It’s a video interview for a job you really want. But the interviewer is not like any you have experienced before.
The interviewer you are trying to impress is immune to your charms and it might be better to avoid “humours comments” and or irony. They are an expert in analysing facial expressions and body language. They will closely monitor your word choice but you can be absolutely sure they will not be influenced by your regional accent, gender or ethnicity. The innovative software that analysis's video interviews claims to identify the traits that predict career success.( Although I can find no information on what these traits are). Its designers claim it removes interviewer bias but I’m not convinced. ( Are traits not biases?). What it does do is make it possible to interview a lot more people for the same post. This in theory opens up the opportunity to a greater diversity of candidates as the essential criteria on the person specification no longer has to be kept artificially tight in order to keep those selected for interview down to a manageable small number. As ever the technologies really selling point is it reduces the human hours involved in recruitment and therefore costs.
A number of large, international companies are already using this video analysis software for their graduate entry schemes where the volume of applicants is high and the differentiation between candidates is small.
Artificial Intelligence may not totally replace the traditional job interview as managers like to, “shake the hand” of a candidate before deciding to offer them a post but it could become a familiar stage in the recruitment process.
Blair Mcpherson former director author and blogger www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
