Do’s and Don’ts of Skype/Video Interviews

It is not all uncommon nowadays for Skype (or similar technologies) to be used to interview candidates who for whatever reason are unable to attend an in person interview.

A Skype interview has a great number of advantages in our busy world, it is economical and with the right equipment easy to set up. Having said that, there are also a number of disadvantages too. These disadvantages fall into two categories, firstly those that relate to technical limitations such as bandwidth where you get poor picture quality, jerky images, out of sync sound and so on and secondly those that relate to perception and presentation.

Unfortunately a proportion of candidates who allow them-selves to be interviewed via Skype, don’t prepare themselves as well as they might for a regular in person interview. Please find below some Do’s and Don’ts when preparing for a Skype interview.

Do:
1. Dress as well as you would expect for a person to person interview. Just because the interview is taking place in an environment that you may choose, is no excuse to wear your old tracksuit.
2. Make sure that you are well groomed. There is no excuse not to be well scrubbed.
3. Be ready at your computer, just as you would turn up in time for an in person interview. Make sure that your computer is up and running ready to receive the connection. Make sure your internet connection is reliable. Take advantage of the "Test" feature to test both Video and Sound before the interview. Be ready to go to Sound only if the Video is bad or fails.
4. Prepare yourself for the interview. Do exactly the kinds of preparation as you would for an in person interview. The interviewer is going to ask the same questions and judge you on the same standards as for an in person interview.

Don’t:
1. Set up the interview where distractions come into play. You may think it is cool to conduct your end of the interview in a café with your nice new iPad, but don’t forget that extraneous noise will be picked up and people passing by may be an annoyance.
2. Think for one minute that a Skype interview is a rehearsal for the real thing; it is just as serious and important to your success in working your way through the recruitment process as any other step.
3. Forget to look at your interview position from the interviewer’s perspective, make sure that you are located in a comfortable chair that allows you to sit with an erect and alert posture. Adopt a posture that shows you are interested and keen for the role. Make sure that the background behind you is uncluttered and non distracting. Specifically ensure that the background is not too brightly lit, otherwise you will appear as a dark silhouette against a glary background, likewise don’t set yourself up so that you are staring into bright light, squinty is not a good look.
4. Forget to be as attentive as possible to the interviewer, paying careful attention to the interviewer is perhaps more important in a Skype interview because you don’t have the same benefit or intensity of all the audio visual cues found in an in person interview.