Why Video Interviews are Not Fit for Purpose: What Smart Employers Must Know When Hiring Top-Tier EAs and PAs

Shortcuts can look tempting. A Deliveroo order feels like the perfect solution to a long day – until the food arrives spilt or the order is wrong. Suddenly, you’re cooking late at night, and you’ve lost more time than you saved.
Recruitment is no different. Agencies that rush through interviews may appear to be moving fast, but when a mis-hire leaves weeks later, the client is back to square one – having wasted more time, money, and energy than if the process had been done properly from the start.
EAs and PAs are increasingly reporting that some recruitment agencies are ‘registering’ them with nothing more than a ten-minute phone call, covering little beyond current salary, notice period and job title, without a single question investigating their work experience, or discussing their ambitions, values and interests and are not even checking basic legal compliance of Right to Work. It’s recruitment by numbers – flinging CVs at the wall like they’re darts and hoping one sticks.

At Knightsbridge Recruitment, we stay deliberately thorough. Every candidate – temporary or permanent – spends an hour with one of our consultants in a full-on, professional interview, where we listen carefully and ask questions that uncover the full picture: skills, judgement, ambitions and the subtleties of character and interests that a CV can’t show.
Then, while they’re in the office, they meet the rest of our team, so that every consultant can put a face to the name and build a real rapport. By the time a candidate is recommended to a client, we know them well enough to speak with absolute confidence.

Some may call our approach old fashioned. We call it professional.
Recruitment isn’t a rat race to the fastest offer. It’s the art of recognising potential and ensuring it aligns with a company’s culture and ambitions. That art still depends on something as simple – and as irreplaceable – as the human touch, and meeting people in person.
In a market crowded with quick fixes and digital shortcuts, Knightsbridge Recruitment remains deliberately, unapologetically thorough. We will never trade precision for speed or let a screen stand in for a handshake.
Because the right hire is rarely a happy accident. It’s the result of insight, rigour, intelligent thinking and genuine human connection – and we wouldn’t dream of doing it any other way.