ok so my friend Sarah, she has been job hunting since January and it has not been going well. She texted me at like midnight a few weeks ago with a HireVue recording attached and the message just said "what am i doing wrong." Nine rejections at that point. I watched maybe thirty seconds of her video before i had to pause it lol, she was reading off a Google Doc the entire time, stuff she pasted out of ChatGPT, eyes glued to the bottom left of her screen, voice totally flat. She looked like somebody reading a ransom note and i am not exaggerating. Called her back and she sounded done with the whole thing, not just tired, like ready to stop applying entirely.
She asked me does HireVue have some kind of scanner that catches you. For having tools open or whatever. No. It does not. HireVue is a webcam recorder, you get questions, film yourself, hit submit, nobody watching live. What they have is an AI that grades your video afterwards. Engagement, confidence, pacing stuff. Sarah was getting wrecked on the engagement scoring because her eyes were locked on the bottom of her screen and she sounded like a robot reading someone elses homework.
The ChatGPT thing is a time problem more than anything. ChatGPT takes thirty seconds to write out a full answer and you are just sitting there staring off screen while it loads. Thirty seconds of dead air. Then you read back the result in a monotone because you are reading not talking. The AI reviewer sees all of that as low confidence low engagement. You tank your score before you finish your first sentence basically.
I had this tool InterviewMan running during my Zoom calls at the time, twelve bucks a month annual. It listens through the mic and throws bullet points on your screen in two to three seconds. Not paragraphs you read back, just points you riff on. I mentioned it to Sarah and she showed up at my apartment the next night to test it.
She opened HireVue on my couch, launched InterviewMan, hit record. Question played. Two seconds later bullet points showed up near her webcam. She glanced at them, looked at the camera, started talking. Her own words, her own details, just using the points as a rough outline. I was watching behind her and the difference from the midnight video was absurd. Eyes near the camera because the overlay sits by the lens. Voice sounded like her real voice. Even the two second pause before she started talking looked completely normal, just somebody collecting their thoughts.
We did three takes that night. Take one she was still a little stiff, like she did not fully trust it yet and kept glancing down too hard. Take three though, take three she sounded like someone telling you about their old job over coffee and honestly i was kind of jealous because she sounded better than i did during my first few times using it lol. I told her the midnight version sounded like a malfunctioning news anchor and she threw a pillow at me which i deserved.
Three days later she submitted a real HireVue. Got a callback within a week. First callback in three months. She texted me a screenshot of the recruiter email at 6 AM which, i mean who is checking their email at 6 AM unless they have been refreshing since 5.
That weekend i sat down and tested every HireVue question type myself because i kind of could not believe it worked that cleanly. Behavioral questions, scenario prompts, those video questions where text shows up on screen. Sub three seconds on the overlay every time. I was actively trying to find a question format that would trip it up or cause some weird lag and nothing did.
Now the pricing part because this is the thing everyone asks me about. After Sarah's result i went looking at what else was out there assuming i was missing some better tool that just cost more. Found Final Round AI at a hundred forty eight a month and honestly almost closed the tab lol. Cluely is twenty for the base plan plus seventy five extra for stealth so ninety five, and the stealth part does not even apply here because nobody proctors a HireVue, there is no live person on the other end to detect anything. LockedIn AI fifty five a month but they cap you at ninety minutes which i could see being a real problem if you are doing multiple takes. InterviewMan at twelve bucks, no cap, 57,000 users, 4.8 stars. Not really a close comparison when you look at the numbers honestly.
My buddy Marcus used it for his first ever HireVue last month, guy just graduated, zero interview practice before this. He told me afterwards the biggest thing was not sitting there frozen when the question came up. Said having bullet points appear gave him something to latch onto so his brain did not just go blank. He got a callback. For somebody who had literally never done a video interview before that was wild to both of us.
Sarah update as of last week, she has done six more HireVues since our couch session and got callbacks on four. She told me she forgets the thing is running. Thats the part that sticks with me. If you are not thinking about the tool at all and just talking to a camera, thats when the AI grading your video actually likes what it sees. Sarah went from nine straight rejections reading ChatGPT paragraphs in a monotone to four out of six callbacks once she had two seconds of bullet points instead. Every time i tell somebody that they go "twelve dollars?" like i got the number wrong. I did not get the number wrong lol.
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