Your first video interview, sorted

Live or pre-recorded?

Video interviews come in two kinds, and they feel very different.

Live. A real person (or a small panel) talks to you in real time, usually on Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet. It works like a face-to-face interview. You can ask them to repeat a question, and they can see you thinking.

Pre-recorded (sometimes called one-way or asynchronous). There’s nobody on the other end. A question appears on screen, you may get a short time to think, and then you record your answer within a time limit. The employer watches it later. These often open for a few days, so you can usually choose when to do it before the deadline.

If the invitation doesn’t say which kind it is, or which app, it’s fine to ask. Our email templates include a short message for requesting interview details.

The day before: test everything once

Most video interview problems are boring ones: a muted microphone, a flat battery, a link that asks you to download an app at 9.58. You can rule nearly all of them out the day before.

• Open the link. Some apps want you to install something or sign in. Find out now, not a minute before.
• Test your microphone and camera. Teams and Zoom both let you preview yourself and check your sound before joining. Or call a friend on the same app for two minutes.
• Learn the four buttons. Mute, camera on and off, leave, and share screen. You might be asked to share your screen for a short task.
• Check your connection where you’ll actually sit. If the signal is weak in your room, try somewhere else in the house.
• For a pre-recorded interview, use any practice question the platform offers. It shows you how long you get, and whether you can re-record an answer if something goes wrong.

Where to sit

You’re looking for three things: quiet, light and a plain background.

• Quiet. Tell anyone you live with when the interview is. Close the door if you can. Turn off notifications on the device you’re using and put your other phone on silent.
• Light in front of you, not behind you. A window behind you turns you into a silhouette. Face the window, or put a lamp behind the camera.
• A plain background. A wall, a closed door or a tidy shelf is fine. Nobody expects a studio. If your room is busy, most apps can blur your background, but test it first, because blur can make your hands and hair flicker.
• Camera at eye level. Raise a laptop on books, or prop a phone on something steady. Looking slightly down at the camera is more comfortable for everyone than looking up your nose.

To check how you’ll look, open your phone or laptop’s own camera app and sit where you’ll be. That keeps your video on your device. Adjust the light and the angle until you can see your face clearly, then close it.

If you’ve only got a phone

That’s genuinely fine. Plenty of people do video interviews on a phone.

Join from the app rather than a mobile browser if you can, because it usually behaves better. If your mobile data is limited, use Wi-Fi, since video uses a lot of data.

Notes without reading them

Notes are allowed and useful, especially in a live interview. The trick is to keep them short enough that you glance, not read.

• Write three or four prompts, not sentences: “college presentation, Sam absent”, “food bank Saturdays”, “ask about training”.
• Put them next to the camera, on a sticky note at the edge of the screen. Then glancing at them looks almost the same as looking at the interviewer.
• Keep the job description open behind the call, in case you want to check a detail.

If you read a prepared answer word for word, it tends to sound flat, and you lose your place when they ask a follow-up. Prompts let you talk normally.

When the technology lets you down

It happens to everyone, including interviewers. What matters is that you deal with it calmly.

• In a live interview: if you can’t hear the question or the picture freezes, say so straight away. Don’t try to struggle through. “Sorry, you broke up there. Could you say the question again?” is completely normal.
• If the call drops: rejoin using the same link. If you can’t get back in within a couple of minutes, contact the interviewer using the details you wrote down.
• In a pre-recorded interview: if the platform crashes, take a screenshot of any error and email the employer or recruiter promptly to explain.

Hi [Name],

I’m so sorry, my connection dropped during our interview and I haven’t been able to rejoin the call. I’m trying the link again now.

If it’s easier, I can continue by phone on [your number], or rearrange for a time that suits you.

Kind regards,
[Your name]

Looking at the camera

You might hear that you must keep “eye contact” by staring into the lens. You don’t have to. Looking at the interviewer’s face on screen is natural, and so is looking away while you think. If you’re comfortable glancing at the camera now and then, that’s nice, but nobody is scoring your gaze. Concentrate on listening to the question and answering it.

If you’d like more questions to practise with, the Practice Room gives you one at a time, with no timer.