Archive for the ‘Video resumes’ Category
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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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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10 Things We Hate About Video Resumes (as opposed to Video Interviews)
Video Resumes
Video Resumes (a simple video taped recap of resume highlights) are the current “hot new technology” in recruiting. But only for their novel high tech feel… not for the value they bring. Once this newness and ‘coolness’ wears off on Employers – and it already is – then we will see the NEXT generation of products on the market that will fix the shortcomings of the stand-alone video resume. Just as the first attempts at resume databases, search engines, and ATS systems needed to go through several iterations, so will this Video Screening Phenomenon.
10 Things We hate About Video Resumes
1. The shortcomings of the current offerings include some mentioned by systematic HR and Raghav Singh, but the list is longer, and we might as well get some collaborative input on this now. Here is a start: 1. A talking head that is simply regurgitating the text on a paper resume adds only one thing – the picture of what a candidate looks like. Granted, there is some value in viewing their language skills, but they could have been ‘coached’ by a video vendor during the session. So this leaves the very real paranoia within the HR community that video resumes are putting discrimination tools in the hands of hiring managers – and that video resumes are simply a clever way to put a face with a name, inviting all sorts of litigation.
7. IT Security & Firewalls may block videos. We all know how diligent IT Departments must be these days regarding the downloading and/or opening attachments. Even more so now with videos. Some of the problems with old video resumes: 7. Files recorded on a Mac often won’t play on a PC and vice versa
8. Employer’s installed version of software for viewing Rich Media Content on the web may not be compatible with all Videos.
9. There is a SIZE issue to Video Resumes. They take up storage space, yes. The bigger issue is the intensive demand on servers when 20 recruiters bandwidth required to watch them, or for several hiring managers or recruiters to watch them at the same time.
10. Files are too big to be easily sent around as email attachments. Please feel free to add your two cents worth on the downsides to Video Resumes listed above.
Video Resumes are becoming mainstream … to build your own, go here: Video Resumes.
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