Pre-recorded video interview: +20 ideas for questions based on the profile you want to recruit
Why should you define a questionnaire for each profile you're looking for?
For a pre-recorded video interview, it is important to prepare a questionnaire for each job vacancy and not a questionnaire for each candidate, or even a standard questionnaire for all the vacancies you publish.
This way, you can assess each candidate for a job in the same way, with the same questions and the same chances. It will then be easier for you to define which candidates will move on to the next stage in the process.
So always start by defining your ideal profile for the job, particularly in terms of hard and soft skills. Based on this, you can prepare the best questionnaire to identify these qualities as effectively as possible.
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What questions should you ask in a pre-recorded video interview depending on the type of job your candidate is doing?
During a pre-recorded video interview, the number of questions asked should be limited. Even if you can technically ask ten or so, it's not ideal. The aim of this tool is not to conduct an exhaustive interview, but to ask the few questions that will give you an idea of the candidate's personality. So choose just 3 or 4 questions that will enable you to achieve this objective quickly.
Here are some suggested questions to consider for your pre-recorded video interviews, depending on the profession. Feel free to draw on them and adapt them to your needs.
Industrial / technical professions
For this kind of profession, you certainly want to identify the technical skills applicable to your company. But technical skills alone are not enough; thanks to the pre-recorded video interview, you can also see how the candidate uses their skills in their day-to-day work.
Question |
What you assess |
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Could you name a tool/technique that you have mastered and how you use it on a daily basis? |
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What measures do you adopt to ensure your safety, that of your colleagues and that of your working environment? |
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Could you tell us about a project that has particularly touched you and the role you played in it? |
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Have you ever been in a situation where you had to resolve a breakdown, a fault, etc.? How did you react? |
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Commercial / sales professions
For sales positions, you need to know that the candidate will be able to understand your products and deliver them to the right prospects at the right time. Of course, sales techniques are very important, but you can also assess other qualities: teamwork, organization or monitoring performance indicators, to cite just a few examples.
Question |
What you assess |
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You're on the phone with a prospect: how do you start the conversation? |
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Could you explain how you monitor your objectives and measure your actions' success? |
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Could you give us an example of how you identify new sales opportunities? |
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How important do you think collaboration with other internal teams is in your business? |
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Creative professions
When you're looking to recruit creative profiles, it's worth looking at their experience, but also how they set up a creative process, how they react to feedback, whether positive or negative, etc. You won't be able to assess their talent, but you will be able to get an idea of whether these candidates will develop positively within your company.
Question |
What you assess |
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What software or creative tools do you master and how do you use them in your work process |
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How do you enhance your creativity on a daily basis? |
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Can you tell us about a creative project of which you are particularly proud? |
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How do you deal with critical feedback on your creations? |
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Management and administration professions
For this kind of profession, it's interesting to assess not only the skills but also the candidate's experience and how it has helped them develop as a professional.
Question |
What you assess |
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How do you manage priorities when you have several tasks to complete at the same time? |
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What do you consider to be the most important quality required for your job and why? |
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In your opinion, what's the best way to adapt to change within a company (tools, organization, etc.)? |
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You will be dealing with German suppliers. Could you introduce yourself to them and say a few words about our company in German? |
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Service professions
Personality and contact with others are two very important elements when you are assessing candidates for service sector positions. Adaptability to the audience is a criteria that can easily be assessed thanks to the pre-recorded video interview.
Question |
What you assess |
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How would you describe yourself in 3 character traits? |
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How would you react to an unhappy customer? |
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Why do you think you would be a good ambassador for our company? |
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What do you like best about your job? Give a concrete example. |
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Pre-recorded video interview: are there any specific questions to ask depending on the profile you're looking for?
As in a traditional interview, you adapt your questions according to several factors. Don't forget that the questions in a pre-recorded video interview will be asked to all the candidates for the same job. You therefore need to think about the profile type you want to recruit and adapt the questions that will enable you to detect it among all the candidates.
There are 3 main points on which you can propose different questions depending on the level of seniority expected for a position.
Level of experience
This question type generally provides a summary of what the candidate has been able to achieve so far. For a senior profile, you will be asked to describe one or more significant experiences. For a more junior profile, the question may focus on skills learned rather than significant experience.
But the level of experience is entirely relative, especially depending on the position you are offering. For some jobs, experience isn't the most important thing, and you're looking more for personality and motivation. If that's the case, forget this type of question, which will teach you nothing, and replace it with soft skills questions.
If you really need someone with a lot of experience, ask at least one question about experience, but adapt it to your needs so that the candidate knows exactly how to record their answer. For example: ‘Tell us about your various professional experiences’ would become ‘What professional experiences could help you to develop in the international context of our company?
Good to know: don't forget that the pre-recorded video interview helps you to detect candidates' personalities in a very short space of time. Wouldn't a question about experience in the broadest sense (and not just professional experience) be useful to better understand your candidate as a person?
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Career perspectives
How do your candidates see their professional future in general and within your company? What are their goals?
These questions are very important in determining whether your candidate is looking to the long term and what they can bring to the table today, in the months to come and even several years from now. It can also help you to see whether their personality matches what you're looking for.
While learning and development are open to all levels of seniority (you're never too old to learn!), questions about training and development are generally more appropriate for junior profiles. It's important to identify the development potential of these profiles, especially in terms of skills. Pre-recorded video interviews make this possible.
For more senior profiles, you might consider asking a question that focuses more on how they have managed their internal mobility so far. Have they held several positions? Have they progressed from an operational position to a responsible one? This may give you an idea of how these experienced profiles react to change or opportunities within a company.
Whether or not to manage
Obviously, if you're looking for a managerial profile, you'll need to adapt your pre-recorded video interview questions. Depending on how important this specific point is for the job itself, you can either ask one fairly generic question, or split it into two.
If you ask a single question on this point, you need to be able to identify two things quickly:
- whether or not the candidate has already managed and in what way
- whether the candidate has the right mindset to manage in your company
So think of a question that will enable you to identify both. For example: ‘In your opinion, what are the 3 qualities of a good manager and why?
If the profile you're looking for is predominantly a manager, especially for larger teams or with a high hierarchical level, you can split the question into two parts:
- An initial, fairly standard question on management experience
- A situational question, with the option of whether or not to prepare, particularly suited to the pre-recorded video interview format. For example: ‘You're at an employee annual review and your employee tells you he wants to leave the company. How would you react?
Tip: personalize pre-recorded video interview questions without “closing” them
It's a good idea to adapt your questions to make them more personal. But they must not make a candidate feel excluded.
For example, you could be dealing with a senior profile who is fully motivated to take on the responsibilities of a junior profile. Even if you think your job is suitable for young graduates, avoid closing the door on more experienced people who may be just what you need.
In concrete terms, if you're thinking of asking the following question: ‘During your studies, what was the most important project for you?’, open it up: ‘During your career (studies, work experience, etc.), what was the most important project for you? You'll maximize your chances of finding that rare gem, no matter how senior they are.
The right pre-recorded video interview questions for each recruitment stage
The pre-recorded video interview can be used at several moments in the recruitment process. Of course, you need to adapt your questionnaire to this specific situation. For example, if you use the pre-recorded video interview after an initial interview, don't include any introductory questions (or just one), and instead ask more in-depth questions about personality or how you see the job, the company, etc.
Let's take 3 examples.
- If the questionnaire is sent out with each new application for a position
Be careful and don't let your candidate do their pre-recorded video interview without any information about this part of the process. You could lose them!
The first part of your questionnaire could be a video question in which you introduce yourself and the company and explain why you are asking your candidate to do this pre-recorded video interview. At the end of your video, play up the connivance, by asking, for example: ‘Now that I've introduced myself, could you do the same in 1 minute?’
For the next few questions, think about getting to know your candidate: who is he or she? Why is he or she motivated to join you?
- If the questionnaire is sent to help you choose between several profiles already well advanced in the recruitment process
The pre-recorded video interview can be used to pre-qualify and shortlist candidates, but it can also be adapted to other moments in the recruitment process. After an initial HR interview, for example, you can consider a questionnaire that goes into greater depth on several topics that are of particular interest for the position. This could involve role-playing, questions detailing the candidate's vision on a specific topic, or specific examples to be given on a particular mission.
Often, the pre-recorded video interviews recorded at this stage will be watched by you as well as by the candidate's future managers and potentially future teams. This is the perfect opportunity to work with them to design the questionnaire so that, after the generic questions asked during the initial contacts, the questions relate more specifically to the way the team operates, future projects, the personalities of each individual, etc.
- If it's a test questionnaire
One of the great advantages of the pre-recorded video interview is that it can also be used to conduct test questionnaires. Prepare a few questions to quickly identify whether your candidate can meet your needs in terms of both interpersonal and technical skills. For example, you could ask the candidate to speak in a foreign language relevant to the job, to see if the language level is sufficient for the position.
You could also suggest a role-playing situation, especially for positions requiring easy contact. For example, for a future customer relations manager, ask them to react to a particular request in a 30-second video, without preparing their response.
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To sum up, as in a traditional interview, adapt your questions to the specific profile you are looking for. Defining the job and the skills (hard skills and soft skills) is therefore more than essential!
But unlike in face-to-face or video interviews, be particularly careful to ask open-ended questions, because you won't be able to bounce back as you would in a normal interview. This is an opportunity to assess all your candidates on the same basis.
And don't hesitate to use all the options open to you with the pre-recorded video interview: vary the type of questions (written, video), adapt the preparation time according to the level of spontaneity required, co-construct your questionnaire with the teams to facilitate group assessment, etc.
👉 Easily identify the best candidates for your positions with our pre-recorded video interview tool.
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