The first step to customizing HireVue's AI assessment models is using their interview guides, which were developed by Industrial and Organizational (IO) psychologists. A preset system on the HireVue platform allows a company to select from a wide range of categorized, and sub-categorized interview questions that best apply to them. The categories range from employee culture, branding, and IO-validated content. These questions are designed to better enable the algorithm to identify top performers and recruit those most suited to the company's goals and culture. Most questions follow the uniform situational judgment structure: "Tell me about a time when you faced a situation. What were the steps you took? What was the impact of your decision?"

A few things to remember with each question. Once a question is posed, you'll be allowed roughly 20-30 seconds per question to formulate your response. You're allowed up to three minutes to record each answer. You get only one opportunity to record your answers. So, even though you are talking to the algorithm, you want to imagine you are speaking to a real person. Keep it natural and be yourself. Even though some questions may take longer to answer than others, only take as much time as you need to answer, and keep it under three minutes. Don't allow it to cut you off, or try to run out the clock either. Be as succinct as possible.

"I recently was building a working relationship with a newly hired administrative assistant who was initially brought on to scan and edit all of our hard copy records using a flawed optical recognition software. This project was going to take months. So I asked for a minute of our supervisor's time and asked if they'd considered any other methods of digitizing those documents in a more expeditious fashion. They told me they had not and asked what I had in mind. I then told them about how there are apps on a smartphone that can convert the text it recognizes in its viewfinder and allow you to cut and paste that text into a document which is then converted into a pdf format. They were curious and wanted to give it a try so we did it together. They loved it and had me dedicate the office smartphone for this purpose and I trained our newly hired admin on this new method and it cut the project time in half."