Most of your interviews are going to happen through a screen. Let me tell you what the person on the other side is actually looking at.
Your chin. Or your ear.
The laptop sits off to one side and the second monitor sits in front of you. The camera is in the laptop. The face you're talking to is on the monitor. So you look at the monitor, and the interviewer is looking at your chin or your ear. I'm not sure you'd have the appetite to hire me in that case.
A man six months into the market asked me for a call. I opened my camera, and he was talking to me exactly that way.
Fix the geometry and you've fixed most of it. Put the camera on top of the monitor you're actually looking at. Now when you look at their face the camera thinks you're looking at the camera, and you're making eye contact with the person on the other side. That's the whole trick.
Then light. About fifty dollars buys a soft box. Put it behind the camera, pointed at you. Never behind you. A window at your back turns your face dark, and you're going to look like a serial killer. I'm not joking.
Then two screens. One to watch, one to type in. Not required. But without it you're switching back and forth all day, and you're losing a lot of time.
One more, and this one isn't about looking good. Your microphone and your camera are live more often than you think. My own laptop decided to connect itself to my phone camera and microphone, and it did that while I was in the restroom on a break, with fifty people in the class. It was so embarrassing.
None of this measures whether you can do the work. I know that. The hiring process is unfortunately bullshit, and you act accordingly.
When I came to this country I rented one room. It had a closet, and because we didn't own that much clothes I set up my learning desk in there. I was learning in that closet because my baby was crying. He was ten months old.
You don't need a large house. You need a decent corner.
Open your camera right now, before you read on. Is your light in front of you or behind you?
Whatever is back there, you stopped seeing it months ago, and that's exactly the point. Everybody on that call is seeing it for the first time, and they're forming an opinion before you've finished your first sentence.