Why Video Interviews Demand More From You Than In-Person Ones

If your last video interview or negotiation felt flatter than it should have, even though you said all the right things, there's a reason, and it isn't nerves.

In his new book Negotiation: The Game Has Changed, Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman revisits a concept called "channel richness," the amount of verbal and nonverbal information that actually makes it from one person to another during a conversation. In-person meetings carry the most: tone, timing, posture, micro-expressions, the small adjustments people make when they sense hesitation. Phone calls and texts carry the least. Video sits in between, richer than a phone call, but a noticeably thinner version of being in the room. Bazerman's point for negotiators applies just as directly to interviews, sales calls, and any conversation where you're trying to be read accurately: on video, a real signal you're sending has a real chance of not landing.

That's a structural problem, not a performance problem, and it means the fix isn't "be more confident." It's compensating deliberately for the bandwidth you've lost.

Say what your face used to say

In person, a raised eyebrow or a considering pause reads as thoughtfulness. On a slightly delayed video feed, that same pause can register as a frozen connection, a dropped thought, or disengagement. The fix is to narrate what you'd normally let your expression carry. Instead of pausing silently before answering a tough interview question, say "let me think about that for a second" out loud. Instead of hoping your nod reads as agreement in a negotiation, say "that makes sense to me" or "I see the logic there." You're not overexplaining. You're replacing a channel that video strips out.

Ask instead of reading the room

Skilled negotiators and interviewers rely heavily on reading the other person's reaction in real time and adjusting. Video makes that much less reliable; a hiring manager's neutral expression might mean they're unconvinced, or it might mean their camera angle is unflattering and they know it. Rather than guessing, ask directly: "Does that answer what you were looking for?" or "How does that land with the range you had in mind?" Explicit checks replace the implicit ones you'd normally pick up automatically.

Slow your pacing on purpose

Video platforms introduce small delays that make natural back-and-forth harder; people who'd smoothly interrupt each other in a room end up talking over one another or leaving longer gaps than intended. Build in a deliberate half-beat before responding, and treat interruptions as a technical hiccup to acknowledge, not a rudeness to react to. This one habit does more to reduce the "off" feeling of a video conversation than almost anything else.

Over-invest in the opening minute

Because rapport-building normally happens through dozens of small in-person cues you don't consciously track, you have to build it more deliberately on video. Spend the first minute on genuine, specific small talk rather than rushing into the agenda. It's compensating for lost bandwidth, not wasted time.

The takeaway

Channel richness isn't something you can restore by upgrading your webcam. But you can identify exactly what a video call strips out, tone cues, reaction cues, natural pacing, and rebuild each one on purpose: narrate your thinking, ask instead of assume, slow your timing, and spend real effort on the opening minute. Practicing this out loud, not just reading about it, is what makes it automatic when the stakes are real.

Source: Max H. Bazerman, Negotiation: The Game Has Changed (Princeton University Press).