Does the use of synchrony and artificial intelligence in video interviews affect interview ratings and applicant attitudes?

The use of asynchronous video interviews (AVIs) and artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision agents enables more efficient employment screening compared with traditional synchronous video interviews (SVIs). However, the social impacts of using synchrony and AI decision agents in video interviews have not been investigated. Drawing on media richness theory and social interface theory, this study employed a novel experimental design to compare human ratings and job applicants’ response behaviours between the SVI and AVI settings and compare job applicants’ fairness perception between the AVI setting and the AVI setting using an AI decision agent (AVI-AI). The results from 180 observations revealed that 1) first impression and physical appearance significantly affected structured interview ratings regardless of whether the video interview was synchronous; 2) compared with SVIs, AVIs lessened the primacy effect on physical appearance and initial impression among human raters; 3) job applicants had indistinguishable fairness perceptions regarding synchrony (SVI vs. AVI) and decision agent (human vs. AI); and 4) applicants exhibited less favourability towards AVIs than towards SVIs. Findings from this experimental comparison, including recommendations for practice and future research on human resource selection, technology education, and social computing, are discussed.