By Heather Bolen
We've run hundreds of interviews through a screen, and the ones that fail don't fail for technology reasons. They fail because the interviewer ported an in-person habit — settle in, read the room, wing it — into a medium with no room to read. Remote interviewing rewards preparation over presence. These four practices are where that preparation goes.
1. Kill the unknowns before the call
Interviews create anxiety; anxiety creates fight, flight or freeze — none of which helps you see the real candidate. In person, arrival rituals absorb some of it. Remote, the unknowns do: Which platform? Camera on? Who's calling whom? What if my kids are home?
Send expectations in advance, explicitly: platform, duration, who they'll meet and in what order, that a barking dog is fine. A calm candidate gives you better data. That's not softness — it's instrument calibration.
2. Bring more structure, not less
The medium strips ambient information, and the temptation is to fill the gap with chat. Fill it with structure instead: know precisely what the role requires before the call — a defined Cipher — and which deliverables this conversation must cover. The unstructured friendly interview already produced, in Craig della Penna's words, "the statistically proven worst results possible"; on video, with thinner rapport to hide behind, it's worse.
3. Work harder at the human part, on purpose
What happened naturally in a lobby handshake now needs deliberate effort. Craig's instruction from the Foundations training applies double on video: "Be the person that you would want to tell your story to… be approachable, be friendly, be engaging, so that you're building that relationship during the interview as much as you are evaluating them." Look at the camera when it matters. Leave silence for them to fill. Close properly — thanks, question time, feedback offer, next steps — because a video call that just ends feels, to a candidate, like a door closed.
4. Capture the interview while it happens
The remote format's genuine gift: the conversation can be transcribed. Take advantage — a live transcript means you listen instead of scribbling, the debrief runs on what was said rather than what was remembered, and a same-day decision becomes practical because the evidence is already on the table. If your process still relies on handwritten notes after a video call, you're using the old method's weakness with the new method's tools sitting right there.
The short version
Remote interviewing isn't in-person interviewing minus the room. Done right it's a different discipline: expectations set early, structure carried in, warmth made deliberate, evidence captured live. Every one of those is easier with the role defined first.
Start with the role definition — free → · See the Conductor run a live interview →→
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Frequently asked questions
How do you conduct a good remote interview?
Set expectations before the call (platform, agenda, formality), come with structured questions mapped to the role, make warmth deliberate rather than assumed, and transcribe the conversation so the decision runs on evidence.
What should you send candidates before a video interview?
Platform and link, duration, interviewer names and order, dress-code note, and reassurance about home realities. Removing unknowns removes anxiety, and calmer candidates show you more.
How do you build rapport in a virtual interview?
Deliberately: camera attention at key moments, unhurried silences, genuine curiosity about their story, and a proper close with clear next steps. What a lobby and a handshake once did for free now takes intent.
Sources
- della Penna, C. HireBest Foundations course — quoted verbatim from the course transcript.
- della Penna, C. Cipher: A Proven Framework to Hire the Best People. Third Act Publishers, 2026.