The setup, handled in ten minutes
- Camera at eye level. A stack of books under a laptop fixes the up-the-nose angle that nothing else fixes.
- Light in front of you, not behind. A window you face beats any lamp; a window behind you turns you into a silhouette.
- Wired headphones with a mic. Audio quality affects how competent you sound more than video quality does.
- Test the specific platform, not just your camera. Zoom, Teams, Meet, and HireVue all behave differently.
- Close everything else. Notification sounds and a full CPU both cost you.
That is the whole list. Anything more is procrastination dressed as preparation.
What actually changes on video
The natural turn-taking rhythm of conversation breaks down over a connection with lag. Two things follow from that:
- Leave a full beat after they finish before you start. It feels too long and it is not.
- Signal when you are done — "that is the short version, happy to go deeper" — because they cannot read the cues that would normally tell them.
Also: on video you are a face in a box, so facial expression carries more of the signal than it does in a room. Being genuinely animated reads as normal enthusiasm; being neutral reads as flat.
Use the format's one real advantage
You can have notes on screen and they cannot see them. Do not waste this by writing scripts, which are audible in your delivery. Keep a single page with:
- Five or six achievement bullets with the numbers, so you never grope for a figure.
- Your three questions for them.
- Two facts about the company you want to reference.
- The interviewer's name and role.
Glance, do not read. Sustained eye movement away from the camera is obvious.
One-way recorded interviews
Recorded formats with no interviewer are their own thing. Structure matters more because there is nobody to redirect you: answer the question in the first sentence, then support it. Use the practice question to check your audio. And take the second attempt if it is offered — the first is almost always worse, and declining it earns you nothing.
When something breaks
Your connection will occasionally fail, and how you handle it is itself a signal. Say plainly that you are having a connection problem, suggest turning off video, and offer to dial in by phone. Interviewers are entirely used to this. Panicking or pretending it is not happening is worse than the outage.