Video interview tips for NZ jobs: Teams, Zoom and recorded questions

Set-up that costs nothing

A good video set-up needs no new equipment. What matters is light, sound and a steady picture:

• Light in front of you. Sit facing a window or put a lamp behind the screen. A window behind you turns you into a silhouette.
• Camera at eye level. Raise a laptop on a pile of books so the camera looks at you straight on, not up from below.
• Quiet sound. Earbuds with a microphone usually sound better than a laptop's own, and a room with soft furnishings echoes less than a bare one.
• A plain background. Tidy what is behind you, or use background blur. Microsoft warns that blurring may not hide everything, so do not rely on it for anything private.

Test it the day before. You can join a Teams meeting without a Teams account and without installing the app, from Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome, but the Teams test call only works in the desktop app. Zoom does not need an account to join either, unless the host requires sign-in, and its test meeting at zoom.us/test checks your connection, sound and camera. Open the actual interview link early, so a missing download or a browser permission does not eat into the first five minutes.

One-way recorded interviews and how to practise

Some employers, especially graduate programmes, use one-way interviews: the questions appear on screen and you record your answers, with no one on the other end. HireVue, one of the common platforms, says most of its video assessments have between five and eight questions, that a preparation countdown runs before each recording starts, and that the number of attempts at each answer is set by the employer.

Use the practice questions the platform offers. They are generic, not the real ones, but they let you get used to the countdown, the camera and hearing yourself. Practise answering out loud in about two minutes, using a simple structure: the situation, what you did, and the result. Our guide to graduate programmes in New Zealand covers the other stages those programmes use.

Find out before you start whether you can re-record. If you get only one attempt, answer the question you were asked, finish cleanly and move on.

Eye contact, notes and the delay

On video, looking at the camera reads as eye contact, and looking at the faces on screen reads as looking down. You do not need to stare at the lens, but look at it when you are making your main points. Moving the video window close to the camera helps.

Notes are fine, and one advantage of video. Keep a few short prompts beside the screen: your key examples, the figures you want to mention and your questions for them. Avoid a full script.

Video calls often have a slight delay, which makes people talk over each other. Pause for a beat after the interviewer finishes before you answer, and keep your answers a little shorter than you would in person, then check: "Would you like more detail on that?" Our guide to NZ job interview questions covers what you are likely to be asked.

What to do when the tech fails

Connections drop, and interviewers know it. Before the interview, get a phone number for the interviewer or the recruiter, and have your phone charged beside you.

• If the picture freezes, turn your video off to save bandwidth and carry on with sound.
• If you drop out, rejoin from the same link straight away.
• If you cannot rejoin within a couple of minutes, call or email: "My connection has dropped. I can rejoin by phone now, or at another time that suits you."

For a one-way interview that fails part-way, contact the employer or recruiter as soon as you can, with a note of what happened. Some platforms let the employer reset an interview, but only the employer can decide that.

Debriefing straight after while it is fresh

As soon as the call ends, write down what you were asked, as close to their words as you can remember, which answers went well, and which you would answer better next time. A second-round interview often returns to the first round's themes, and your notes from the first are the best preparation you have.

The demo opens with no account and has an interview still waiting for its write-up: press Debrief to record what they asked, what wobbled and your next move, which is saved with the job and can go straight into your calendar.

Write it up before you forget it