A HireVue interview is usually a one-way video interview: you open a link from the employer, read or watch a question, get a short window to think, and record your answer on a laptop or phone with nobody on the other end. HireVue's own candidate FAQ says most video assessments have five to eight questions and take under 20 to 30 minutes. Some employers add short brain-teaser games or a coding challenge, and some score the answers with AI. Every setting that matters to you (prep time, answer length, retakes, games) is chosen by the employer, not fixed by HireVue. This guide sets out what HireVue itself publishes about each setting, so you know what is documented and what is guesswork.
What HireVue is
HireVue is hiring software that employers buy. It is not a job board, and you do not apply through it. You reach it after you have applied, when an employer sends you an invitation link. In its AI Explainability Statement, the version linked from its legal hub in October 2026 (the document is marked copyright 2022), HireVue says it has hosted "more than 26 million video interviews and 5 million AI-based candidate assessments for over 700 customers".
Goldman Sachs, for example, names HireVue as its approved interview platform on its recruiting scams page.
In Greenhouse's 2026 Candidate AI Interview Report, 63% of 2,950 job seekers surveyed said they had been interviewed by an AI, and 70% said they were never clearly told upfront. Greenhouse sells hiring software too, so treat it as a vendor survey.
The three formats: video, games and coding
| Format | What you do | Length HireVue publishes | What is scored |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-demand video | Record answers to set questions, alone, on your own schedule | 5 to 8 questions, under 20 to 30 minutes (FAQ) | Your transcribed words, if the employer uses AI scoring; otherwise a recruiter watches |
| Game-based assessment | Short puzzle or chat-style tasks | About 3 minutes per game; 7 to 20 minutes in total (HireVue, 2019) | Game performance (cognitive or personality measures) |
| Coding challenge | Solve programming problems in the browser | No time stated; a library of "more than 200" challenges (coding page) | Your code, with plagiarism checks |
| Live video | A scheduled call with a real interviewer | Set by the employer | Judged by the interviewer |
Video. This is the format most people mean by "a HireVue". HireVue's 2019 prep post says you record "in your internet browser" on a computer or in the HireVue app on mobile. Questions are usually behavioral ("tell me about a time") or situational ("what would you do if").
Games. The same post says each game "takes approximately 3 minutes to complete", comes with its own instructions, and "starts with some easy levels so you can get used to the game format". Some games resemble brain teasers; others are a chatbot that sends you messages to answer. The Explainability Statement adds that the games adapt as you go: complete a task and the next one is harder, fail one and the next is easier. So a run of hard levels is a sign you are doing well, not badly.
Coding. HireVue's coding assessment page lists languages including Python, Java, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, C++ and Perl, and says it can "automatically detect" potentially plagiarized submissions. Employers can also write their own challenges. If you are applying for engineering roles, a coding challenge may be followed by a short video question asking you to explain your solution. HireVue's 2025 whitepaper on cheating recommends exactly that follow-up to employers.
HireVue also sells an AI Interviewer that asks "probing follow-up questions, in a natural two-way conversation". If your invitation describes a conversation rather than a list of questions, this is probably it. The page says candidates can opt out and that "recruiters always make the final call".
Timing, retakes and practice questions
The top search answer for this query says you get 30 seconds to prepare and 60 to 120 seconds to record. We could not find those numbers in anything HireVue publishes. What HireVue does publish is the menu employers choose from, in its Explainability Statement:
| Setting | Range the employer can choose | HireVue's recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Preparation time per question | 0 to 5 minutes | 60 seconds |
| Retries per question | Yes or no | 1 to 2 retries after the first attempt |
| Number of questions | Set per role | 3 to 6 video questions plus 2 to 3 games (typical) |
| Total time | Set per role | 15 to 25 minutes for video plus games (typical) |
| Feedback report to candidate | On or off | On |
Source: HireVue AI Explainability Statement.
On answer length, HireVue's candidate pages say only that you will be "given several minutes to respond to each question" (FAQ) or that most on-demand interviews ask for your answer "in just a few minutes" (interview tips). The screen shows a countdown, so read the clock on your first real question rather than trusting any guide's number, including this one.
Retakes are the setting candidates ask about most. The Explainability Statement says "the number of re-takes allowed is set by the employer". The cheating whitepaper describes a "spontaneous" mode that some employers use, which "requires candidates to provide their answers immediately, with no retakes and with limited prep time". If you have retries, use one only when the first take went wrong in a way you can name, such as losing your place or the audio cutting out.
Practice questions are offered before the real ones. HireVue's interview tips say "you'll even have the opportunity to do a practice question". Use it to check your camera framing, your sound, and how the countdown looks. Many prep guides say practice answers are never sent to the employer, but HireVue's own pages do not say either way, so do not record anything in practice you would mind a recruiter seeing.
If your connection drops, the FAQ says you can "pick up where you left off with the same link".
A setup checklist
Work through this the day before.
- Open the invitation link early and read the instructions screen. Note the deadline, the number of questions, whether there are games or coding, and whether retries are allowed.
- Pick the device. HireVue says you can use a computer, tablet or phone (FAQ). For coding or games, use a laptop.
- Charge or plug in the device. HireVue's prep post asks for a device that is "fully charged or plugged in".
- Use the strongest wifi you can get, and close video calls, downloads and cloud syncing on the same network.
- Put the light in front of you. HireVue's tips say "lighting from behind makes it hard to see you."
- Choose a room "free from distractions and noise", and tell anyone you live with when you are recording.
- Set the camera at eye level with your head and shoulders in frame.
- Keep a one-page note card nearby. HireVue's tips say you can keep notes for reminders. Write story titles and one number each, not a script.
- Block 45 minutes, which is what HireVue's FAQ suggests, even if the invitation says 20.
- Do the practice question. Watch it back if the platform lets you.
- Have the recruiter's email ready in case something breaks.
A question bank with STAR outlines
HireVue says its interview questions are designed by its industrial and organizational psychology team "to elicit behavioural responses related to a specific competency", so most prompts are behavioral. The STAR method (situation, task, action, result) is the right shape for them. Keep each answer to roughly one minute of situation and task, and spend the rest on what you did and what happened.
The prompts and outlines below are samples written for this post for tech and business new grads. They are not leaked questions from any employer.
| # | Sample prompt | STAR outline (sample) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tell us about yourself and why this role. | Not STAR. Present (degree, focus), one proof (project or internship with a result), why this team. |
| 2 | Describe a time you worked on a team that disagreed. | S: four-person capstone split on scope. T: you owned the backend. A: proposed a one-week spike to test both options. R: picked one on data; shipped on time. |
| 3 | Tell us about a time you missed a deadline. | S: internship report. T: weekly metrics deck. A: flagged the delay a day early, cut scope, set a new date. R: delivered; started a checklist that prevented a repeat. |
| 4 | Give an example of solving a problem with data. | S: student club dues falling. T: find why. A: pulled two years of records into a spreadsheet, found drop-off after month two. R: changed the reminder timing; renewals rose. |
| 5 | Describe a time you learned a new tool quickly. | S: internship needed SQL you did not know. T: build a report in two weeks. A: course in the evenings, asked a teammate to review queries. R: report shipped and was reused. |
| 6 | Tell us about a time you received critical feedback. | S: code review on your first pull request. T: fix it. A: asked for the reasoning, rewrote, added tests. R: merged; you now write tests first. |
| 7 | Describe a time you led without authority. | S: group project with no assigned lead. T: get it moving. A: wrote a task list, set two check-ins a week. R: finished early; professor used it as an example. |
| 8 | How would you handle a customer who is angry about an error? | Situational. Acknowledge, find the facts, fix or escalate, follow up with a date. Close with a short real example if you have one. |
| 9 | Tell us about a goal you set and reached. | S: wanted an internship in a new field. T: three applications a week with tailored materials. A: tracked them, asked for two referrals. R: offer in month three. |
| 10 | Describe a time you made a mistake. | S: sent a report with a wrong figure. T: limit the damage. A: told your manager within the hour, corrected and resent. R: added a second check to your process. |
| 11 | Give an example of prioritizing competing tasks. | S: finals week plus a part-time job. T: keep both. A: ranked by deadline and weight, traded one shift. R: grades held; manager thanked you for the notice. |
| 12 | Tell us about a time you persuaded someone. | S: team wanted to skip user testing. T: change their minds. A: ran five quick tests in an afternoon, showed the clips. R: two design changes before launch. |
| 13 | Walk us through a technical project you are proud of. | S: what it was for. T: your part. A: the hardest decision and why. R: what it does now, with one number. |
| 14 | Describe a time you had to work with someone difficult. | S: teammate missing meetings. T: deliver anyway. A: asked privately what was going on, split work to fit their schedule. R: shipped; the relationship improved. |
| 15 | Why do you want to work here? | Not STAR. One specific thing about the business, one about the role, one link to your experience. |
| 16 | (Coding follow-up) Explain how you approached the last challenge. | Restate the problem, your first approach and why you changed it, the complexity, and what you would test next. |
More prompts, sorted by competency, are in our behavioral interview questions guide, and the steps in how to prepare for an interview apply here too.
Can HireVue tell if you use AI?
Here is what HireVue has put in writing on this, and nothing more.
What HireVue's AI scores. The Explainability Statement says video scoring has three steps: transcribe the speech to text, work out what the text means, and score it against expert human ratings of answers to the same question. It says "our AI relies only on what is said by the candidate and does not use any video analysis or other audio characteristics", which it spells out as no facial expressions, body language, background or tone of voice. That was not always true: SHRM reported in February 2021 that HireVue had dropped facial analysis in March 2020.
What it says it can flag. HireVue's cheating and fraud page and its 2025 whitepaper list the controls an employer can turn on:
| Control | What HireVue says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Disabled copy and paste | Makes it harder to paste answers from ChatGPT; candidates are notified when it is on | Whitepaper, 2025 |
| Browser-focus flags | "Automated flags for browser-focus loss or unexpected session changes" | Cheating and fraud page |
| Coding playback | Reviewers can replay the challenge and are told when you leave the window or paste text | Whitepaper, 2025 |
| Similarity checks | A script compared 1,000 transcribed answers; under 1% were flagged as highly similar | Whitepaper, 2025 |
| ID checks | "ID verification" and checks that "the same person remains present" | Cheating and fraud page |
| Spontaneous mode | Immediate answers, no retakes, limited prep time | Whitepaper, 2025 |
What it has not published. We found no HireVue statement that it runs a detector which labels a spoken answer as AI-written. The same page also says a single behavior "should not automatically be treated as proof of fraud".
What its tests found. In the whitepaper, HireVue's data science team ran ChatGPT (version 3.5) against its assessments. On its video questions, ChatGPT "scored in the range of an average candidate", and its answers "were generic even with additional prompting". On HireVue's longer job tryout tests it performed poorly and took "over an hour for assessments meant to last 20 minutes". HireVue also wrote that people reading a scripted answer tend to use "bigger and more formal words" and fewer filler words, which "a human reviewer can sense". These are HireVue's own tests of an older model, so read them as the vendor's view.
The practical answer: an AI answer read off a second screen tends to sound read, scores like an average answer at best in HireVue's tests, and leaves you with nothing to say at the live follow-up. Rehearsing with AI beforehand is a different thing. The whitepaper says "cheating is ultimately defined differently by each company", so if the instructions say no outside tools, take them at their word.
Accommodations
HireVue's FAQ says you can "request accommodations from your recruiter or the hiring team at that company". The Explainability Statement shows the standard on-screen wording some employers use: if you "require extra time due to a qualified disability", a "Request Accommodations" button relaxes the time limits, and in that case "the game-based assessment section will not be presented". For any other kind of accommodation it directs you to your contact at the employer.
Ask before you start, not after, and put the request in writing to the recruiter as well, so there is a record if the button is missing. The statement says the employer decides whether to grant an exemption.
What happens after you submit
The Explainability Statement describes what employers see when AI scoring is on: each candidate lands in a tier, and HireVue suggests what the recruiter should do with each one.
| Tier (as HireVue describes it) | Suggested recruiter action |
|---|---|
| Top tier, 67 to 100% | Advance to the next step |
| Middle tier, 36 to 66% | Watch the interview, then advance, hold or reject |
| Low tier, 0 to 33% | Watch the interview if volumes are low, then hold or reject |
| Insufficient data | Issue a retake |
The statement adds that an answer in which fewer than five words are understood is not scored and is "flagged for human review". So a broken microphone usually means a retake request, not an automatic rejection. It also says "the final decision on next steps and whether to hire" is "taken entirely by the hiring company", and that a candidate who wants to question a decision has to take it up with the employer. HireVue recommends that employers turn on a candidate feedback report, so it is worth asking the recruiter for one if you did not get it.
Whether everyone gets invited is the employer's choice; HireVue publishes nothing on how employers decide. On data, the FAQ says the employer sets the retention period and HireVue purges your data when it expires. You can ask for deletion at any point, but the employer decides, so the request goes to the recruiter, not to HireVue.
Where ApplyEze fits
ApplyEze has no interview feature and does not take HireVue assessments for anyone. The invitation arrives only after an application goes into the employer's applicant tracking system, and that is the part ApplyEze handles: it completes applications on 12 platforms, including Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby, with a resume and cover letter written for each posting. The video round is yours, and the checklist above is the best use of the evening before it.