How-to: Fetching Interview Transcriptions

When to use this

Use this query when you want to retrieve the video transcriptions for a candidate’s interview answers — for example, to display transcripts in your own hiring dashboard, feed them into an AI screening tool, or search across candidate responses by keyword.

Each interview has one or more stepExecutions (one per interview question), and each step can carry a transcription of the candidate’s video answer.

GraphQL Request

Use this query to fetch the transcription for every step in an interview. Don’t forget to replace the id with the interview you want to fetch, and update the Hireflix API Key in the headers.

Explanation

• id – the ID of the interview you want to fetch transcriptions for.
• stepExecutions – one entry per interview question. Each step is typed as AdminInterviewStepQAExecution.
• latestAnswer – the candidate’s most recent answer for that step. Typed as InterviewStepQAVideoAnswer for video responses.
• transcription – contains the transcribed text, the languageCode it was detected in, and vttSubtitles (WebVTT-formatted captions, useful if you want to render a subtitled video player).

Example Response

{
  "data": {
    "interview": {
      "id": "6a79c65ae26008ae3df7b50e",
      "stepExecutions": [
        {
          "id": "6a79c65ae26008ae3df7b50c",
          "finishedAt": "2026-08-10T12:39:30.596Z",
          "status": "COMPLETED",
          "latestAnswer": {
            "video": {
              "transcription": {
                "languageCode": "en",
                "text": "Hey. I would really like to join this company because it's one of the coolest companies out there in the AI space, and it would really suit my skill set...",
                "vttSubtitles": "WEBVTT\n\n00:01.200 --> 00:03.920\nHey. I would really like to join this company because...\n"
              }
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "id": "6a79c65ae26008ae3df7b50d",
          "finishedAt": "2026-08-10T12:40:04.158Z",
          "status": "COMPLETED",
          "latestAnswer": {
            "video": {
              "transcription": null
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

transcription can return null even for a completed step with a valid video answer — as shown in the second step above. This usually means transcription is still processing or wasn’t available for that answer. Always check for null before reading transcription.text in your code.

Tips

• Flatten the response client-side. GraphQL mirrors your query’s shape — it won’t merge or restructure the array for you. A small helper function makes the response easier to work with:

  flatten.js

  function flattenTranscriptions(interview) {
    return interview.stepExecutions
      .filter(step => step.latestAnswer?.video?.transcription)
      .map(step => ({
        stepId: step.id,
        finishedAt: step.finishedAt,
        language: step.latestAnswer.video.transcription.languageCode,
        text: step.latestAnswer.video.transcription.text,
        vtt: step.latestAnswer.video.transcription.vttSubtitles,
      }));
  }
  

• Handle missing transcriptions gracefully. Don’t assume every completed step has one — build in a fallback (e.g. “Transcript pending” or a retry check) rather than letting your UI break on null.

• Use id on each step to correlate a transcription back to the specific interview question it belongs to, especially if you’re storing transcripts against your own question records.

✅ FAQ: Why is transcription null on a completed step?

A COMPLETED step means the candidate submitted their video answer — it doesn’t guarantee the transcription has finished processing yet. Transcription happens asynchronously after the video is uploaded. If you consistently see null for older, fully processed interviews, check with Hireflix support, since it may indicate the transcription failed for that specific answer rather than being pending.

Learn next?

Let’s learn how to score and comment on interviews.