Is it OK to look at notes in a Zoom or video interview?

Usually, yes. In a live video interview on Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, a few bullet points near your camera are normally fine, and several university careers services say so in writing. Reading full answers off a page or a screen is a different matter: it tends to show in your eyes and your voice, and it leaves you stuck when the interviewer asks a follow-up. Notes are not OK when the employer says so, as it may for an online test, a proctored assessment or a recorded round. If you are not sure, ask.

The question comes up again and again, in plain words like these:

“I have a 1st round zoom interview later today and I was wondering if it is acceptable to have some notes open on my computer I made about the company?”

Blind

One reply on that thread said they would be “foolish NOT to have notes”, then added that the notes should be a few words, because it is easy to see when someone reads. Below: what the official advice says, when notes are off limits, what to write, why scripts backfire, where to put notes so you are not looking down, and how phone, live video and HireVue rounds differ.

What do careers services and HireVue actually say about notes?

Here is what organisations that coach or assess candidates have put in writing.

• HireVue, the one-way video platform, says on its candidate tips page: “You can even keep your notes next to you in case you need a reminder during the interview.” The same page tells candidates not to worry about eye contact with the camera and to be natural.
• The careers service at the Technological University of the Shannon in Ireland tells students to make notes in bullet point format and keep them in easy view. Its guide says: “It’s OK to glance at your notes for reference if you need to, but you shouldn’t sit there with your eyes glued to a piece of paper, reading out answers that you’ve written down in advance.”
• Kansas State University’s Career Center, in a sheet adapted from the US National Association of Colleges and Employers, suggests that if necessary you post notes from your resume on the wall behind the screen.
• Texas Tech University’s Career Center takes a middle line. Its video interviewing tips say to let the interviewers know you are glancing at notes, and not to pull up files on your computer during the interview.
• Spencer Stuart, the executive search firm, wrote in a 2020 piece on video interviews that notes are not unusual, but candidates look down at them too often. Its fix: write larger, so a glance is enough.

Not everyone agrees. A careers sheet hosted by Ohio State University says notes and answer outlines are for phone interviews only, “never at a face-to-face or Skype interview”, because listening, reading and answering at once is hard. The common ground: short notes as a backup are widely accepted, reading answers is not, and the employer’s rules come first.

When are notes not OK?

Some rounds ban outside material, and using it there can cost you the offer even if the answer was right.

• Online tests and proctored assessments. Coding tests, aptitude tests and other timed assessments may ban outside material outright, and a proctored one may record your webcam or screen while you work. The rules are usually on the invite or the first screen. Read them.
• Rounds with an explicit rule. Some employers write rules into the invitation itself. Amazon, for example, told candidates not to use generative AI tools in interviews unless explicitly permitted, according to internal guidance reported by Business Insider and summarised by ITPro in March 2025. That rule covers AI tools rather than a paper card, but it shows the company is paying attention.
• One-way video rounds with their own instructions. HireVue’s general guidance allows notes, but the employer writes the instructions for its own round. If they say no notes, that wins.

How to ask without sounding unprepared

Asking is normal. Keep it short and make clear the notes are a backup, not the plan. Ask by email a day or two before, or say it at the start of the call:

For an assessment with unclear rules, email before you start, not midway through a timed test.

What should you put on your interview notes?

Good notes list the things your memory drops under stress. Stress weakens working memory, and names, numbers and examples are easy to lose when it does (there is more on why in our guide to when your mind goes blank). Put those on the card and leave the sentences in your head.

• Three to five story titles. Two or three words each, enough to pull the whole story back: “late launch, vendor fight”, “dashboard rebuild”, “intern mentoring”. Note which questions each one answers (conflict, failure, leadership, deadline).
• Numbers you might fumble. Team size, users, money saved, before and after figures, dates. They slip easily under nerves, and they make an answer believable.
• The job’s three main asks. Copy them from the job description in its own words, so you remember to connect your stories to them.
• Names. The interviewer’s name, the product or team you would join, anything you read about the company that you want to mention.
• Two or three questions to ask them. This is the part of the call where reading from a list looks completely normal. Our list of questions to ask the interviewer has options.
• A three-word outline for “tell me about yourself”. For example: “now, before, why here”. Practise the answer aloud; keep only the outline on the card. See how to answer tell me about yourself.

A good test: hand the card to a friend. If they could not give your answers from it, it is a set of notes. If they could, it is a script.

Why does reading full answers backfire?

Writing out full answers feels like protection against going blank. On a video call it usually makes things worse, for four reasons.

Your eyes give it away

When you think, your eyes drift. When you read, they move along a line in small jumps and snap back for the next line. That pattern can show on a webcam, even when the text sits close to the lens. In the Amazon guidance reported by ITPro, the signs interviewers were told to look for included candidates “appearing to read rather than respond naturally” and eyes wandering. We go into the full list of signals in can interviewers tell if you are reading or using AI.

Your voice changes

Reading aloud sounds different from talking, even when the words are your own. In a study presented at Eurospeech 1993, Gitta Laan and Dick van Bergem recorded speakers telling something about themselves and then reading out their own transcript. They found that intonation, the length of individual sounds and the quality of the voice all carried cues to which version was read. The study did not test interviewers, but it shows a read answer can sound different from a spoken one even when the words are your own.

Your replies get slower

To read an answer you have to find it first. That means a silence while your eyes search, then a fluent paragraph. An answer you build as you talk tends to go the other way round: it starts sooner and a bit rough, then firms up. A long silence followed by a polished block of text fits the “appearing to read rather than respond naturally” sign in the Amazon guidance above.

The follow-up has no script

Good interviewers dig. “What would you do differently?” “Why that tool and not another?” “What did your manager think?” A scripted first answer often makes the follow-up harder, because you sounded more polished than you can keep up. When the second answer is much weaker than the first, that gap can stand out more than either answer.

So notes are for facts. The sentences should be yours, made up in the moment around a story you have told aloud before.

How do you read notes on Zoom without looking down?

The useful research here is older than Zoom. In 2002 Milton Chen, then at Stanford, ran experiments on how people judge eye contact over video. He found the sensitivity is lopsided. If someone looks just above, left or right of the camera, viewers notice almost at once: about one degree away was enough to lose the sense of eye contact. If they look below the camera, viewers are roughly ten times less sensitive, and people tend to assume they are being looked at unless it is obvious they are not. Chen’s conservative design rule was to keep the gap between the camera and what you are looking at under five degrees, which he worked out as about 3 inches (8 cm) at a viewing distance of 3 feet.

At a normal laptop distance of about 60 cm (two feet), five degrees works out to roughly 5 cm (two inches) below the camera. Two cautions. The study used 2002 webcams, and Chen found people saw more eye contact over video than face to face, which he put down to low resolution, so the margin with today’s sharper cameras may be smaller. And the rule is about where your eyes rest. Eyes moving across a line of text still show. Inside those limits, it gives you a practical setup:

• Put notes just below the camera, not beside it. The common tip of a sticky note to the side of the webcam works against the research: sideways is the direction viewers notice most. Going by Chen’s results, a narrow strip of keywords directly under the lens, at the top edge of the screen, should show much less. Test it with the recording below.
• Raise the camera to eye level. Texas Tech’s career centre says to install the camera at eye height and not to stare down into it. A stack of books under the laptop does it.
• Move the interviewer’s video window up. Drag the call window so their face sits at the top of your screen, right under the camera. Then looking at them and at the camera are almost the same thing.
• Keep any on-screen notes small and close to the top. A narrow window of keywords beats a document. But Texas Tech advises against pulling up files during the call, and anything open is seen if you share your whole screen. Paper avoids both problems.
• Glance at natural pauses. The moment after a question, while you say “good question, let me think”, is a normal time to look away. Mid-sentence glances look like reading.
• Hide your self view if it distracts you. Zoom, Teams and Meet each have an option to hide or minimise your own video on your screen only. Check your framing first, then hide it.

Then rehearse it. Record a two-minute mock answer with your notes in place and watch it back with the sound off. If you can spot each glance, the interviewer can too; move the notes or cut the words.

Eye contact on video: look at the camera or the screen?

You cannot do both at once, since the camera sits above the face you are talking to, and staring into the lens for 45 minutes looks fixed. A split that works:

With the window moved up under the camera, the gap between screen and camera gets small enough to stop worrying about. For one-way recordings, HireVue’s own advice is to be natural rather than worry about the lens. Kansas State’s guide says to look directly at the camera when the call begins, a good habit for the opening hello.

What about teleprompter apps and eye contact filters?

Teleprompter apps exist for exactly this situation: they scroll text in a strip near the camera so you can read while appearing to look ahead. Some newer tools go further and change your eyes in the video itself. Windows Studio Effects, on supported Windows PCs, has an eye contact effect that adjusts your gaze to simulate eye contact, with a stronger “Teleprompter” mode only on Snapdragon Copilot+ PCs. NVIDIA added a beta Eye Contact feature to its Broadcast app for RTX graphics cards in 2023, and Engadget’s report on it noted it “may be uncanny at times”.

Both deal only with where your eyes seem to point. Your voice, your pauses and the follow-up you have no line for stay the same. A gaze that never moves can also look odd, since people look away to think. For a speech, a teleprompter is a reasonable tool. In an interview, a scrolling script mostly swaps one tell for another. If you use one, load it with keywords, not paragraphs.

AI prompt tools, which hear the question and put a suggested answer on screen, follow the same rule. Use what appears as a reminder of which story and which number, then say it your way. Read word for word, a generated answer has every problem of a script, plus it may not sound like you. The employer’s rules on AI help matter most here.

Phone, live video, Teams or HireVue: do the rules change?

Phone interviews

This is where notes are easiest. Nobody can see you, so you can lay out your CV, the job description and an outline of each story. Ohio State’s sheet, the strictest source above, still allows notes for phone calls, as bullet points rather than a script, because a read answer sounds read even down a phone line. A pen to jot down names and questions helps more than another page of notes.

Live video on Zoom, Teams, Google Meet or Webex

The app makes no difference. Teams is not stricter than Zoom; the employer sets the rules, and the careers services above treat a short card in a live conversation as fine. What changes on video is that your eyes are visible, so placement matters. If you will share your screen, close anything you would not want seen first.

One-way recorded interviews (HireVue and similar)

In a one-way interview there is no person on the call: you read or hear a question, get a short time to think, then record your answer. The Muse’s guide to digital interviews describes about a minute or two to read and think, a couple of minutes to answer, and retake rules that vary by company, from one redo to unlimited. Bentley University’s career blog says that papers or sticky notes nearby are an advantage of the format, as long as you do not depend on them, because heavy reliance is obvious.

A common worry is that HireVue grades your face or tracks your eyes. According to SHRM’s 2021 report, HireVue stopped using visual analysis in its assessments in March 2020 and announced it in January 2021. Its chief executive said it transcribes answers and evaluates the content. So what you say matters most, though a person at the company may still watch the video. Use the prep time to glance at your card and pick a story, then talk to the lens. If the employer’s instructions say no notes, follow them. Our guide to the AI interview round covers one-way and AI-scored rounds in more detail.

Where does PiriPiri AI fit?

Paper notes cannot know which question is coming: you write five stories and the interviewer asks about the sixth. PiriPiri AI is a desktop app for macOS and Windows built for that gap. During a live call it listens to both sides (your microphone and the interviewer’s audio from your computer), transcribes them, and drafts a short answer on a small floating overlay, built from the CV, job description and role you added. In practice it works like a note card that updates to match the question.

How it lines up with the advice on this page:

• Keep it near the camera. Drag the bar to the top of your screen, just under the lens, where Chen’s research says a downward glance is least noticeable. Pick a concise answer style so the prompt is a few lines, not a paragraph.
• Glance, then speak in your own words. Look for the story name or the number, look back at the interviewer, and answer the way you rehearsed. If nothing is showing yet, press Answer now (Cmd+Shift+Enter on Mac; Windows uses Ctrl in place of Cmd for every hotkey here).
• Use detail to prepare, not to read. Deep dive (Cmd+Shift+6) asks for a longer answer when the interviewer pushes for more. Skim it for the one point you missed rather than reading it out.
• Written or coding questions. Analyze screen (Cmd+Shift+Space) reads a coding or written question off your screen and suggests an approach.
• Afterwards. The transcript and notes are saved to your account, so you can see which questions your card did not cover and fix it for the next round.

No meeting bot joins the call, and it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex and others. The overlay asks the operating system to leave it out of screen capture, so it does not appear when you share your screen or record in the usual way. On Windows 10 (version 2004) and later the window is removed from captures. Developer documentation for this setting notes that some newer Mac capture tools may still pick such windows up, so do a test call with a friend on the exact app you will use before you rely on it. On a Mac, hearing the interviewer needs macOS 14.2 or later.

The limits are the same as for any notes. It cannot give you experience you do not have. Your eyes and voice are still on camera, so reading its drafts word for word sounds rehearsed. And if the employer, the test or the platform says no notes or no AI, do not use it in that round; check those rules before any interview. Try it first in a mock interview so you learn how little of each prompt you need. More on the setup in how to use it.

Questions people ask

Where to go next

Notes work best on top of real preparation, so start with how to prepare for an interview. If the call is soon, the interview tomorrow checklist fits into one evening. And if your real worry is being seen reading, read can interviewers tell if you are reading or using AI.

PiriPiri AI costs about $2.50 an interview, paid in one-time packs that never expire, so no subscription is required. Every new account starts with 3 free sessions, so you can try it in a mock interview before a real one. See pricing, prices in India and the refund terms.

Keep reading

• Can interviewers tell if you are reading or using AI?
• How to use AI during a live interview
• How to answer “Tell me about yourself”