Just a few years ago, interview tools for employers would've included things like a phone, a resume, and a pen. With rapid advancements in technology, today, we have tools to aid employers at every step of the interview cycle. From automated sourcing, digital and Ai (artificial intelligence) assistants, interview intelligence, and ATS (applicant tracking systems), to assessments, virtual onboarding, and more. If you're looking for a tool to make interviewing more effective and efficient, today there are hundreds.

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In this article, we'll cover a list of tools that we've seen to be most effective in the interviewing process. We'll start with automated sourcing, which helps an employer identify candidates through job boards, social media, referrals, and more.

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First, you'll need a video interviewing platform and our recommendation is always Zoom. Most of us already have access to this tool, it's easy to use and it integrates seamlessly with the other tools we'll mention here - so you can check it off the list. Next, you'll want a digital assistant like Paradox to help you find the right candidate faster.

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An ATS system (our recommendation is Lever) will help you organize and manage your hiring process. It'll keep track of applicants, notes on interviews, job postings, and more - keeping everything in one place plus it integrates with Pillar, an interview Intelligence software. Pillar helps you to analyze data from interviews - giving you insight into how candidates performed so that you can make better decisions.

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Later in the interviewing process, you'll need assessments to ensure that your candidates have the skills necessary to perform well in the role. Assessment tools such as Codility or HackerRank can be used to test applicants before and after an initial interview.

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The final step of the interviewing process is onboarding, and there are several tools available to help employers make this stage smoother. For example, BambooHR onboarding allows hiring managers and recruiters to assign tasks, set reminders, and track progress.

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By using the right tools at each step of the interviewing process, you can make sure that you hire the best candidate for your company - but if they don't integrate with the other tools in your stack, you'll spend the day searching and switching tabs rather than doing real work.

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For more details check out, How to Build the Best Recruitment Stack."

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Interview Tools and Techniques

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Staying up to date on the latest techniques of interviewing is essential for employers to hire the best candidates. Every role, company, team, and hiring manager interviews just a bit differently, so it pays to have an arsenal of tools and techniques at your disposal.

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Traditional interviewing techniques like in-person interviews, phone screens, and personality profiles have been successful tools for hiring in the past, they simply do not fit today's high-tech remote world. However, we can still learn a lot from these methods.

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For example, scenario-based and behavior-based questioning have become two of the most effective interviewing techniques. Questions that are tailored to a candidate’s experience, knowledge, and technical skills in order to get the best understanding of their capabilities. Also, asking semi-structured open-ended questions that focus on different experiences can help employers gain a better understanding of candidates.

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Aside from traditional interviewing techniques, employers can now leverage technology to make the hiring process easier. As we've shifted to a remote workforce, these traditional interview tools and techniques have been adapted to video interviews, and technical, cognitive, and coding assignments. For instance, interview intelligence software powered by Ai gives you the ability to automate candidate introductions and interview scheduling, record, transcribe, and index video interviews, and access insights and analytics to score a candidate's interview performance.

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These tools nearly eliminate the need for interviewer preparation before the interview. All of the tools an interviewer needs to pull off a great candidate interview experience are at their fingertips. All they need to do is open the candidate's resume, LinkedIn profile, and any other relevant social media profiles or portfolio and scan them prior to the interview.

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While you're scanning their social profiles, look for a great icebreaker to open the conversation. Icebreakers help to establish comfort, which is essential for a successful interview. Personally, I like to look at posts that they've commented on, influencers they follow, a previous company, alma mater, or rival school they attended. These are great openers that build rapport quickly.

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By leveraging the right tools and techniques, you can ensure that you hire the best candidate by getting to know them on a deeper level. It's all about getting to know who they are as a person, instead of just looking at their skills and experience. With the right tools and techniques, you can make sure that they're the best fit for your company.

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Online Interview Tools

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Ai interview software is a new class of online interview tools that make the hiring process easier and more efficient. Interviewing has always been time-consuming and expensive, with employers having to schedule interviews between job applicants, interviewers, and other stakeholders to get feedback on each candidate the ancillary work can seem endless.

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Now, online interview tools are here that make this much easier. Ai-powered automation takes care of many administrative tasks associated with interviews such as introduction to candidates, scheduling, and reminders. Not only does this help with structuring the interview process, but it helps ensure that you don’t miss any important details or forget to follow up. Ai serves like a second brain when a hiring manager gets pulled in many directions.

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In addition to automating the interview process, online interview tools allow you to record video interviews and transcribe them into text that can be indexed and searched. This helps hiring managers get the right information quickly when reviewing interviews and candidates. It also makes it easier for multiple people involved in the recruiting process to review a candidate without having to watch the entire video, as many important points can be highlighted, scored, and measured across the spectrum of candidates.

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Finally, online interview tools offer helpful analytics and insights. By analyzing facial expressions, tone of voice, and other nonverbal cues, Ai powered tools like interview intelligence software can give employers a better idea of how well-suited a candidate is for the role and whether they will fit into your team culture. With these insights, you'll have a more accurate assessment of the candidate and the resources to make a better hiring decision.

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Online interview tools have revolutionized the job interviewing process, helping you save time and money while ensuring that you create a great candidate experience and hire the best candidates for your organization.

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Interview Techniques for Recruiters

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An important part of the recruitment process is having effective interview techniques that will help you determine which candidate is right for the job. First, creating an effective candidate screening process will help you identify the most qualified candidates from the beginning.

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We have an interview guide for hiring managers that includes a 6-step process for recruitment. Each step of the process was specifically designed to ensure that you get the best possible results from your recruitment efforts from screening to the offer. It also includes interview techniques for recruiters that will help you streamline your candidate selection process.

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The interview process is vital to creating a company culture that thrives, but the skills and interviewing techniques for interviewers don't stop in the candidate assessment phase. To ensure that you hire the right people who will succeed in your organization and fit with your culture, it’s important to arm your team with the tools necessary to make the best decision long term. Tools like interview intelligence that help you assess culture fit are far more important in today's highly connected world than they've ever been in the past.

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This means offering interview coaching and training to your team so that they know how to assess candidates fast, in a fair way, and without bias. This means knowing which questions to ask, and which questions not to ask. Using different types of interviews such as technical interviews, panel interviews, assessments, and behavioral interviews gives you deeper insights into a candidate's strengths, weaknesses, and overall fit for the job.

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Kerri McKinnney, Global Director of Talent @ Terminal, came to us a few years ago with a request, to help us differentiate our recruiting process from everyone else in our market. In her own words, " we were trying to set ourselves apart." Kerri's boss had outlined a mandate for their new hiring process, "it had to be faster, better, and more innovative" than any of their competitors - you can read the full story here.

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Once Pillar was implemented for their recruiting teams, they were able to save 10 hours per week - per recruiter, and cut more than an hour off of each candidate interaction, all while doubling their submission-to-offer ratio. Plus, they were able to streamline their screening and assessment processes, making it easier to vet candidates and ensuring that every candidate received a fair evaluation.

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At Pillar, we understand how important it is for recruiters and hiring managers to have the right tools in place to make sure their recruitment process is efficient and effective. With the abundance of interview tools and techniques available to employers today, it is important for recruiters to ensure that they are leveraging the right ones in order to find the right candidates.

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Pillar is an interview intelligence platform that provides hiring managers and recruiters with customized interview insights, analytics, and candidate to help them quickly identify the right candidate for the job. By utilizing Ai (Artificial Intelligence), Pillar helps recruiters make better-informed decisions in the screening, interviewing, and hiring process while creating a more personalized candidate experience. To see how it works, schedule a demo to chat with someone on our team.

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