Christian Segovia

Posted on Mar 14

Most HR platforms can't record video. Adding it takes 4 lines of code.

#webdev #javascript #saas #hiring

Every HR platform eventually hits the same wall: phone screens don't scale, written assessments miss half the signal, and scheduling live interviews is a bottleneck.

The answer is async video interviews. The problem? Building video recording into your platform has traditionally meant months of work and expensive infrastructure.

We changed that. Here's how any HR tool can add video interviews — today.

Why HR needs video (and why most platforms don't have it)

AI recruiting tools are growing 35% year over year. Resume parsing, chatbot screening, predictive hiring — the stack keeps getting smarter. But there's a blind spot: most of it is text-only.

The richest signal — how someone communicates, thinks on their feet, handles pressure — lives in video. Yet building video recording has meant:

Hiring a media engineering team
Server-side transcoding infrastructure
Fighting iOS Safari and Android quirks
Paying $0.02-0.03/min to a vendor with monthly minimums

So only enterprise platforms like HireVue could offer it. Not anymore.

The shift: browser-native video recording

Modern browser APIs changed the economics completely. Instead of uploading raw video to servers for processing, we transcode directly in the browser using the WebCodecs API.

What this means for HR platforms:

Before	Now
Raw video → server transcoding → storage	Browser encodes MP4 → direct upload
50MB per minute of video	5-10MB per minute
Server infrastructure required	Edge-only, serverless
$0.026/min	$0.01/min
Weeks to integrate	Hours

No plugins. No app installs for candidates. Works on mobile — candidates record from their phone.

4 lines to add video interviews

Here's how you add a candidate recording flow to your React-based HR platform:

import { VidtreoRecorder } from '@vidtreo/recorder-react'

<VidtreoRecorder
  apiKey="your-api-key"
  maxDuration={90}
/>

That gives you: camera selection, recording controls, upload progress, error handling, and automatic transcription. Done.

Not using React? Works with any framework:

<vidtreo-recorder
  api-key="your-api-key"
  max-duration="90">
</vidtreo-recorder>

Or vanilla JS:

import { VidtreoRecorder } from '@vidtreo/recorder'

const recorder = new VidtreoRecorder({
  apiKey: 'your-api-key',
  maxDuration: 90,
  onComplete: (video) => {
    // video.url → the recorded interview
    // video.transcript → AI-generated transcript
    saveToCandidate(video)
  }
})

recorder.start()

What makes this useful for HR specifically

AI transcription is included — not an add-on

Every recording is automatically transcribed. This unlocks:

Searchable interviews — find every candidate who mentioned "Kubernetes" or "team lead experience"
Keyword extraction — flag specific skills or experiences automatically
Multi-language — candidates record in their native language, transcripts in yours
Structured data — turn 60-second videos into parseable, scorable data points

At $0.01/min, transcription included, this is 12x cheaper than running your own OpenAI Whisper pipeline.

Your videos, your storage

Candidate recordings are sensitive data. You need control over where they live.

By default, videos are stored on our edge cloud storage — globally distributed, zero egress fees, fast playback from anywhere. But if your compliance or architecture requires it, you can plug in your own S3 or R2 bucket and videos go straight there. You own the files, we never touch them after upload.

Coming soon: Azure Blob Storage and Google Cloud Storage support.

This matters in HR. GDPR, SOC 2, internal data policies — your legal team will ask "where do the videos live?" With Vidtreo, the answer is wherever you decide.

The use cases are broader than you think

Startups (no HR team): Post a job, include a link to record a 60-second intro. Review candidates async. Cost for 100 candidates: ~$1.

ATS platforms: One-way interviews, video assessments ("walk me through your portfolio"), onboarding recordings where new hires introduce themselves.

Staffing agencies: Batch-send recording links to 200 candidates. 1-minute videos replace 15-minute phone screens. Forward clips directly to hiring managers.

Universities: Scale admission interviews, oral exams, career services practice sessions.

The math for your platform

If you're building an HR tool, here's the business case:

Scenario	Volume	Cost
Small ATS, 50 interviews/month	50 min	$0.50/month
Mid-size platform, 500/month	500 min	$5/month
Staffing agency, 5,000/month	5,000 min	$50/month
Enterprise, 50,000/month	50,000 min	$500/month

Compare that to HireVue's enterprise contracts or building your own video infrastructure. The ROI is immediate.

Try it

Add video recording to your HR platform:

$1 free credit — enough for ~100 recordings to prototype
$0.01/min — no monthly fees, no minimums
AI transcription included — every recording, automatically
React, Web Component, or vanilla JS

Website: vidtreo.com
Docs: docs.vidtreo.com
SDK: npm install @vidtreo/recorder

I'm the founder. We built this because we saw HR platforms struggling with the same video infrastructure problem over and over. If you're building in the HR/recruiting space, I'd love to hear what you're working on — drop a comment or DM.

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