Revealed: The Ultimate Guide to Crushing Your Vacation Scheme Video Interview

Nov 30, 2023

Written By Chidera Ofili

Your phone goes off, you know that sound, it’s an email notification. You open your inbox expecting another rejection from another law firm, but to your surprise, you receive an invitation for a video interview! What do you do? How do you prepare? This article aims to answer just that.

The basics of video interviews

Video interviews are a recorded format where candidates have 15-30 seconds to digest a question and 1-2 minutes to deliver an answer. This is a relatively novel style of interviewing that many candidates struggle with, especially because you’re responding to a computer and not an interviewer. This typically precedes the final interview stage or assessment centre, and is an opportunity for you to bring your written application to life by articulating why exactly that particular law firm should hire you.

The questions are similar to what you would expect in a face-to-face interview, combining competency and commercially-focused questions. The time pressure and the fact that you may not have an extra chance to re-record your answers creates a lot of anxiety about this style of interview. It is thus paramount for applicants to have a clear understanding of what the specific firm they are applying to is looking for.

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Video interview tips

If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. It cannot be overemphasised how much research is needed before your video interview, as it’s a defining chance to secure a vacation scheme and ultimately a training contract. Ideally, you should be prepped on the firm’s core values, the types of clients it works with, key practice areas, any recent deals or awards that caught your interest, or even any legal trends that they’ve discussed. The latter can help you address some of the commercial questions that might be thrown your way in the interview. Reading the Financial Times, Economist, Bloomberg or any other financial website is critical in staying commercially aware.

Do not waffle. Take a deep breath and speak slightly slower than you usually would to avoid tripping over your words. For the competency questions, a good way of providing clarity of thought and structuring your answers is by using the STAR (Situation, Task, Action and Result) method.

For example, ubiquitous across UK and US law firm video interviews is the “Tell me about a time where you’ve had to go above and beyond in a task or project?” type of question.

Applying the STAR method, you should first mention the context of the project and then the task where you particularly went above and beyond. Here, you have to make sure you mention your specific contribution to your team’s efforts and the action you took; i.e. how you went above what was expected of you. The result should tell the recruiters what the outcome of your contribution was and what you learned from the experience.

The quintessential commercial question tends to be “Tell me about a recent business article that caught your attention, why does it interest you and how does it affect our firm?”. The latter part of this question may not be explicitly asked, but the best candidates are aware that law firms are looking for this and go the extra mile. Choose an article you can speak enthusiastically about and utilise a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and/or PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors) analytical framework to explain it.

“Let Me Hear Your Body Talk!” and I’m not talking about Olivia Newton-John in an 80s pop song. What you want to do is speak with your body, including your hands with gesticulation, smiling and maintaining eye contact with the camera. Do not and I repeat do not rely on a script! Have bullet points jotted down; reading a scripted answer word for word will likely sound robotic and will be obvious to the graduate recruiter who views your answer.

Ambience is everything. Make sure to check your surroundings and that you are somewhere quiet and distraction-free, but also with a neat background. If the latter is impossible, there is usually a blurred background option available before starting the interview. Your room should be well lit and your webcam should be just above eye level and no more than two feet away from you. Always make sure to test the Wi-Fi connection, as well as video and microphone quality to avoid any unexpected disruptions.

If disruption does, however, occur in the middle of your interview, take a deep breath, finish your remaining answer in the time you have left and send an email to graduate recruitment immediately explaining the situation. They tend to be quite understanding about these situations and they will likely resend an invite to you.

Practice makes perfect. Make sure you have mock interviews to ensure that you go into the interview feeling prepared. Try having a friend, family member or someone you know who has passed a video interview give you mock interviews and provide you with feedback. Some online resources listed below can help:

Post-Interview thoughts

Take a deep breath! It’s over now, you’ve done it! Now begins the waiting game, but in the meantime, you can consider writing a quick thank you email or LinkedIn message to the recruiter who sent you the invite. You might also wish to reflect on what went well for the interview and what you could’ve done differently.

I hope this has given you a rough flavour of how the video interview works and what to expect. Law firms typically filter a lot of candidates after the written application so reaching the video interview stage means you are a lot closer to the finish line. Remember, you made it to this stage because you deserve to be here.

Selection & Assessment