time where everything comes to your place -- on time -- and job interviews aren't any different.
It's come down to the survival of the fastest and simplest processes out there. You either quickly adapt to the new digital climate or end up turning obsolete. Unfortunately, there are no two ways about it. Industries, the world over, have evolved to a state where they rely more on automation compared to all other types of process-enablers.
In this day and age, not a single developer would tell you that they prefer the classic ‘pen and paper’ over the blazing-fast dexterity offered by some of the latest computer keyboards. So, it’s almost whimsical that we still resort to using archaic contraptions like whiteboards and notepads to evaluate candidates. If you want to assess a knight of the realm on his deadly jousting skills, you’ll have to give the man a real lance, and not one made out of plastic. So, to really gauge the optimal competency of a coder, you’ve got to give him or her the tools that they are most used to, and are comfortable using. There’s no point stunting their performance with tradition.
So, all these are just some of the reasons why more and more companies are looking toward completely automating their hiring process. Automation begins right from the beginning of the funnel, where Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS’s) like Zoho Recruit form your first solid line of defense by effectively picking out the right fit for your organization from the ocean of resumes that you receive. The next line of defense are your online technical assessment platforms like HackerEarth Assessments that offer you a comprehensive way to assess candidates on their programming capabilities, in a completely remote environment. However, recruiters’ biggest boon come in the form of video interviewing tools like FaceCode that enable you to virtually interact with the candidate whilst they showcase their coding skills in an in-built code-editor.
You have to be quite inventive in the way you reach out to candidates or risk losing them to your competition, who, believe us, will snag them up in no time. Why? Not because they were the better choice, but simply because you weren’t as updated in tech as the ‘other company’.