Introduction
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Willo’s video interview solution is simple to set up and get started, unlike many other enterprise grade platforms in this space. It’s also priced affordably and flexibly so that you don’t have to go allin on a massive annual contract without understanding the tool. In fact, they have a free tier you can try out to make sure it’s as intuitive as we think it is. However, you should be aware that some of the bells and whistles you may find with a more mature product don’t exist in this tool.
Ratings
Ease of Use
Best For
Key Differentiator
Price
Free Trial
PROS
- Asynchronous video interviews (one of the main benefits of video interviewing) that save your recruiting team time while allowing them to see candidates for who they are beyond a resume
- Extremely simple to get started, powerful enough for larger companies
- Transparent and affordable pricing, including a free tier
- Willo calculates the time your recruiting team saves each month so you know you’re getting value
CONS
- Doesn’t have the breadth of features that products have who have been in this space for 10+ years
- They don’t have a mobile app, but do have a mobile-optimized experience
- Native ATS integrations are limited to <10 ATS’s at this point
- They do not have real time 1:1 video interviews
Hireflix
Hireflix
Willo
Willo
Recright
Recright
Zoom
Zoom
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Willo’s video interview platform is simple enough for smaller companies who want to do virtual interviews, but powerful enough for enterprise customers like Coinbase and high volume hirers who need to scale past thousands of interviews per month.
From the talent acquisition perspective, you first login and create a company profile. You can create multiple profiles here if you are managing multiple brands, or multiple company locations that demand their own account. Willo allows you to brand the candidate experience to match your colors and logo.
Next you can create interviews for specific types of roles through a fairly simple workflow that takes a few minutes:
- Name your role
- Fill in pertinent details (salary, location, etc)
- Record an intro for candidates that outlines what they can expect in this interview, and how this fits into the overall candidate experience
- You can also leave a written description for candidates if you’d like
After the basics, your recruiting team will build out questions you have for candidates from Willo’s library of over 100 suggested questions, or whatever custom questions you want to include. You can add up to 20 questions, although most video interviews will be much shorter (and should be, you want to keep the candidate experience in mind!).
There are other details admin or recruiters can set up such as defining how many retakes a candidate can do, and the maximum time a video response can be. Then, your team will select a template to invite applicants to the video interview. Communication can be via email or SMS, and will remind candidates that don’t take the interview after seeing the first notification.
You can also define the completion email that job seekers get after taking the assessment. This can link to employer branding collateral, other assessments, or simply give them an idea on what to expect next. You can also have candidates grab a time on one of your colleague’s calendars as a next step. This is a small feature, but can be a massive time saver for your team —who likes to spend hours scheduling calls?
One of the key metrics that hiring teams need to look at for this tool, or analyzing any video interview solution, is the response rate from candidates. A good response rate depends on the job you’re recruiting for, and at what stage in the process you are asking candidates to complete video interviews. If it’s the bottom of the funnel, you should shoot for 100% completion. Conversely, expect 20-30% if you invite all candidates as the first step in the recruiting process, especially for lower skilled roles.
The main benefit of this solution is decreasing the amount of time spent on hiring. Many recruiting teams are understaffed and managing loads of resumes is really hard, let alone scheduling next steps with candidates.
From the candidate's perspective, I get invited to an interview, get to understand what to expect from the message recorded from the hiring manager, get an opportunity to practice, and then answer the questions. It’s very simple, and there is a live person standing by on chat if I have any questions (in addition to over 150 support articles).
We like Willo as it’s easy to set up for both recruiters and candidates, it’s priced affordably, and the company is value focused— they will send you a monthly KPI update that literally calculates the time your recruiting team has saved by using Willo.
We used Willo for specific remote hiring campaigns. We primarily used it for on-demand video interviewing. It also supports audio interviews and allows candidates to upload a file or write text in response, which we used for more technical interviews. Additionally, it offers a multiple-choice interview format, which we found useful. The tool has strong integrations with major ATS platforms, and we utilized this workflow as well.
- Willo is easy to use.
- We were able to get up to speed quickly and start interviewing within hours.
- The integrations with major ATS platforms were very convenient.
We needed to hire a lot of remote staff quickly, but we found that the video interview options available were too heavyweight, and the time to implement them was too slow. We wanted a light and agile tool that we could start using quickly. Willo offered this by being a powerful yet streamlined video interview system, and we were able to get it up and running within hours. It included free onboarding, an on-demand help video, and we were operational in no time. We used the tool for a couple of large recruitment campaigns over six months.
- The same thing I liked about Willo: it was very agile but lacked basic automated interview scheduling functionality.
- It didn't have an interview question library, which would have sped things up.
- It also lacked a job description library, which would have been helpful.
- It could benefit from AI integration, which would improve the tool significantly.
Willo is agile, lightweight (in a good way), uncluttered, and fast to market.
Look for good servers and a stable interview platform, as this will reflect on your company. AI integration can be very helpful for writing job descriptions and designing interview questions, which will speed up the process.
Willo has increased the number of integrations, reaching 5,000 at the last count.
Willo is great for small, agile startups.
A larger organization with lots of hiring will not benefit from Willo as they'd be better off with a more heavyweight tool with more inbuilt ATS functionality
We utilize Willo for mass recruitment vacancies and for positions where we seek a first-personality vibe, effectively reducing the time our recruiters spend on CV review processes.
- User Experience
- Customizable questions and formats
- Capability to share candidate profiles with our Hiring Managers
- Integration with system-built question examples
We purchased Willo to enhance our recruitment process and improve the overall candidate experience. We have been using it for 2 years.
There is currently no option to integrate Willo with our existing ATS.
Outstanding customer support, a user-friendly platform, numerous customizable features, and GDPR compliant.
- GDPR compliance
- System administration
- User experience;
- Candidate experience;
- Range of services provided
- Impact on recruiters' job
Reduce the time spent by recruiters on mass recruitment projects and quickly form initial impressions about the candidates.
It is beneficial for companies dealing with a large volume of CVs and recruitment projects, particularly those requiring an immediate understanding of candidates' creativity and their ability to articulate their vision.
For IT companies, where technical assessments play a crucial role in understanding a candidate's adaptability for specific IT vacancies.
Willo for us has predominantly been used across our early careers hiring, in particular graduate recruitment. It enables us to screen higher volume candidates much quicker than on 121 phone screens, and with a lean team and hiring for grads starting when we're in peak, it has been a huge time saver whilst ensuring consistency in the process.
- Easy to use.
- Personalised so well received by candidates.
- Great support from the Willo team when needed.
We've used Willo now for about 3.5 years, it was brought in just before I joined the company but not fully utilised. When I joined we did a review of our tools and I found Willo to be a fantastic tool for us, mainly used for our early careers recruitment where we receive a high volume of applications and with a lean team, enabled us to screen so much faster, whilst offering candidates flexibility on when in the day/night they completed it.
No real cons at this time.
I've not had reason to look beyond Willo based on cost and the benefits of the product itself.
Think about how you are going to use it and the impact on candidates. And also if it integrates or not with your other tools (like your ATS). There are so many great products out there, but it's about finding those that meet your needs, not just what some people hype. All our challenges are different so find the tool that compliments what you're trying to achieve.
We're in retail and use it for our early career recruitment, albeit we could certainly explore use in other high-volume roles. I think it's hard to say who would suit, as everyone's needs are different.
When bringing in products to your TA workflow, research what you need and find those products that suit you well. Not every product will be right for everyone.
We use Willo for Async interviews which thousands of applicants complete every month. We use the interview to confirm their identity and check their suitability and ability for the role. We then have a team of people who review the interview recordings. We also have used Willo to interview candidates for this team and conduct right-to-work checks. We will be moving our Right to Work checks for our Tutors onto Willo which will be great to free up operational resources.
- I really like that Willo is so easily adaptable to our needs. and we can update our interviews whenever we need.
- The Willo team has been super open to our suggestions and have added new features that we have requested.
- The platform is really reliable and we can rely on it to cope with our large volume of interviews and the recordings are of a really high quality.
We onboard thousands of Tutors each year and needed an effective way to conduct interviews for so many people. We previously did interviews on calls that were booked with a team of freelance interviewers. There were issues with applicants and interviewers not turning up and sometimes problems with tech issues. In these cases, candidates would need to rebook the interviews. There were also constraints with the availability of the interviewers which could cause bottlenecks in our onboarding flow. We wanted to move to async interviews to remove these problems and Willo was the best tool to do this. Using Willo has meant that our tutors have a much better experience when applying and giving them the ability to complete their interviews in their own time has improved our conversion rates significantly. We purchased Willo in Q1 of 2023. I have been working more closely with Willo since May of 2023.
- When there are tech issues that affect the interview it is hard to tell the reason for the tech issues without getting in touch.
- It would be great to get more insights on the main dashboard about the performance and conversion rates of the interviews. Here it would be great to see expected conversion versus actual conversion.
- I would love to be able to see information about how long applicants are spending on questions and how many retakes they are using.
I haven't tried or had any experience with their competitors.
Price per interview, the flexibility- how well will this tool fit in with your business needs. From our perspective, our applicants are also our customers so being able to create and update the interviews so easily was a must.
Willo has a great platform for requesting updates, improvements and new features. We have requested a lot of new features that have now been introduced. They are also currently working on implementing multiple-choice questions for us for example.
Organisations that are completing high volumes of interviews daily. Willo would be great for first-round interviews or quick ability checks like we use them for.
I think for users that are needing to demonstrate a technical skill in something like data or software engineering. If you need to ask follow-up questions to get clarification Willo is not the right tool- at least from my experience.
We use Willo as part of our interviewing process. Typically we set a Willo interview at the first stage, as part of screening candidates.
It's really user friendly and easy to roll out to multiple members of the team. It has saved the team so much time, not having to phone screen has made the process smoother for everyone involved. With the use of video interviewing it means our hiring managers can start to get move involved in the recruitment process and make it a much more collaborative experience. The Willo team are ALWAYS on hand for any issues or questions the team may have.
We brought Willo to help us manage high volume recruitment, specifically at an early careers level. We have used it for over a year.
This is a tough one as Willo is so user friendly there aren't many cons. I suppose for us as a business we would like to see how Willo can explore more options to be used at a more senior level. Would be nice if when you press reject or accept comms was sent to the candidate.
Willo is by far the best tool I have used for video interviewing, for me it's so easy to use (especially for someone not very tech savvy) and means I can include more of my hiring team with recruitment.
Think about what they actually need Willo to do, where are their biggest pain points and most time consuming tasks. For us as a business we were spending a lot of time phone screening which is how Willo came to reduce time spent and gave us so much time back to be able to improve other areas of the process.
Willo has become much more diverse, with different languages being added, as well as features such as recording without video and text answers. This makes it much more user friendly for those who don't always feel comfortable with video interviews.
Businesses with high volume recruitment, as well as those looking to add a personal touch to their recruitment process.
Maybe start up companies, where not as many people are aware of the company. I think for these companies it is easier for a recruiter to speak to the candidates directly about what the company is about and have an open dialogue.
We use it every day. We've put the Willo interview link in our automated thank you emails that go out to all our applicants. That way everyone gets the chance to record their interviews. We also send the interview links to applicants via text & email blast.
It speeds up the hiring process, minimizes ghosting and reviewing video interviews as opposed to resumes has proven to yield better hires.
We wanted to speed up the hiring process, give our applicants additional options/ways to interview and minimize the amount of ghosting that happened when scheduling interviews. It has helped in all 3 areas and we've been using it now for about 7 months.
The publishing section where Willo interviews are shared was not built well initially but they have since fixed it.
Easy of use, simplicity and customer service is great
Who you are recruiting for; what your main challenges are in your hiring process; do you have a recruiting problem or a retention problem?
They have fixed some bugs and made some updates.
Any and all.
I can't think of one.
Willo is great for teams that are hiring a lot either due to their growth rates of scale. While it was originally founded to serve all types of companies, it really isn’t for smaller businesses that hire very periodically.
The reason is simple. The value from asynchronous video interviews comes from saving time. If you can save 10 phone screens and instead watch 30 minutes of video interviews, you just saved hours of work. If you hire hundreds or thousands of people per year, then the savings are really big. But, if you are only hiring a few people per year, then it’s really difficult to get the ROI.
It’s also worth noting that some of the features you may find in other enterprise first solutions aren’t here including various admin levels, ability to send interview snippets, transcriptions, and more. But, we find many companies don’t need nor want these features, and opt for a simpler tool like Willo.
Danone, NHS Scotland, 7 Eleven, Samsung, University of Pennsylvania
- Time saved calculator: Each month they’ll send the total amount of time saved for your company so you can understand the ROI from their solution.
- Device Transfer: Interviewees can scan a QR code on the screen if their laptop is having technical issues and they need to switch to a different device. This aligns nicely with their candidate first ethos.
- Templates: Your team can create re-usable templates for candidate communication and interview processes.
- Resource links: Recruiters can link to resources from within their video interview questions.
- Video interview details: Your team can define how long answers can be, when an assessment needs to be completed, how many retakes, etc.
- Scheduling: Their tool will link with your calendar to offer synchronous interview scheduling as the next step in your hiring process.
- Bulk Invite: You can upload up to 1,000 candidates at a time, you can also invite candidates individually or add via the ATS.
Willo has native ATS integrations with TeamTailor, Greenhouse, Workable, Lever, and Loxo. Their most popular integration though is still via Zapier which allows you to connect with many different HR systems (you can check out if your recruiting system is part of the Zapier ecosystem on their website).
We also want to point out that Willo has an Open API that allows other HR Tech companies and services to white label their solution and pay on a cost/interview basis. ATS’s, job boards and a few staffing apps use their platform to deliver video interviews.
Willo has a free tier where you can interview up to 10 people per month. This is great for small companies that want to try video interviewing, or larger companies that want to get a deeper feel for the product before moving to a paid tier.
Otherwise, the product is priced based on the number of users your team has.
- 0-5 users is $336/yr
- 5-20 users is $1,800/yr
- Their enterprise tier is $3,300/yr up to 1,000 employees
- If your company is over 1,000 employees, you’ll have to get a custom quote
We appreciate Willo has transparent pricing that is also accessible to SMBs. In addition to the annual pricing quoted above, they do have month to month plans (annual plans get a 50% discount).
Willo’s video interview platform is best for companies that are hiring a lot either due to high growth, or scale. And, their customer base reflects that with everything from airport managers to Coinbase as customers.
Even though these examples are quite large businesses, many of their customers are small and medium-sized companies due to their pricing model which starts at $75/mo for up to 5 users. In fact, most of their customers are 250 - 5,000 employee companies.
Implementing Willo for smaller companies takes about an hour from first signup to sending out your first interview links. However, for larger companies this timeline gets extended as you will want to create more infrastructure around your interview and candidate communication templates.
In addition, it will take time to train your colleagues on how to get the most leverage from this tool. Willo helps setup and run these trainings, which aren’t all that arduous, but do need to get done to get the most from the tool.
Willo has a team of dedicated support people that cover 24 hours, seven days a week. This team supports both candidates and customers. However, less than 1% of interviews require technical support.
Willo was started by Euan Cameron who had been on both sides of the interview process and found it extremely stressful. In addition, he was always hiring as part of his job at various startups.
He wanted to find junior people with a lot of potential but found it hard to judge potential based on a resume alone. Plus, many candidates don’t always have transport to get to the interview nor a suit to wear, so he found person interviews to be somewhat discriminatory.
Euan started asking candidates to record a few answers over video to bolster their resumes, and realized the power of seeing someone on video. He also noticed that many of the existing platforms were way too expensive for smaller companies. So, he started Willo.
Company HQ
Glasgow, Scotland
Number of Employees
10
Year Founded
2018
Amount Raised
$1.2 million
