Archive for July, 2009
The New H.R. Technology for Candidate Screening
Imagine being able to browse through candidates like you can in InterviewStudio… watch the video below to view how easy it is to scan through the candidate’s resume, their endorsements, their video interview, their assessment test scores, their LinkedIn profile… all on one screen using one tool.
Imagine the time you could save by cutting out the phone screens and first interview rounds using a tool like InterviewStudio for your candidate screening.
Yes, it takes a few minutes to screen a candidate this way instead of just looking for keywords on a resume, but what a rich set of due diligence data you now have at your fingertips with which to make quality decisions!
And taking a few more minutes of a recruiter’s time is well worth the weeks’ or even months’ worth of time and money savings to the employer.
The ultimate tool in Candidate Screening . InterviewStudio.
Video CVs are Just the Forerunner of Things to Come
Video Resumes or “video CVs” tend to be short video clips of a job seeker speaking his/her background and skills — we call them “outloud resumes” — and they are really just a front-runner to complete platforms such as InterviewStudio. There is little value for a stand-alone video resume (or video CV) since, on its own, it hasn’t been proven to SAVE TIME AND MONEY in the hiring process AND it brings with it the paranoia of discrimination litigation.
However, there is hope. Like all cycles in new “progressive” technology, there already have been several iterations of this type of candidate presentation tool, and the industry is moving toward a hybrid model of resume-plus-video interview-plus-references-plus-social network all in one digital representation of a job candidate.
Here is what is Good and Useful about tools in the future that will include Video Interviews with other pieces of candidate due diligence:
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- Videos are only one piece of the total candidate due diligence in these new combination products, so the emphasis on the visual is downplayed a bit.
- Video Interviews are quite easy to produce now and too widespread in marketing and media to ignore.
- The younger generations are growing up on video, so the video CV is a logical extension for them.
- The technology is easy to use, and the equipment is inexpensive.
- It saves time to look at a 2-minute video interview rather than do a 20-minute phone screen
- It saves time to look at a 5-minute all-inclusive candidate presentation rather than spend hours scheduling a first interview round to find out the fit.
- It saves money to watch a 20-minute Interview rather than fly a candidate in and put him/her up in a hotel.
- Having access to on-demand all-inclusive showcases of candidates allows hiring managers to choose when to interview, instead of tying them down to disruptive schedules during the work day.
- More and more Employers are creating branding videos of their own on their own Career Pages to attract Candidates. It just follows that soon Employers will be accepting branding videos from candidates as well.
- The industry needs some collaborative rules or accepted behaviors for Video Interviews. This can be easily accomplished by blogs such as this.
- Technically, most corporations are now pretty savvy in regards to rich media viewing software, and Flash is an accepted program that is widely installed. Flash is cross-platform, meaning if it works on one computer, it will work on any other with Flash installed. Flash is small and lightweight, but carries a robust video control platform. You never have to leave your webpage to view the video. Flash can be embedded right into the page. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=344
- As technology marches on, rich media viewing will become cleaner and quicker.
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The bottom line is that currently, yes, there are downsides to the tools out there labeled “Video Resumes” (or Video CVs), as discussed in a previous blog post. However, the Good News is that vendors such as InterviewStudio have now worked through the technology challenges to aggregate all of these disparate (but important) pieces into a single robust, time-saving information platform for screening, due diligence and selection.
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Videos for Interview Purposes
For several decades, employers have been utilizing video conferencing in order to communicate with their internal staff or clients without having to fly people around the country. This new phrase “interview videos” is simply a newly packaged application of video technology. No longer do we need to spend $1000/hour at Kinko’s or some corporate video conferencing facility in order to see another person through our computer screen. Most webcams come with simple video chatting capability downloaded in 10 minutes from the CD in the box. Every generation is using video now – talking to grandchildren, keeping tabs on parents or college students traveling in Europe, or pre-screening a potential dating partner before committing to a real meet.
These are all instances of “live” video or “real-time” video – coming to you as it happens.
There are several vendors in the employment market jumping into this product/service category, basically repackaging a video conferencing tool like Webex or copying the newer Skype tool: LiveHire, CareerCam, GreenJobInterview, to name a few. You can use these services over your computer to talk with a remote person and/or see them on your screen with the use of a webcam in realtime.
By now, most everyone in the employment marketplace has heard the phrase “interview videos” or “video interviews”. These are canned videos (or stored videos) that contain a job interview, wherein a candidate is usually answering questions they received earlier from an employer, and then the employer can go watch them anytime via online password. These videos are available to view (securely) at any time since they are stored on a server that is available 24 hours a day. A job seeker simply needs access to a computer with a webcam on it (or plugged into it). Usually the built-in microphone on any computer will suffice for audio quality, but many people plug in a stand-alone microphone to enhance the sound when they are recording their videos for their interview.
In some instances, the potential employer will send their preferred interview questions to candidates via email ahead of time, or they will post their questions on their employment website. In these cases, the job seeker simply uses his/her own computer/webcam to videotape themselves answering these questions, and then “uploads” their video clips to YouTube or to a place on the employers website, so the employer can watch it later. Job seekers have to know a bit about technology to do this all themselves.
There are other sites, like our own InterviewStudio.com site, which walk job seekers through this “videos for interview” process in an easy step-by-step tutorial. Candidates get to choose their own interview questions from a list of 20 that are appropriate for their job function. When each question is answered, that video clip gets uploaded automatically to our site where all clips are stored securely behind passwords. Job candidates who choose to do their video interviews this way are being proactive, and have a “marketing tool” to then email out to any employer or recruiter of their choice. In this case, the job seeker owns his/her own showcase including the video interview, and can choose who can view it. Candidates obtain a URL address for their InterviewStudio “showcase” from their account online and they can type this into an email they are sending or can even upload this URL into an applicant tracking system text field to be stored along with their other candidate information.
Videos for interview purposes are becoming more popular with employers, since it saves them several days or even weeks in the screening process. The key is to make sure the videos they are viewing are professional, and useful as a compliant screening tool—meaning that videos for interview purposes will soon have rules and governing guidelines for both job seekers and employers to conform to – whether the video interviews are live or canned for viewing later.
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The Rules For Job Hunting Have Changed
Reposted from HR News
Paul Anderson wants you to forget just about everything you think you know about finding a job.
“Many changes have happened in the job market since 20 years ago, since 10 years ago – since last October,” said Anderson, a former hiring manager for Microsoft and Expedia.
Even since March. Three months ago, roughly 100 résumés an hour got posted on job-search Web sites. Now that number exceeds 400 resumes an hour, Anderson said.
You want a job? Join the club.
Some 13.7 million Americans want jobs but can’t find one – up by 6 million in the last 12 months. The private sector dumped 611,000 jobs in April, according to the latest report from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“You have so many people out there looking. Revenues are down at companies in most industries. Needs are becoming very specific. Fewer jobs are available. Some companies are trying to hire people at bargain prices. There’s fierce competition and overqualified candidates willing to take anything,” Anderson told a congregation of job seekers in Tacoma recently.
Anderson, principal at Kirkland-based ProLango Consulting, says job hunting these days has morphed into a new industry he calls Career Search 2.0. With his background in psychology, he doesn’t call himself a career consultant. No, he’s a behavioral specialist, because job hunters need to understand human behavior and outfox the system.
He offered five ways to tackle a job search in the new world.
First, scrap the elevator pitch – your 30-second soundbite that describes what you do so you can sell yourself in a flash, Anderson said.
“Why the elevator pitch doesn’t work,” Anderson said, “is that nobody cares about you. They care about themselves. You have to change your mindset from self-serving to serving others.”
That means finding out what need you can fill for the recruiters and other hiring authorities you meet.
Second, at job fairs, don’t bring a sheaf of résumés and hand them out to recruiters like Halloween candy. They’ll wind up in the garbage.
Instead, get business cards from the recruiters. Ask them what kinds of jobs they need to fill and what kind of candidates they like. Note that on the back of the business card. If you know a lot of people in town, tell them so and say you’ll steer qualified candidates their way. Then follow up when you get home. Ask the recruiter to meet for 15 minutes over coffee.
“People buy from people they like and trust,” Anderson said. “You can’t build a relationship at a job fair. Instead of being a desperate jobless person looking for work, turn yourself from a stranger into a contact. When you contribute first, reciprocity will kick in.”
Recruiters have extensive networks of contacts. If you help a recruiter fill a job, you have just tapped into that recruiter’s vast network. Even if they don’t recruit for your expertise, Anderson guarantees they know someone who does.
Third, leverage online social networks, primarily LinkedIn.com, the No. 1 online business network, to connect with as many people as possible.
Online networks allow you to find and seek advice from contacts who work for the companies you have targeted for your job search, it allows others to endorse you, and it allows you to post specific information about the job you want, Anderson said.
Other online social networks, such as Facebook, focus more on users’ personal lives – where you should “show yourself as a stable family person who’s serving the community. If you have a dog, put up a picture,” Anderson said.
“When you submit a résumé, three things happen,” he said. “The hiring manager will look for you on LinkedIn to see what kind of endorsements you have. They’ll look on Facebook for pictures of you at drunken parties. And they’ll ‘Zillow’ your address to see where you live, the value of your property, how long you’ve lived there and if you can reasonably commute to a job.”
Fourth, get your résumé off of all job-search Web sites such as Monster.com and Dice.com, Anderson said.
“They’re too expensive. Plus 85 percent of jobs are filled from word of mouth,” he said. “Use LinkedIn instead for targeting people at companies you want to work for … and get into conversations.”
Try to secure informational interviews, informal conversations where you seek advice from someone at your target company.
“Many times open positions don’t make it to online job boards,” Anderson said. “You want to build rapport with those hiring managers you met informally” so they remember you later.
Finally, Anderson said, stay off the recruiters’ blacklists.
You didn’t know they had them? Anderson told his class of job seekers that recruiters have begged him to delete this tip from his seminars. He hasn’t.
Every major company has a computerized database to manage its applicants, their résumés and notes about all interactions. Those companies also have a separate database – the blacklist – where they kick out all the problem applicants who have no chance to get hired, he said.
How do you kill your chances? Multiple ways. Visit a company’s Web site, put 80 jobs in your job cart and click “Apply All.” Anderson said it shows you as desperate rather than focused. If you come across as rude to a recruiter screening you by phone, you’ll get kicked onto the blacklist. If, during a meeting, you complain, have bad body language or appear depressed, it’s the blacklist for you.
“Every time you show up, you have the opportunity to become one of the good ones,” Anderson said. “Take it.”
Dan Voelpel:
dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com
http://www.thenewstribune.com/voelpel/story/770211.html
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How to Get the Executive Job Interview
“Just get me in front of the CEO!” says Josh Furman, one of my executive job search clients. Josh has been laid off his lucrative Vice President position at a local high tech company, and has no patience with learning the art of keyword populating, or search engine scouring. He just wants to get in front of as many hiring authorities as possible. Why? Because he is positive that he can talk his way into a job if he can just get the face-to-face executive job interview.
Well. There is a lot to say regarding this theory in today’s hiring climate. Yes, it used to be true that executives could network their way onto the CEO’s schedule – a golf foursome, a chance meeting at the local Starbuck’s on Saturday, comp tickets to a Mariner’s game, a coincidental airport introduction – all schemes that used to work. That was before CEOs were saddled with the long, iterative “best practices” for hiring that now include reams of due diligence, behavioral interviewing processes, corporate culture match screening, background checks, and all sorts of rules for the actual executive job interview that will take place after all candidates have been properly vetted.
So, as an out-of-work candidate seeking that executive job interview in today’s market, what are your options for jumping right into that face-to-face meeting?
- Ignore the new hiring realities and keep trying the old ways to get in the chair across the desk from the CEO.
- Seek out a Recruiter who will market you into the CEOs
- Be proactive and provide the CEOs with all that best practices data they need upfront in order to qualify you for an executive job interview sooner.
Selection 1. is simply an approach that is no longer effective in today’s hiring market.
Selection 2. has its problems since professional recruiters don’t market candidates out to CEOs. They make their money by obtaining a specific assignment from a company to fill a specific job within that company. The company pays the Recruiter for presenting only the exact matches for that position. However, on occasion, you will find a Recruiter who offers to “market you” to several companies, but beware of this. If a Recruiter sends your resume to several companies hoping for some interest, and any of those companies have a policy not to pay recruiter fees, then you will be ignored for the next 6 months as a candidate for any position within those companies – since your hiring would now be associated with a headhunter fee. IF you choose to use a recruiter, make sure they will only “market you” to companies with whom they have a written fee agreement. And even then, you’ll have to consider that companies in this economy may prefer non-fee-bearing candidates.
Selection 3. brings us to a definitive market advantage that executive candidates can possess. If you put yourself in the shoes of the hiring authority, you’ll realize that they may give preference to a candidate who does most of the due diligence work for them. This is a world of full disclosure now. No longer do you play cat and mouse in the interview process. Hiring companies want to know, and have ways to find out, EVERYTHING about you. For instance, candidates who provide not only a resume, but the results of recent skills tests, assessment tests, or annual reviews will be put in the pile that is further down the line in the process and closer to the actual executive job interview stage than those with only a resume submitted. Providing written references or endorsements pushes your candidacy further, and a professional video interview can actually put you over the top of the uphill climb for position, since it can eliminate the entire first interview phase of the executive job interview process.
In this candidate-rich market, competition is tough enough for those few executive positions that open up. And internal HR and Recruiting departments are swamped with applications, making the hiring process that much longer.
Just get yourself in front of the CEO. Get a jump on the competition. Be first in line. What this means in today’s market is to take the initiative to do the upfront work for the hiring company. Provide a complete package of yourself as a candidate including most of the due diligence that they will need to collect in order to make a decision. Increase your chances of getting that executive job interview. And by that point, you’re practically hired.
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WTIA Partners with InterviewStudio to Showcase Washington State Technology Executives
Washington Technology Industry Association Partners with InterviewStudio to Showcase Washington State Technology Executives
InterviewStudio platform to power special section of WTIA website devoted to tech visionaries and entrepreneurs
SEATTLE, WASH. – July 15, 2009 – The Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) <www.washingtontechnology.org> and InterviewStudio <http://www.interviewstudio.com/> have partnered to offer a special site to showcase Washington state technology executives who have contributed to the success of the local technology community over the last 10 years. Launched today, the “Profiles in Technology” project kicks off by spotlighting local technology innovators such as Ben Elowitz (CEO of Wetpaint and founder of Fatbrain and Blue Nile), Jonathan Sposato (CEO of Picnik), Jeremy Jaech (CEO of Verdiem, formerly with Adobe, Visio and Trumba) and Bill Baxter (CTO of Cozi.com, co-founder of Bsquare). The first profile can be seen on WTIA’s Web site at: <http://www.washingtontechnology.org/pages/resources/resources_profilesintechnology.asp>.
The Washington Technology Industry Association chose InterviewStudio for this project for several reasons, including its relationship with long-standing WTIA member Colleen Aylward, founder of InterviewStudio and the recruiting firm, Devon James Associates. Creator of one of the country’s first vendor recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) services, Aylward has assisted many WTIA member start-up companies with progressive solutions for their recruitment needs over the last 15 years, utilizing her “Onsite Recruiting War Room” methodology, that is still in use today.
“We chose InterviewStudio because its combination of video and other information brings subjects to life like no other platform,” said Ken Myer, president and CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association. “We see this as a great way to highlight some of the technology and business people who are so important to the success of not only the WTIA, but to the entire technology industry in the Northwest. InterviewStudio is a terrific example of the creativity and innovation that our members are known for.”
Originally designed to create a comprehensive showcase of Devon James’ executive candidates to send to employers, the InterviewStudio showcase can combine any mixture of data, media, text, icons and links in an elegant presentation format displayed all on one screen, in one place and can be emailed via URL link. In an employment application, a showcase may display a candidate’s resume, video interview, reference checks, professional assessment test results, Web page and portfolio, colleague endorsements and other data from Internet search engines and social networking sites like LinkedIn. This process allows hiring managers to view all pertinent data about a candidate in one place on one screen at one time – saving weeks of time and money in the initial candidate screening process.
For the Washington Technology Industry Association project, InterviewStudio combines executive bios, video interviews, company overviews, press releases and other links in one presentation format that can be easily displayed and viewed in a Web 2.0-type “showcase.”
“InterviewStudio is really a mash-up that combines several of the most advanced technologies in multi-media and presentation tools with your product or service highlight info,” Aylward said. “As video technology and man-on-the-street interviewing becomes the more popular way to present bios, we’ll see more of this type of media combined with clickable icons for product and service information that replace the paper brochure. As the globe shrinks, large and small vendors alike need to get their story out, and an InterviewStudio showcase is a faster, easier way to create a marketing deliverable than a traditional Web site or brochure. Additionally, you’re able to simply email your showcase link around the world immediately to promote yourself or your product and or company.”
About InterviewStudio
InterviewStudio.com is a ground-breaking technology platform that can be used to display multiple forms of data all at once on one screen: videos, data, text, images, icons, links – that appear instantly when clicked by the viewer. This is the NEXT STEP in programs that allow anyone to showcase themselves and their accomplishments, products, services, to a vast market instantly and elegantly. Visit http://www.interviewstudio.com. And follow their blog about this technology here: http://www.interviewstudioblog.co.
About the WTIA
Washington Technology Industry Association is the largest state-wide association of technology companies and executives in the world. With more than 1,000 member companies representing more than 100,000 technology sector employees in Washington State, Washington Technology Industry Association is a catalyst for setting new industry directions, sharing expertise, fostering collaboration, delivering key business services, and advancing the economic value and global impact of technology companies doing business in Washington: http://www.washingtontechnology.org
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From Resume To Resume Video – In A Few Short Years !
As legend has it, Leonardo DaVinci created the first professional resume in 1482. For what purpose, I’m not sure, but it is likely he needed a real job, as did many unsung artists in history. Would that all historical greats had created a resume video for us to view!
Since then, the traditional resume hasn’t changed all that much, unfortunately:
Section 1: Name and Address
Section 2: Objective Statement
Section 3: Chronological Work History
Section 4: Education
The only significant addition in the last 20 years has been the introduction of KEYWORDS into the text of the resume, and that is only because computers are reading resumes now instead of people. A “Section 5” has been added in many online resumes that is simply a long string of words and phrases such as “C++, SQL, project management, PMP, program management….”.
With the advent of MySpace, Facebook, and Linkedin, the physical appearance of job candidates came back into play along with previously taboo data like age, lists of friends and hobbies, and various substance intake preferences.
And then it was a short stretch from photos to video. YouTube capitalized on this trend of ‘full disclose’ by the younger generations, and the first round of the YouTube Resume Video started to appear in 2006.
The Resume Video so far has no rules, no restrictions, and no governing standards board. They range from a simple talking head (a head and shoulders view of a candidate reading their resume out loud) to animated pleas for jobs and then more recently to professional productions that present many facets of a person’s work background, skill sets, and personality.
Early on, the human resources departments of many of the larger corporations balked at the viewing or use of any type of resume video out of fear of potential discrimination claims by those who were not selected based on something in their video. Employment attorneys counseled companies to “just say no” to the resume video in an effort to avoid even the slightest possibility of discrimination claims.
“‘Just don’t even deal with them,’ said Dennis Brown, an attorney in the San Jose, Calif., office of Littler Mendelson whose firm recently advised employers about the dangers of video résumés at a seminar.”
But in the 2007 Video Resume Survey by Vault.com, “89% of employers revealed that they would watch a video resume if it were submitted to them”.
So, it is 2009, and bloggers are proclaiming that perhaps the initial paranoia was premature, since there has not been one discrimination case yet due to a resume video. In addition, it appears as if companies may be saving money by not flying as many candidates in for interviews, and not having to put them up in hotels, or pay for cabs or parking. Then too, their interview teams are not wasting as much time in group interviews only to find out in the first 5 minutes that the candidate was not a corporate culture match at all.
Like it or not, the resume video is not going away. The good news is that they are morphing to include other pieces of due diligence – the electronic resume, links to annual reviews or portfolios, shortcuts to their social media profiles, reference checks and endorsements – in order to provide a cross section of candidate assets. In addition, the trend is away from the simple “resume video” and more towards “video interviews”, wherein the job seeker is not necessarily talking about his/her chronological history of jobs, but is answering behavioral and situational interview questions, much like those asked in a typical face-to-face interview.
As you can see in the History of the Resume chart, the pace of change has gone from centuries to months in the last few years. Technology integration has reached a point where multi-media is not just an entertaining YouTube video any more, but a true collection of multiple electronic data pieces all in one place at one time.
Just had to mention that, in a funny turn of events, YouTube videos are now teaching people how to write paper resumes. Technology marches on.
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How Video Resumes Came to Be
How Video Resumes Came to Be
Video resumes were the first attempt by job seekers to break out of the keyword trap and get around the computer screening programs. So how did the candidate screening market get to this frustration point for the job seeker, AND for the recruiter?
LIKE IT OR NOT, TIME MARCHES ON… Technology marches on… Tools get more progressive and disruption happens. Change happens. For about 50 years, the paper resume has ruled within corporations seeking new employees. People are used to it… People are comfortable with it. We were taught to write resumes in black ink on white paper and mail them out using stamps.
And then resumes became “soft-copy” (Yes there was a time when that was not a real word). The online resume became accessible instantly to several viewers at a time, and storable and retrievable.
And then came text search capability and KEYWORDS along with that. So today the comfort zone is not paper resumes anymore. It is soft-copy keyword-searchable resumes.
Today, the industry has deemed this as standard, and many vendor products have been developed to help parse, and poke, and rank and rate these KEYWORDS and their relevance to matching KEYWORDS in job descriptions, for instance.
RECRUITER FRUSTRATION
And, as most every system can be “gamed”, job seekers can now populate the KEYWORD section in their resume to match a job description and submit it with a keystroke, whether or not they are qualified. It is then incumbent upon the Recruiter to read through that mass of electronically “qualified” resumes to identify the truly qualified.
So Recruiters don’t have much time on their hands to really read a resume thoroughly –
- too much volume
- too many resumes look the same, populated with keywords from the online job description
- not enough time to do a thorough job — hiring managers need to hire NOW
CANDIDATE FRUSTRATION
Job Candidates were initially impressed when the Employer sent them immediate feedback after applying for a job. “Finally”, they thought. “This company cares.” Thoughtful “no thank-you” letters arrived minutes after an online resume submission. But this again was simply a production letter generated by the company’s ATS (Applicant Tracking System) and sent to all candidates who did not populate their resume with the correct keywords.
Enter VIDEO RESUMES
What does anyone do when they want attention? Yell louder.
The Video Resume is a louder yell: “HEY! Look at me!” “See how I talk – I’m 3-dimensional.”
As a headhunter, I talk to dozens of executives each week whose only objective is to “get in front of the hiring manager”. They don’t want tips about the newest keywords to use. Job seekers are tired of playing the keyword game, knowing full well that every other candidate for the same job is using the same keywords. And their patience is wearing thin with 22-year old internal corporate “recruiters” who call them up to ask simple questions – the answers to which are clearly on their resume. And lastly, job seekers have figured out the “mass email” tools that come with every ATS, and realize that no one actually reads their resume enough to grasp their total value as a candidate.
The first ever YouTube video was put up in April 23, 2005 by some guy at the zoo talking about elephants. And that was all it took. Now, every minute, twenty hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
So, naturally, video would be the new channel to use to get noticed. And candidates looking for jobs are eager to find ways to stand out from the mass of keyword-laden resumes, and to virtually “get in front of the hiring manager”. Armed with a PC or a Mac, and a $50 webcam, a job seeker can easily create a video as simple as a “talking head” – reading their resume in front of a camera.
Granted, there are issues galore with “video resumes”, many covered in our previous blog, but every new idea starts out a little rocky.
In time (and in the not so distant future), Video Resumes, as all other new products, will enter the professional realm and become more relevant to specific jobs, more polished as a tool, and have more industry-developed rules around them.
The first step is to change Video Resumes into Video Interviews. Stay tuned for more on that.
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Job Interview Videos
Job Interview Videos
Traditional screening technology has created some obstacles for the Job Seeker that job interview videos just might relieve.
Currently candidates with an electronic resume can shoot it off to an electronic job description with an electronic screening set of rules and take their chances that they included the right KEYWORDS.
Job Seekers also gamble that the human who is looking through the “screened” resumes will understand all the jobs on the resume and what that experience could mean to a new employer.
For the infrastructure employee, or those who will perform specific repeatable tasks, this is not a bad way to save time in candidate screening.
Job Interview Videos
But a search for anyone who can think outside the box, bring new and interesting solutions to old problems, create new revenue streams by discovering new channels, cut product development time by 50% by revamping the architecture, or structure inventive alliance partnerships to get around old commerce rules… this KEYWORD recognition thing just doesn’t cut the mustard … job interview videos however are just what the doctor ordered.
Employers are still struggling to find and hire the right candidates… and have been doing so for the past 20+ years … but job interview videos can help change that significantly.
Let’s look at the real problems in the market. Employers are still struggling to find and hire the right candidates… and have been doing so for the past 20+ years. “No keyword searching tool has solved the iterative process that is inherent in a thorough due diligence process.”
A partial answer to this problem that has huge value could be job interview videos. Whereas Keyword searching provides a good “first pass” at a stack of 200 applicants by narrowing the pool according to “the 3 S’s”:
- Skills (which keyword skills are on the resume, e.g. C++, sales, project management)
- School (which college, degree, and date of graduation)
- Status (employed, unemployed, recently laid off, re-entering the workforce)
… job interview videos can provide tremendous value-add in “the 3 C’s” to a recruiter or hiring manager.
- Composure/Poise
- Communication Skills
- Corporate Culture Match
Granted, the traditional first in-person interview would provide these 3 C’s, but at what cost? Business moves too fast in today’s world to wait days to reach a candidate, and to coordinate the interview team’s schedules for that first meet — or even for those first video conference.
And how many times has a candidate been brought in for a day’s worth of team interviews, only to find in the first 10 minutes of the day that the 3 C’s are lacking?
There really is a 4th “C” on this list: Convenience.
There really is a 4th “C” on this list: Convenience. Schedules don’t always match up nicely in order to coordinate in-person interviews, or even Live interview videos. These stored “on-demand” job interview videos that can be viewed at any time along with the other due diligence (resume, endorsements, etc) can save weeks of time, particularly for executives who travel often.
The convenience afforded to all interview team members by offering stored job interview videos for screening at any time, day or night, (and repeated visits to the same job interview video) offers the freedom of screening at a time when the team member can focus and concentrate on all the factors that may affect a critical quality hire — especially for the executive job interview.
Imagine being able to choose “finalist candidates” in a matter of 2 weeks instead of 3 months. And calculate the savings:
Job interview videos mean fewer airline tickets for candidates
Job interview videos mean fewer hotel rooms for interview travel
Job Video interviews mean fewer workday hours spent on first interviews by productive team members
Fewer hours spent on phone screens by recruiting staff In the spirit of progressive technology solving difficult problems, job interview videos have lots going for them, provided they're done correctly.
Stay tuned for the next blog installment on job interview videos…
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Interviews on Video? Read Baron’s article: Match.com For Employers
Are interviews on video becoming more accepted? Apparently so. Even Barons magazine chose to mention them as long as a year ago. Article below:
Match.com for Employers?
Edited by ROBIN GOLDWYN BLUMENTHAL
BARONS – April 28, 2008
JOBLESS CLAIMS ARE STILL SHOWING SIGNS OF A LACKLUSTER economy, but there’s now an electronic way for people to put themselves in front of potential employers — the InterviewStudio.com.
The brainchild of Colleen Aylward, founder of Devon James, a Seattle recruiting firm that spent a year helping Amazon find employees, the software package lets job seekers showcase their talents on the site with their résumés, a video interview, recommendations and other helpful items for $150 a year.
Companies pay Aylward $1,200 to $5,000 a month to keep an InterviewStudio link on their Websites for hiring purposes, enabling them to more efficiently screen potential candidates, without hiring a high-priced executive recruiting firm or being constantly spammed by them.
“Management search savings could be in the tens of thousands of dollars,” says Aylward. Consider that an $85/hour internal recruiter might screen 15 candidates at two hours each, for approximately $2,500. Calculate a six-hour round of interviews in one day with six to eight highly paid employees, at, say, $134 an hour.
“That’s approximately $6,500 for each day that is wasted on a round of interviews with a candidate that isn’t the right fit,” says Aylward. She adds that generally at least two of these exercises in futility take place in a large organization each month. Add flight, hotel and cab expenses and, well, you get the picture. (The site has a return-on-investment calculator built into the employer page.)
So far, InterviewStudio is gaining fans. Recently, Gartner Group dubbed it as one of 2008′s four “Cool Vendors for Human Capital Management Software.”
– Leslie P. Norton
So, as Barons and Gartner both agree, there is a future for Interviews on Video done correctly, especially in this recent economy where saving time and money is paramount. “Cool Technology” aside, it’s even cooler to get greater return on every recruiting dollar spent.
Come And See InterviewStudio on Vator.tv