Best Practices for Online Meetings and Interviews

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Prepare

Turn off any potential distractions such as music and video streaming services. You may also consider deleting or hiding bookmarked pages in your web browser if you’ll be screen sharing, as they can be viewed by meeting participants. Lastly, you should consider any time zone differences that could make the meeting start time difficult for some participants.

If you are hosting the online meeting, it is also important to prep well in advance so you are not taking care of housekeeping items while early participants are joining.

Test Your Audio and Video

Test your audio and video devices (speakers, microphone, webcam) and mute all notifications that may serve as a distraction during the meeting.

Find Somewhere Quiet

Make sure you are in a quiet area to reduce background noise.

Have All Documents and Assets Ready

Remember to have any slide shows, documents, or videos that you will need during the online meeting ready at hand. Before your meeting begins, you may want to send meeting documents to participants so they can prepare beforehand.

Open the Virtual Meeting Room Early

Arriving a few minutes early before your meeting start time is ideal. This is to accommodate the people who come in early, and those who may not be familiar with the technology, who often try to gain access in advance of the start time.

Greet Participants

Introduce and acknowledge each member of the meeting so they don’t feel anonymous. This will empower them to engage and communicate freely. Ask participants to mute their mic if they are not speaking to reduce background noise.

Be Ready for Your Interview

You can arrange a pre-interview prep session a day or so before the actual interview to make sure your interviewee can use Zoom. It is important for the interviewer to introduce all of the meeting participants before you start the interview.

NOTE: Consider using multiple meetings for interviews rather than recurring ones, as the link remains the same. Having the same link allows the option for multiple interviewees to enter the meeting at the same time.