What is a Self-Paced Interview?

Learn how self-paced interviews, also called on-demand interviews, can serve as a tool for recruiters.

Welcome to your new phone interviewing platform

We know you need to make quality hires — yesterday. Your job can feel chaotic when you can't stay ahead. We created a tool to help you screen all of your candidates in one day.

Like traditional phone interviews, but faster

All of the value that comes from phone screens, in a fraction of the time.
Evaluate every candidate in five minutes.
Shorten your time-to-hire by 6-8 days.
Get started instantly, and be up and running in a single day.

Engage via email, texting, and more

Reach your talent wherever they are.

See which channels drive the best results.
Place an interview link anywhere you'd like to source more candidates.
Generate QR Codes that point straight to your interviews.

Identify keywords and hiring insights instantly

Easily find the candidates who are the perfect fit for your company.
Interviews are transcribed with 98% accuracy.
Identify desirable keywords in interviews.
Filter responses to review top candidates first.

Put diversity first

Level the playing field by mitigating bias from the beginning.

Eliminate unconscious bias by using phone interviews instead of video.
Make your interviews fair and equitable with built-in structure and consistency.
Increase accessibility with audio-based interviews.

What is a Self-Paced Interview?

The labor market is constantly evolving. That means recruiting teams have to stay on their toes to keep pace and stay competitive. That means looking for the best tools and methods available and applying them to their hiring process when they suit their needs. However, what tools are the modern hiring manager looking for to ensure their recruiting team reaches the best candidates quickly?

According to research by Small Biz, 73% of today’s job seekers consider the process of finding a new job one of the most stressful events in life.

Although this is unfortunate for job seekers, it offers recruiting teams an opportunity. Providing the best candidate experience possible improves your chances of getting the most qualified talent into your vacant roles. To do this, you need a tool that eases the hiring process for candidates.

With 84% of job seekers, according to Career Plug, reporting that recruiter responsiveness influenced their decision to accept an offer, you’re also looking for a tool that can allow you to reach out to applicants as quickly as possible.

That means you need a tool that’s both fast and delivers a pleasant experience. You need self-paced interviews. But what is a self-paced interview?  

In short, a self-paced interview is a form of an on-demand interview. This type of asynchronous interview allows recruiters to pre-record interview questions to which candidates can reply at a time of their choosing and at their own speed. This allows candidates to answer recruiter questions at any time, allowing a degree of flexibility that doesn’t come with live interviews.

In fact, Qualifi’s research found that applicants presented with a self-guided interview option typically responded outside of normal business hours. That flexibility brought in 75.5% more responses than traditional phone interviews. That is the power of the one-way interview.

What’s more, remember how we discussed candidates demanding responsive employers? Qualifi’s on-demand interview platform allows you to reach hundreds of applicants at the click of a button.

But what type of on-demand interview is right for you? It boils down to video interview vs. phone interview. The answer to that question is rather simple. The phone interview wins out over the video interview at almost every turn. On-demand phone interviews are accessible to most candidates as opposed to video interviews which require candidates to have access to a camera and a space set up for their interview. Plus, phone interviews are easier for recruiters to screen and help mitigate bias in the hiring process.

How Self-paced Interviews Meet Today’s Hiring Goals

Keeping up with today’s hiring goals can be challenging, and it is only responsible for being critical of solutions before adopting them. As such, it is only natural to ask how self-paced interviews meet today’s hiring goals before deciding to adopt. However, this type of on-demand interview is an excellent way to achieve a fast interview process.

Slow time-to-hire is one of the leading causes of recruiters losing top talent to their competitors. Roughly 60% of recruiters report regularly losing candidates before they’re even able to schedule an interview. When you consider this statistic alongside that 84% of job seekers are concerned with responsiveness, we can intuit the importance of providing a faster interview process.

Today’s candidates want and expect a speedy hiring process. Qualifi’s on-demand interview platform helps your recruiters to provide exactly that. With Qualifi, hiring teams can recruit 7x faster or more.


Roughly 83% of candidates report feeling that the overall recruitment experience is improved when employers can provide a clear timeline of the hiring process.

And with the fears of an economic downturn on the horizon, recruiters need to prepare today. Hiring during a recession is an entirely different environment. That’s why your team needs a tool that encourages retention and helps prepare their companies for another 2008.

That means using the right tools to refine your hiring process by reaching and hiring the top talent in the labor market today. Quality candidates with a wide breadth of experience can cover multiple skill sets during times of hardship while your team works to keep roles filled.

It’s only a matter of reaching these quality candidates before your competitors, and that means improving your time-to-hire while delivering a better candidate experience in the process. The hiring process is a candidate's first experience with the company they are to work for. A good experience improves retention and your chances of candidates taking an offer.


But there’s more, mitigating bias in your hiring process with Qualifi’s on-demand interviews can also help you prepare for a potential recession. The Boston Consulting Group survey in 2018 found that companies with above-average diversity produced a greater proportion of revenue from innovation — a staggering 45%.

We found that 43% of job candidates prefer to interview outside of typical business hours. Read the study here.

AI Hiring

You would be hard-pressed to find any part of today’s society that has not been touched in some way by the recent developments in AI (artificial intelligence) technology. AI has appeared in various ways, from simple bots automating mundane and manual tasks to predictive analytic software processing massive amounts of data inputs to predict the future. The AI revolution is here.

The recruiting industry is no different. AI in interview software has changed how we recruit candidates. AI hiring allows recruiters to automate the most mundane and tedious tasks in the recruiting process to focus on the things that really matter, such as reviewing and interacting with only the most qualified applicants. That’s why more and more recruiters are utilizing AI in recruitment software to save time and improve their ROI.

Qualifi’s interview platform utilizes AI to sift through applicants and frees recruiters to focus on the most qualified candidates first. Machine language and learning assist recruiters by highlighting the best prospects for your recruiters' screen. Never again sift through an endless pile of resumes and interview transcripts while the best talent in the applicant pool falls through the cracks. And when you consider that 88% of resumes that come across a recruiter’s proverbial desk are considered unqualified for the positions. This creates a serious time sink that costs recruiters time and energy.

What’s more, Qualifi allows recruiters to reach more candidates by speeding the interview process and enables recruiters to automatically send interview invites and gather responses. Furthermore, recruiters utilizing this AI-powered tool see their hiring efficiency by 80%.

In terms of the candidate pool, AI assists recruiters through digital advertising, personalized algorithms, and job boards to draw candidates to a company’s pool. Although this volume of applicants could easily overwhelm traditional screening methods, machine learning allows recruiters to shift through the entire pool quickly and easily.  

So, save your recruiters time, and your company money, by adopting an AI-powered interview software that automates the most excruciating parts of the hiring process.

Try for free today to see how Qualifi can shorten your time-time-to-hire and prevent those costly hiring bottlenecks keeping you from the very best talent the labor market has to offer.

Additional Resources