One-way video interviews let you send candidates a set of pre-written questions that they answer in their own time. Each question can be answered on video or, if you set it to audio only, with a voice recording and no camera.
You configure the questions once, add the one-way video interview to your hiring workflow, and review the responses when candidates submit them - no scheduling required.
Responses are recorded through Willo, our one-way video interview partner, and played back directly inside Pinpoint, alongside your scorecards and candidate profile.
Interested in setting these up? Have a look at our video walkthrough!
ℹ️ Note
One-way video interviews use Pinpoint Credits. Please contact your Pinpoint representative if you have any questions.
Configuring One-Way Video Interviews
To start using one-way video interviews, you’ll need to first configure your job with a one-way video interview hiring workflow stage.
Existing Jobs
To edit a job’s hiring workflow:
Open the job.
Click Edit.
Select Edit Stages.
Drag and drop a One-Way Video Interview stage at the point in the workflow where the one-way video interview should sit.
If you have an integration enabled with Hireflix or myInterview, you'll be asked to pick which provider you want to use for this stage. Otherwise, Pinpoint's built-in one-way video interviewing is used automatically.
Click Configure Interview.
Fill in the details for the interview either using a template or from scratch.
Enter an Interview Name.
Paste a link to an Intro Video.
While optional, we highly recommend including one. It welcomes the candidate, sets expectations, and gives a noticeably better experience than dropping them straight into the first question!Add an optional Description.
This will be visible to the candidates.
Provide optional Hints and Tips to set your candidates up for success.
Add your questions one at a time.
For each question you can set the:Question title
Response type - Video (default) or audio. Audio only questions ask the candidate to record a voice answer without their camera, and are transcribed just like video answers.
You can mix video and audio only questions in the same interview.Answer duration - Maximum length for the candidate's recording.
Number of retakes allowed
Recommended time to answer - Candidates can still take as long as they want. The recommendation is only a signpost.
Choose your Communication Preferences for the interview.
Click Save.
You’ll see a summary of the configured interview at the top of the Edit Stage drawer.
Give it a stage Name.
This is what your recruiters will see in the pipeline.Configure the rest of the stage Settings.
New Jobs
To make sure new jobs needing a one-way interview stage have one, you can add it to a hiring workflow template.
To edit a hiring workflow template:
Expand Settings.
Select Templates.
Go to Hiring Workflows.
Open the workflow template you want to edit.
Click Configure Interview.
Fill in the details for the interview either using a template or from scratch.
Click Save.
Give it a stage Name.
This is what your recruiters will see in the pipeline.
Inviting Candidates
To invite candidates manually:
Go to the one-way video interview stage within the job.
Select the candidates you want to invite.
In the bulk action bar, click One-Way Video Interview.
Edit the invitation email as needed.
Send the invitation.
If you've set a stage action to trigger when a candidate enters the stage, you don't need to do anything - candidates receive the invitation as soon as they enter the one-way video interview stage.
✅ Tip
You'll be notified of new responses if you have the corresponding notification turned on in your profile notification settings.
Completing a One-Way Video Interview
Once a candidate clicks their unique link, they will be taken to the page where they can complete the one-way video interview in their browser (no account or install required), and submit their responses.
If toggled on, they’ll also see the hints and tips page before starting the interview.
For each question, they see the question text, the recommended time to answer (if configured), the answer duration, and a record button. For audio only questions, the candidate records their answer using their microphone only, so they won't be asked to turn on their camera for that question.
The website is fully optimised for mobile, so candidates can complete the interview with whatever device works best for them.
After recording an answer, they can retake it (up to the number of retakes you allowed) or move on to the next question.
Once all questions are answered, they submit the one-way video interview.
Creating One-Way Video Interview Templates
One-way video interview templates are reusable sets of configurations and questions you can use to pre-fill any hiring workflow or job stage. Creating a template once saves you rebuilding the same questions for every interview.
Expand Settings.
Go to Templates.
Select One-Way Video Interviews from the list on the left.
Click New one-way video interview template.
Give the template a clear Name (e.g., Customer Success – screening questions).
This is an internal name which candidates won’t see.Give the interview a candidate-facing Name.
✅ Tip
Use variables such as your company name or job title to create dynamic templatesPaste a link to an Intro Video.
While optional, we highly recommend including one. It welcomes the candidate, sets expectations, and gives a noticeably better experience than dropping them straight into the first question!Add an optional Description.
This will be visible to the candidates.
Provide optional Hints and Tips to set your candidates up for success.
Add your questions one at a time.
For each question you can set the:Question title
Response type - Video (default) or audio. Audio only questions ask the candidate to record a voice answer without their camera, and are transcribed just like video answers.
You can mix video and audio only questions in the same interview.Answer duration - Maximum length for the candidate's recording.
Number of retakes allowed
Recommended time to answer - Candidates can still take as long as they want. The recommendation is only a signpost.
Choose your Communication Preferences for the interview.
Click Save.
Once saved, the template is available to use in any hiring workflow or job stage’s interview configuration that its scoped to.
✅ Tip
When you're reviewing a candidate's response later, you'll see the total time the candidate took (including any retakes) alongside the Recommended Time to Answer.
This gives you a quick signal of whether the candidate spent longer than expected and lets you weigh that against the quality of their response!
Configuring Stage Actions for One-Way Video Interviews
Stage actions decide what happens automatically when a candidate moves into the one-way video interview stage - for most teams, you'll want the invitation to go out without anyone having to click anything.
ℹ️ Note
Make sure the one-way video interview is configured before adding your stage action.
To configure stage actions:
Open the stage needing additional actions.
Click Add Stage Action.
Choose Send One-Way Video Interview Invitation.
Select the Invitation Email Template to use.
There are several templates to choose from.
Click Save.
Controlling Interview Reminders
Reminders are controlled inside the one-way video interview configuration itself, not as a separate stage action. If reminders are toggled on in the interview configuration, candidates who haven't submitted will automatically be reminded.
Using Communication Templates for One-Way Video Interviews
There are several templates that candidates can receive across the one-way video interview flow. You can edit any of them, or create new ones for different roles or tones of voice.
Email Templates
One-way video interview invitation - The first email sent to a candidate when they're invited
One-way video interview reminder - Sent automatically if reminders are toggled on in the interview configuration and the candidate hasn't submitted
One-way video interview completion - Confirms to the candidate that their responses have been received
SMS templates
One-way video interview invitation (SMS)
One-way video interview reminder (SMS)
Editing a Live One-Way Interview
You can edit an interview after candidates have been invited, with a couple of safeguards to keep existing responses intact.
There are two stages to be aware of:
Candidates invited, no responses yet
Everything in the interview is fully editable: the name, description, intro video, hints and tips, communication preferences, and questions (add, edit, delete, reorder, and switch question type).
One or more candidates have submitted a response
The interview itself can still be edited, but to protect the integrity of submitted responses:
Existing questions can't be edited. They can be removed, but any responses already submitted for that question are preserved (just no longer surfaced as part of the live interview).
You can still add new questions. Previously submitted responses won’t include answers to new questions.
All other fields (name, description, intro video, hints and tips, communication preferences, question order) remain editable.
Existing Responses
Responses already submitted are not affected - the questions and order the candidate saw are preserved against their response. So if a candidate completed the interview with five questions in a specific order, that's exactly what reviewers will see when they look back at the response, even if you've since changed the live interview.
To make this clear to reviewers, a message is shown on responses to interviews that have been edited since the candidate completed them:
This interview has been updated after the candidate completed it, so the questions and order may not match more recent responses.
When you save edits to a live interview, you'll see a confirmation alert before the changes are applied.
✅ Tip
The most common reason to edit a live interview is to tighten or clarify wording on a question that isn't producing useful responses, or to add a question after seeing early submissions.
Both of these are supported - just be aware that early responses will be tagged as based on the older version of the interview.
Branding One-Way Video Interviews
The candidate-facing one-way video interview pages are branded using the theme associated with the job.
✅ Tip
If your company logo/s in Pinpoint are currently in the SVG format, you’ll need to replace them with PNG versions in order for them to appear in the one-way video interview pages.
Each job has a theme assigned to it (set up under Company settings). The theme controls the logo and colours candidates see when they open a one-way video interview:
Primary color of the theme is used for the header.
Highlight color of the theme is used for buttons.
Depending on the brightness of your primary colour, the system will automatically pick either the Dark or Light logo to use (if the primary colour is light, the Dark logo will be used, and vice versa)
Assign the correct theme to each job and the one-way video interview will pick it up automatically – no extra configuration needed.
Setting up Permissions and Notifications
Permissions
You can update these permissions the same as all other role-based permissions.
Users need the Configure and invite candidates to one-way video interviews permission in order to add one-way video interview stages to jobs, configure interviews, and send invitations.
Users need the Templates permission in order to add one-way video interview stages to hiring workflows, and to create and manage one-way video interview templates.
Viewing one-way video interview responses is controlled by users’ visibilities - users will visibility of an application also gives them visibility of responses.
Notifications
Users are notified when a candidate they're following submits a response, provided the New one-way video interview response notification is turned on in their profile notification settings.
Reviewing Responses
Once a candidate submits, their responses appear on their candidate profile in the One-way video interview tab.
To review their responses:
Open the candidate's profile.
Select the One-way video interview tab.
Play back each response using the video player.
You'll see the total time the candidate took on each question (including any retakes) next to the Recommended Time to Answer, if one was set.Review the AI scripted-ness assessment beside each response.
This feature uses AI to flag whether the response reads as naturally spoken, scripted, or AI-generated. Use it as a signal, not a decision-maker, and watch the response yourself before drawing conclusions.Fill in a Scorecard alongside the response.
Scorecards are optional – they aren't required to move a candidate through the workflow, but they're strongly recommended for structured, comparable reviews. The best way to do this is to open the candidate in split view, with the one-way video interview on one side and the scorecard on the other, so you can rate each question as you watch.Submit the scorecard when you're done.
Submitting Scorecards
Scorecards are completely configurable and aren't inherently tied to the one-way video interview configuration or questions. It's up to you how closely you align your scorecard criteria to the interview questions – we'd recommend aligning them (see the next section) so reviewers can score each response in turn.
A few recommendations that make scorecards more useful once one-way video interviews are running at volume:
Set scorecards up at the job level. Scorecards are configured per job, not per candidate, so every candidate for that role is reviewed against the same criteria - which is what lets you compare them fairly.
Align scorecard questions and criteria to the one-way video interview questions. If you have five interview questions, set up your sections or questions to match. Reviewers can then rate each answer as they watch, which produces tighter, more consistent feedback than a single rating at the end.
Keep the criteria tight. Long scorecards lose reviewer attention, especially when reviewers are watching back-to-back responses.
Anchor each rating with a short description of what "good" looks like. One sentence per rating option is enough to keep reviewers calibrated.
Leave a free-text field for specific quotes or moments. A short written summary is often the most useful part of a scorecard to look back on later.
Get two reviewers per candidate where possible. One-way video responses are easier to rate in isolation than live interviews, so a second opinion catches bias quickly.
Reporting on One-Way Video Interviews
Pinpoint includes a dedicated Pinpoint One-Way Video Interviews report type that gives you a row per candidate invited to a one-way video interview, so you can pull data on response rates, time-to-complete, and which jobs and stages they're tied to.
To build a report:
Go to Reports.
Click New Report.
Select Pinpoint One-Way Video Interviews as the report type.
Choose the columns you want to include:
Applicant ID
Applicant name
Applicant email
Current stage
Applicant furthest stage reached
Interview stage
Interview name
Interview description
No. questions
Question types (shows whether the interview used video questions, audio questions, or both)
Interview status
Invited at
Response received at
Total time spent (mins)
Time to complete (days)
Job Title
Plus any company structure levels you have configured (Location, Department, Division, etc.)
Add filters as needed.
You can filter by Interview status, Invited at, Response received at, Interview stage, and Job.Click Save.
Saved reports can be re-run, scheduled, and shared with colleagues with the right report permissions.
✅ Tip
Combining Time to complete (days) with Interview status is a quick way to spot bottlenecks - e.g. candidates who were invited weeks ago and haven't responded.
Viewing One-Way Interview Insights
The Pinpoint One-Way Video Interviews insights widget surfaces three headline metrics at a glance, so you can track adoption and candidate engagement without building a report.
To view the widget:
Go to Insights.
Add a new widget to your insights page
Select the Pinpoint One-Way Video Interviews subject
Select the chart type
Choose the property you want to display:
Count of One-Way Video Interviews — number of candidates invited to complete a one-way video interview (excludes deleted interviews).
Average one-way video response rate (%) — percentage of invited candidates who completed their interview.
Average time to complete one-way video interview (days) — average number of days from invite to completed response.
Apply filters and groupings as needed:
Filters: One-Way Video Interview Status, Location, Department, Division, Job, Job Status, Hiring Manager, Recruitment Manager, Employment Type, Channel, plus any custom fields you have on jobs or applications.
Groupings: Status, Location, Department, Division, Job, Hiring Manager, Recruitment Manager, Employment Type, Channel — or no grouping for a single overall number.
Click Save.
A few ways teams typically use this:
By job or department - to see which roles or teams are getting the most engagement from one-way video interviews.
By status, over time - to track response rate trends and spot drops in candidate engagement early.
By hiring manager - to surface differences in usage and response rates/times between teams.
Pulling One-Way Video Interview Data via API
Pinpoint exposes a read-only API endpoint for one-way video interviews so you can pull data into other systems (BI tools, data warehouses, custom reporting, etc.).
Refer to our API documentation for more information!
FAQs
Candidate are having issues completing their interview. What support is available to them?
Candidates can access Willo’s support directly from the interview page. You can also direct them to finding answers to their issues in Willo’s support pages. Here are some key links that might be worth sharing with candidates:
Can candidates answer with text or audio instead of video?
Yes. Set a question's Response type to Audio and the candidate records a voice answer without their camera. Audio only answers are transcribed and reviewed in the same place as video answers.
Text answers aren't currently supported.
Can I use video and audio only questions in the same interview?
Yes. The response type is set per question, so you can ask some questions on video and others as Audio Only within a single interview.
Can I send the same link to multiple candidates?
No. Each invitation generates a unique link tied to a single candidate. This is how we match responses back to the right candidate.
Can candidates edit their answers after submitting?
No. Once a candidate submits, their responses are final. They can however record retakes if they have been configured on each question before submitting.
How many reminders do candidates get?
Reminders are controlled inside the one-way video interview configuration. If reminders are toggled on, candidates who haven't submitted receive one automatic reminder two days after the initial invitation; if they're off, no reminders go out.
Can I manually remind candidates?
Not at the moment. If a candidate cannot find their original email or SMS invitation link, you can delete the video interview and re-invite them. They’ll then receive a brand new invite via email (and SMS if configured).
Can I share a candidate's responses with someone outside Pinpoint?
Not via a public link. Anyone who needs to review a response needs a Pinpoint account with access to the job. This is to keep candidate video data protected.
Are there question-level scorecards?
Scorecards aren't inherently tied to one-way video interview questions, but you can align them yourself – set up a scorecard section per question and reviewers can score each response as they watch. See the scorecard recommendations above.
What does the AI assessment actually check?
It's strictly an AI analysis designed to detect scripted-ness in a candidate's response. It looks at patterns in the audio and wording to flag whether a response reads as naturally spoken, scripted, or AI-generated. It's a signal for reviewers – it won't reject or filter candidates automatically, and you should always watch the response before acting on the flag.
How long are one-way video interview responses kept?
Video recordings are kept for 365 days and then permanently deleted. All other information related to the one-way video interviews – including transcripts and metadata – is retained in line with your company's data retention policy.