A couple of years ago, we had the opportunity to manage a large recruiting project for a client on the West Coast.

During the engagement, our team was conducting about 70 video interviews per month.

We learned a lot about video interviews over the six-month duration of the project. Here are some of the best practices we documented:

Keep Them Brief: Video interviews should be shorter than in-person interviews. The best interviews lasted between 20 and 30 minutes.

Set Expectations: A video interview may be a new experience for some of your prospects. Start the interview with a brief summary on how the interaction will be structured.

Ask Permission to Take Some Notes: Losing eye contact during a video meeting makes the interaction feel a little cold. Letting prospects know you’ll be looking away to jot down some notes (and it’s OK for them to do the same) makes it feel less awkward.

Follow a Predefined Structure: Your 30 minutes will go by fast, so it is important to break the interview into segments. Our segments were setting expectations (2 minutes), open-ended questions (8 minutes), standard questions (8 minutes), answering the prospects questions (5 minutes), closing the interview (5 minutes).

Offer Options for Moving Forward: If you believe a prospect has good potential, offer several options for moving forward in the recruiting process. People like choices, and it’s important to get a commitment to take the next step before disengaging.

With these best practices in mind, try scheduling and conducting a few video interviews.

Once you get a few under your belt, you’ll be surprised how much you enjoy connecting in this way.