This post about virtual interviewing tools was first published in May 2023 and was updated with new information in May 2025.
During the pandemic, virtual interviews became a necessity; since then, they’ve become the norm. More than 80% of companies that made the switch are still giving virtual interviews.
Virtual interviews also have tons of advantages:
- 74% of recruiters said that virtual interviews have made their lives easier.
- 87% of candidates said a positive interview experience could change their mind about a company.
- 96% of recruiters said that using artificial intelligence (AI) enhances talent acquisition while saving 14 hours per week on manual tasks.
But these aren’t automatic benefits of video interviewing. Your recruiting team needs to provide a positive, efficient virtual interviewing experience — the experience candidates have come to expect. To make that happen, your recruiters need tools that help them save time and improve their processes.
Who better to give advice on the subject than ClearCompany’s own Brian Abraham, Director of People & Culture, and Brian Smith, Manager of Recruiting? They’re experts on the subject — ClearCompany has been exclusively remote since 2020, and our own virtual interviewing tools have helped us maintain a time-to-hire that’s weeks faster than the market average.
Keep reading for their expert advice on how to pull off successful virtual interviews. They also talked about some of the essential tools recruiters should have in their Virtual Interview Toolkit. Then, download our complete checklist of tools you need to execute fast, effective virtual interviews.
1. ATS and LinkedIn Recruiter Integration
LinkedIn is ubiquitous in job hunting and recruiting — it has one billion users globally, and 9,000 applications are submitted every minute. That’s why the ClearCompany Applicant Tracking System’s integration with LinkedIn Recruiter is at the top of our list of must-have tools.
With this integration, ClearCompany automatically creates candidate profiles when they apply. If they’re already in the system, the candidate’s information is merged with their existing profile, avoiding duplicate entries, providing recruiters with more context, and saving tons of time.
“I like the fact that you can see who’s already in our system,” said Brian Smith. “You can look at notes and see if we’ve interacted with the candidate in the past.”
“I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of this integration,” said Brian Abraham. “Before, if I had, say, 100 candidates in LinkedIn, I’d have to go cross-reference those candidates with our database manually. It's a huge task.”
The ClearCompany team also uses LinkedIn Apply Connect, which allows job seekers to submit applications without leaving LinkedIn. The integration helps the team capture more candidates, “make it as easy as possible for them to apply,” said Abraham, and get them to the interview stage faster. “It’s all about speed to the interview.”
2. Candidate Texting
Candidate texting is too practical to be optional for modern recruiting teams. According to text recruiting statistics, 97% of U.S. adults have cell phones, and text messages have a 98% open rate. In other words, you can reach nearly anyone with a text message, and they’re all but guaranteed to be seen.
Our hiring statistics support texting as an effective recruiting tool, too. ClearCompany’s time to hire is just 21 days, compared to the average of 45+ days. It’s largely thanks to ClearText, ClearCompany’s candidate texting solution.
“The speed of our process is greatly improved with texting, and it can even be by weeks,” Abraham said. “People lose emails or don’t see them until three days later.
“And then, by the time we get an interview scheduled, it's another three days later, so you're six or seven days faster just with texting. That same person might text back within five minutes. So it's a huge time saver.”
Recruiters can text candidates via their mobile devices or within the platform, where conversations are stored to increase transparency and help recruiters and hiring managers stay on the same page.
3. Text and Email Templates
Staying in contact with lots of candidates is still a challenge, let alone maintaining a personal touch and consistent messaging every time you speak with them. The text and email templates available in ClearCompany save time for our recruiters, eliminating manual processes and preventing a common error — misspelling candidates’ names.
“Any repeatable process that we can automate is helpful,” agreed Smith. “To be able to just click a button instead of typing out an entire text message saves us time. It doesn't seem like a big deal if it's one or two texts, but when you're texting candidates all day, you can save as much time as possible, and it certainly is a big help.”
4. Easy Interview Scheduling and Candidate Screening
Scheduling interviews and screening candidates can add days to the hiring process. You have to coordinate a time, send an email with the interview link and directions, share candidate information with the hiring team — the list goes on.
ClearCompany’s answer? AI and automation. With Virtual Recruiter, your career site chatbot assistant, and automatic interview links, scheduling and screening are a breeze. That’s why our hiring timelines are more than 50% faster than average.
With Virtual Recruiter, job seekers can get answers to simple questions while searching. Your team can even screen applicants and allow qualified candidates to self-schedule their interviews via the chatbot.
For recruiters conducting their own outreach, self-service interview scheduling can eliminate days of back-and-forth communication.
Recruiters include a link to schedule an interview in their initial message, cutting the number of days to initial screening from six down to just two, and the number of emails sent during the process from five to 1.5.
Compatibility with LinkedIn isn’t the only integration you’ll find helpful in your recruiting software. ClearCompany integrates with major video interview software providers, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Indeed Interview, and automatically adds meeting links to scheduled interview invitations. No need to worry about sending out meeting links or tracking them down on the day of the interview — it’s easily accessible to everyone on the invite.
5. Interview Guides and Scorecards
Prevent repetitive interviews, reduce bias, and receive fair and timely interview feedback from hiring teams with Interview Guides and Scorecards. These virtual interview tools help recruiters improve communication and make hiring decisions based on set criteria.
ClearCompany automation also saves time. When recruiters send interview invites to hiring teams, they receive Guides, Scorecards, and candidate profiles, including the candidate's resume and any internal notes, delivered to their inbox.
With structured interview questions and a standardized rating system, said Abraham, “we can make decisions faster, which means we can make offers faster, and we can be more competitive.”
They also help reduce bias and ensure you hire high-quality candidates. “I really like that candidates are evaluated on core competencies and core values,” said Smith. “I think having those guiding principles of whether or not the person is actually qualified for the role, not just a likable person, is super helpful.”
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Download Now >6. AI Interview Notetaker
Taking notes during interviews can be a distraction, and candidates notice when your focus is on your keyboard rather than their responses. ClearCompany’s AI Notetaker eliminates this issue by capturing key insights and structuring feedback in real-time.
With AI Notetaker, recruiters can stay fully engaged with candidates while it transcribes and organizes interview details. It highlights the most important information, helping teams make faster, more confident hiring decisions.
This tool also supports collaboration, enabling hiring teams to review structured notes and compare candidates objectively. By reducing the risk of miscommunication and costly mis-hires, AI Notetaker ensures every interview is a step toward smarter hiring.
7. Fully-Integrated Hiring Solution
Are you using different pieces of software to manage all the moving parts of recruitment, like writing and posting job descriptions, talking to candidates, scheduling interviews, and conducting background checks? These HR tech stacks are costing more than they’re worth, and they’re inefficient for recruiting teams. They have to log into multiple accounts to access information and send messages on different platforms to coworkers and candidates. There’s no single source of truth the team can rely on.
That’s where ClearCompany’s TA team has a leg up on the competition. ClearCompany’s Applicant Tracking System is a fully-integrated, cloud-based platform for managing the entire recruiting and hiring process. Recruiters and hiring managers can access the most recent information when they log in. There’s no need to verify information between systems or spend time logging in and out of apps.
“I think the way that our platform captures everything, including email and texting communications, is where a lot of other platforms fail,” said Abraham. “You have to go somewhere else to figure out what is happening in the hiring process. You have to find the trail of where we're at right now by emailing this manager or Slacking that one. But we have none of that in ClearCompany.”
Hiring managers don’t need to check in with recruiters — they just log into ClearCompany to see where candidates are in the recruiting process. “All of the interviews are in there; all of the text messages are in there; all of the emails are in there — and managers have access to that too.
“It's like the nerve center,” said Abraham, and with this level of integration across the recruiting process, “we're already two or three steps ahead of most people. When you're doing everything in a remote environment, having everything contained in one location where everybody else has access to it, not just the recruiting team, is worth pointing out. Even if you just leave the platform for email, there's this break in that continuity, and in a remote recruiting environment, that's huge.”
Virtual interviews aren’t just faster with ClearCompany tools — they’re more efficient and effective and can lead to better hiring decisions. Improve hiring team communication for a seamless interview process, recognize and remove bias, and increase transparency at every stage when you use ClearCompany to interview candidates.
Download ClearCompany’s Virtual Interview Toolkit Checklist to discover the tools you need to conduct seamless, effective virtual interviews and put these recruiting tips to the test. Get the Checklist here.
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