1) Ensure Flash is installed

Adobe Flash version 10 or higher is needed for your video camera to work properly. If you don’t have Adobe Flash installed, you can download it here.

2) Double check your microphone and speakers are turned on and working

Sometimes your microphone or speakers will be turned off or disabled, whether accidentally or on purpose. That’s okay! We have all done this at some point before.

Be sure that your computer has speakers or headphones, and double check that they can play audio. This is required for you to hear the interview questions.

A microphone is required to record the audio portion of your interview. Double check that your computer has a microphone and that it is enabled.

A Fallback

If you are still having problems, we provide the opportunity for you to still conduct your interview over your phone. You will hear the questions and will be prompted to simply answer through your phone. It’s just as easy as leaving a voicemail!

Look for the “I would like to take a phone interview instead” link if you are having technical problem with your microphone, speakers, or video camera.

Learn more about your candidates by hearing them earlier in the hiring funnel. That’s the main emphasis of Voice Advantage, but it’s not all. You can process more candidates, quicker—and positively impact quality.

Here’s a magazine advertisement we created illustrating how Voice Advantage makes your day better.

In short, Voice Advantage allows you—a recruiter, HR staff member, or simply someone in charge of hiring for your company—to record questions over your phone. With those questions recorded, you invite candidates to participate, either through e-mail or SMS invitations, or as the main application action from job postings out on the web (e.g. job boards, Twitter). Candidates answer your pre-recorded questions using their phones, hearing your voice on the other end. When they are done, you review their answers via a web dashboard, ranking, sorting and organizing along the way.
Let’s look at a video describing the candidate experience to gain a little more insight into how this all works.

Pretty simple, right? Fortunately your interaction with Voice Advantage to customize those questions are just as easy.

The Four Things You Need To Know

Voice Advantage is couldn’t-be-easier interviewing. Understanding the four main pillars to its use will make you a power user in no time. We’ll walk through each pillar, building off the previous, so by the time we’re done you’ll understand all you need to know to get started. Fortunately the four pillars are easy to mentally compartmentalize while you read and watch. So let’s get started!

Pillar 1: Campaigns

Campaigns are a grouping of questions and answers, and an assortment of other customizable features. They are like a job requisition: when there is an opening you are trying to fill, create a Voice Advantage campaign. They are best thought of as a 1:1 ratio to a job opening.

Creating a campaign from scratch is simple. Give it a name, then enter a few management options, and you’re done. The next part is recording audio questions, which is both the hardest and easiest part of the whole darn thing. It’s hard because you will need to have your questions ready. If you don’t have your questions predetermined, it can take time to come up with what’s best. But it’s also the easiest because it’s just like leaving a voicemail. This video explains recording audio in more detail.

Audio is the only required portion of a campaign. There are other optional customizations however. Let’s walk through them.
Pre-qualifying questions allow you to have a web-based quantitative questionnaire in front of the audio questions. Use it to knock out unqualified candidates, while also informing them of their status in the process immediately. Studies show that one of the largest sources of candidate frustration is not being notified in a timely manner their status when applying. Helping close the loop immediately is greatly appreciated by job seekers, even if they didn’t move on. Check out how pre-qualifying questions work with this video.

Other customizations include the greetings and descriptions of all the pages candidates visit along the way or email notifications of completed interviews. All these extra customizations provide a default so you don’t need to worry about them if you are just starting out. If you’d like to learn more, check out the Interview Management category of our help area.

Pillar 2: Corresponding with Candidates

Now that you have a completed campaign ready to go, you might be asking yourself, “Now what?” The second of four key areas is corresponding with candidates. Voice Advantage provides two ways to bring candidates into the system. They are, at their core, “push” and “pull” concepts.

E-mail invitations are the push model. If you have a list of 100 candidates, import them into Voice Advantage and we’ll send each one a personal invite asking them to participate. (The default invite can be customized!) Candidates who open the e-mail and click on the invitation link will be directed to the first step of the process—it could be a landing page, pre-qualifying questions or straight to the audio.

“Interview Now” is the pull method. Use the “Interview Now” link as the application action anywhere on the web: job boards, job portals, Twitter, Facebook—anywhere! Candidates will be asked to enter their name, e-mail and phone number before they begin. You can optionally ask to submit resumes here too.

Voice Advantage does offer SMS integration as a premium feature. This works similar to both e-mail invites and “Interview Now” depending on how you want to use it. Contact our team if you are interested in an SMS add-on.

Pillar 3: Reviewing Candidates

Once those candidates start rolling in, you might have some questions: “How will I make sure I don’t miss anyone?” or “What kind of reviewing tools are available to me?” The good news is reviewing candidates is as simple as it gets.

First, check out your “Queue” to stay on top of all candidates you need to personally review. The Queue keeps track of candidates belonging to campaigns you own. Once you review a candidate, he or she will be automatically removed from the Queue. This video goes into more depth of how the Queue works.

You also have the option to receive an e-mail alert every time a candidate completes an interview, which will provide a direct link to easily review the candidate.

Regardless of the path you take to inspect a candidate, you’ll be greeted with a set of audio answers, optional pre-qualifying answers and various ways to rank, sort and organize him or her. We review the candidate profile in more detail here:

Pillar 4: Presenting Candidates

So you’ve created a campaign, processed dozens of candidates, and are now ready to share the best with an external a reviewer. No problem. Presentation Lists and Links get this job done.

We created a way for you to grab the audio for a single candidate or slate of candidates with a single web link. Simply copy the link, then share it by pasting into an e-mail, job portal or however else you are communicating with the external reviewer. There is no overhead—no usernames, passwords or anything else to manage. It’s a simple link. Let this last video walk you how this feature works.

Hello, World!

With the knowledge of those four key areas of Voice Advantage, you are well on your way to being an advanced user. Everything else you’ll encounter are advanced features meant to enhancement the experience of you and your candidates. Peruse other areas of the help section and watch other video walkthroughs. You’ll be a power user in no time!

Notes

You may leave notes on individual answers as well as an overall summary. Learn more about notes here. If other colleagues leave either type of note, you’ll see their responses inline below where you can type your thoughts.

Rating and Status

In addition to notes, you can see how colleagues are rating a candidate. Below the five-star rater, you’ll see an average of all votes on this particular interview.

The default statuses Voice Advantage uses are “Accepted” and “Rejected”. If a disposition has already been entered by a colleague, you’ll see what it was an by whom.