Video interviews are judged on the same content as in-person ones, plus a small technical layer you fully control: camera at eye level, light on your face rather than behind you, mic audible, and the notes trick — keep them minimal and next to the camera, not on a second screen. Test everything on the actual platform before the day.
Camera at eye level — stack the laptop on books if needed — because a camera looking up at your chin reads subtly wrong in a way viewers can't name but consistently register. Light in front of you: face a window or a lamp, never sit with one behind you, or you become a silhouette. Sound matters more than video: any wired or dedicated mic beats laptop audio, and audible is the bar that actually gets you scored on content.
Background: tidy and boring beats virtual. Virtual backgrounds glitch around hair and hands, and the flicker is quietly distracting for the entire interview. A plain wall, a bookshelf, a door — nobody was ever rejected for a boring background.
On video, eye contact means looking at the camera lens, not the interviewer's face on screen — which feels wrong and reads right. The practical compromise: look at the lens while speaking, at their face while listening. Shrinking the meeting window and dragging it directly under the camera collapses most of the gap.
Notes are legal on video — everyone knows it, nobody minds — but reading is visible instantly. Keep a sticky note next to the camera with five trigger words: your story-bank tags, the number you keep forgetting, the two questions you want to ask. Glancing at a keyword list is invisible; tracking full sentences with your eyes is not.
Join five minutes early on the actual platform — Zoom, Meet, and Teams each have their own permission prompts, and discovering a forced app update at start time is a self-inflicted wound. Close everything that produces notifications; a chat ping during your answer breaks both your focus and theirs.
Decide the failure protocol in advance: if the call drops, you rejoin once, and if it fails again you message the recruiter and offer to switch to phone. Handled calmly, a technical failure is a tiny live demo of how you handle things breaking — which is to say, it can actually help.
At the camera lens while speaking — that's what reads as eye contact on their side — and at their face while listening. Dragging the meeting window right under the camera makes both nearly the same direction.
Yes, and interviewers assume you might. The rule is keywords, not sentences: five trigger words on a sticky note beside the camera is invisible; reading prepared paragraphs is obvious within seconds and undermines everything it touches.
Rejoin once immediately. If it fails again, message or email the recruiter within a minute and offer to continue by phone. A calmly handled failure leaves no lasting damage — visible panic does.
Setup gets you seen clearly; the content is still your record — run your resume through the free scorer so the story on paper holds up on camera.
