Wading through record numbers of candidate applications and AI-assisted resumes, recruiters are glomming onto one-way interviews as a leading, though variable, solution.
- One-way, asynchronous video interviews are now mainstream and growing fast. The market is already worth hundreds of millions globally, expected to reach billions.
- One-way interviews emerged from early platforms like HireVue and Spark Hire, with AI increasingly entering the space — creating efficiency gains, but also ongoing controversy.
- The core tradeoff is efficiency vs. the human touch. One-way interviews can seem impersonal but are more structured, which can improve fairness, and they can ensure that more candidates get screened in fast-paced recruitment processes. However, many candidates still prefer the dynamism and back-and-forth of a two-way interview.
Tools like ChatGPT and autofill browser extensions have made it easy for candidates to apply to hundreds of positions in record time. As a result, record numbers of applications are flooding recruiting systems. Faced with this torrent and mounting pressure to hire faster, recruiting managers are turning to new software tools for help — and one-way interview platforms are one of them.
One-way interviews — where candidates record responses to on-screen or AI-delivered questions on their own time, without a live interviewer — have their proponents and their critics.
Estimates of the value of the video interview software market, dominated by players like Sparkhire, HireVue, InterviewStream, and VidCruiter, vary widely. However, most research firms put the value in the hundreds of millions of dollars globally today, with predictions projecting growth into the low billions over the next decade.
Some companies, like Spark Hire, market their platform as asynchronous one-way interviewing where AI is optional, while companies like HireVue use AI for analysis and feedback. Yet others, like Alex.ai, are run entirely by AI avatars. None is without their controversy, although some platforms invite more risk than others.
When did one-way interviews become a thing?
Hirevue was one of the first companies to create a one-way interviewing platform back in 2004. Their founder, Mark Hewman, then a 20-year old student at Westminster College, recognized a gap in the market for companies looking to hire remote or out-of-area candidates without the ability to conduct in-person interviews. In the early days, the company even mailed webcams to candidates whose computers didn’t have built-in ones. In 2013, HireVue introduced AI to screen interviewees. Early features included facial and vocal analysis, though some were later discontinued due to limited evidence of impact on hiring outcomes and concerns about potential bias — and several legal challenges and filed complaints as well.
Spark Hire, a similar platform and big player in the market today, was also dreamt up by a college kid — Josh Tolan, then a student at the University of California, San Diego. Founded in 2012, Spark Hire was created in response to the same need: companies wanting to recruit without relying on time-consuming phone interviews.
Although the platforms relieved the burden of hiring on recruiters, not every candidate was a fan. People were already denigrating async one-way “webcam interviews” (specifically Hirevue) in 2016.
Yet video interviews in general — over Zoom or otherwise — exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. According to a 2021 study from Indeed, 82% of the US employers they surveyed adopted virtual interviews for candidates due to the COVID-19 pandemic — and almost all said they expected to continue to use virtual interviewing in the future.
These days, one-way interview platforms are firmly established in the market, with newer AI-driven platforms — like Alex.ai — now emerging.
The turn to AI
Outside the specific use case of one-way interviewing, about two-thirds of recruiters say they’re using AI tools. According to a LinkedIn report, among talent acquisition professionals surveyed, 93% said they planned to increase their use of AI in 2026 to meet hiring goals. That’s partly due to pressure to hire more quickly and hire candidates with the right skills. One survey from mid-2025 found that one-third of companies expect AI to run their entire hiring process by the end of this year.
Although AI can improve efficiency in some cases, it comes with risk of bias — including bias toward its own outputs. AI-powered tracking systems tend to prefer applications that are clearly written with the help of LLMs, like ChatGPT and Claude, over those written by humans. And AI tools can infringe upon candidate privacy, like in the class-action lawsuit filed against Eightfold AI.
When it comes to interviewing, this year, 66% of recruiters intend to up their use of AI for interview pre-screening, in order to save time to have more valuable conversations with pre-screened candidates down the line. That could mean something like Hirevue’s one-way interviews paired with its AI analysis — or it could mean avatar-driven interviews, where a bot poses questions and adapts its responses in real time.
AI interviews have been occurring since at least 2023. And now, they’re inviting quite a bit of controversy.
In a number of published articles, some people have described their experience unknowingly interviewing with Alex, an AI robot created by a startup formerly known as Apriora, who in at least one instance, could not stop repeating “vertical bar pilates.”
Hirevue just acquired Hireguide. In a press release, HireVue said the deal would accelerate its ‘agentic AI’ strategy by helping it build conversational hiring agents. It seems the future of AI in interviewing is leaning agentic.
Talk to sales
Structured vs. unstructured interviews
AI aside, there are some upside to a structured, one-way interview that aren’t apparent in a typical, casual two-way one.
One-way interviews can feel impersonal. But they introduce something traditional interviews often lack: structure.
Structured interviews — where every candidate is asked the same questions and evaluated against a consistent rubric — have long been shown to reduce bias and better predict job performance. The problem is that they’re difficult to execute well in practice. It’s not easy to ask identical questions, apply scoring consistently, and set aside personal impressions in a live, conversational setting.
That’s where unstructured interviews fall short. Without a clear framework, they tend to reward familiarity. Interviewers are more likely to favor candidates who think, speak, or present themselves in similar ways.
Critics often point to the risk of bias in video or one-way interviews — concerns around race, gender, or presentation. But those risks are not unique to the format. Face-to-face and live virtual interviews carry the same, if not greater, susceptibility, especially when they lack structure.
What matters more than the medium is the method. When interviews are standardized, scored against clear criteria, and reviewed across multiple evaluators, outcomes are more likely to reflect actual job ability and less likely to hinge on subjective impressions.
Skills validation
Few companies felt effective at skills validation last year, according to Hirevue and Aptitude Research. A major issue is that companies have primarily been focusing on inferred skills — based on resumes and experience — instead of validated skills.
Resumes can provide context, but they can’t say whether someone is competent or not. Validated skills, on the other hand, can be determined through evaluations, simulations, testing, and even some types of interview questions. For example, the eSkill platform allows recruiters to both test candidates through simulations or multiple-choice questions, or to invite them to answer questions through a video or voice recording. Think of it like one-way interview questions, interspersed between validated skills assessments — allowing for multiple methods of measurements within one test.
What’s the point?
Recruiting teams can’t interview everybody. It has also become harder to assess skills and competence based solely on resumes due to reliance on AI (both by candidates and ATS systems). The goal is to try and find the balance — between saving time for recruiters, finding the most authentic candidates, and still keeping the process human.
One-way interviews, at least, allow recruiters to interview more people, and allow candidates to explain their skills beyond what a one-page resume or a formulaic cover letter can say. And one-way interviews may not be as personable, but they align with what historical I/O psychology research says about the validity of structured interviews.
One-way interviews can help level the playing field where ATS recruitment systems fail or where recruiters are stretched in. They’re not as personable, no. We agree there. But when bias baked into ATS platforms is a risk, when hiring managers are grasping at straws (and inviting lawsuits) by using AI tools marketed as silver bullets to the problem, when candidates are jostling to stand out — and using AI to do so — one-way interviews can at least help make the process more fair, and give more candidates an opportunity to share why they’re suited to a particular role.
The most successful HR teams will understand how to deploy one-way interviews without the bias (or candidate discomfort) created by AI agents or graders. And they’ll pair them with other aspects of measurement, like skills assessments, to get a more complete, accurate picture of their applicants.
