Video profiles for candidate evaluation: what to score, and what never to

A short video answer can tell you far more about a candidate than a resume ever will, especially for roles where resumes are thin. It can also be misused. The difference is what you choose to evaluate.

Score what a person says about the job. Ask every candidate the same short, role-relevant questions: describe a task you have done, what you would do in a safety situation, how you handle a disagreement on site. Transcribe the answers and judge them against a written rubric with clear examples of strong and weak responses.

Don't score how a candidate looks or sounds. Appearance, accent, facial expression, tone of voice and so-called emotion detection have no reliable link to job performance and are a direct route to bias. Keep them out of the model, and tell candidates that you have.

Make consent real. Tell candidates what is recorded, who will see it, how long it is kept and how to ask for deletion. Let them re-record their answers, and offer an alternative to video for people who can't or won't use it.

Keep a human in charge. The system's job is to surface the passages that support each score, so a recruiter reviews evidence instead of watching hours of footage. The decision to move a candidate forward, or not, stays with a person.