One-way video interviews: how they work and when to use them

How a one-way video interview works

The mechanics are the same across every tool in this category, VoxScreen included.

1. The employer writes 3 to 6 questions and sets a time limit for each answer, usually 2 to 3 minutes.
2. Candidates get a private link by email. There is no account to create and nothing to install.
3. The candidate reads each question, records an answer on their phone or laptop, and can re-record before saving.
4. The employer reviews the answers whenever they like, alongside a transcript and, in tools that score, a rating per question.

What they are called

The same format goes by several names, which is why buyers often think they are comparing different products. "One-way video interview" is the common term in English. "Pre-recorded interview" and "video screening" mean the same thing. In Brazil the usual phrase is "entrevista gravada". All of them describe a candidate recording answers alone, with no interviewer on the call.

When to use one

One-way interviews earn their place at the top of the funnel, where the number of applicants is larger than the number of half-hour slots anyone has.

• You have 40 or more applicants for a role and a screening call would cost a full working week.
• Communication matters for the job and a CV cannot show it: support, sales, teaching, anything customer-facing.
• Your candidates are in other timezones, or working, and scheduling is the slowest part of your process.
• Several people need to weigh in on the same answers without four calendars having to agree.

When not to use one

They are a filter, not an interview. Some things need a conversation.

• Final rounds. Negotiation, mutual assessment and selling the role all need a real exchange.
• Senior or executive hiring, where a recording asks a candidate to audition for a job they have not been sold on yet.
• Roles with tiny applicant pools. If five people applied, call all five.
• Anything where a candidate's access to a quiet room and a decent connection would bias the result. Offer an alternative if someone asks.

What makes a good question

The failure mode is asking questions a candidate can answer from a template. Good ones are specific to the role and hard to fake.

• Ask for one concrete past example rather than an opinion. "Tell me about a time a customer was wrong and angry" beats "How do you handle difficult customers?"
• Ask about the actual work. A short scenario the person would face in week one tells you more than a values question.
• Keep it to 3 to 6 questions. Completion drops sharply past that, and the people who drop out are often the ones with other offers.
• Say up front how long it takes, and mean it. "About 10 minutes" is the single biggest driver of whether people finish.

What candidates think of them

Worth being honest about: candidates like the flexibility and dislike talking to a screen. The complaints are consistent and mostly fixable. Recording without knowing the time limit feels like a trap, so show it. Not being told when they will hear back feels like a void, so tell them. Being asked to record for a role they know nothing about feels one-sided, so put the salary range and the process in the invitation. Teams that do those three things see materially better completion.

Where AI fits

Recording answers solves the scheduling problem but not the reviewing problem: 60 candidates times three minutes is still three hours of watching. Modern tools transcribe every answer and score it against criteria the employer defines, so the reviewer starts from a ranked list and a transcript they can skim in seconds. The scoring is worth checking rather than trusting: read the reasoning next to the transcript, and treat the ranking as a reading order, not a decision.

Common questions