Posts Tagged ‘interview’
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.
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.
…
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. 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.
Employers are still struggling to find and hire the right candidates… and have been doing so for the past 20+ years.
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:
- Fewer airline tickets for candidates
- Fewer hotel rooms for interview travel
- 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 this subject…
Job Interview Video Data is Crucial Addition to Keyword Search for Candidate Screening
Traditional screening technology has created some obstacles for the Job Seeker that the job interview video 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 screening. 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.
Employers are still struggling to find and hire the right candidates… and have been doing so for the past 20+ years.
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 the job interview video.
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)
…the job interview video 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 that first job interview 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 an in-person interview, or even a Live job interview video. A stored “on-demand” video interview 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 a stored job interview video 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:
- Fewer airline tickets for candidates
- Fewer hotel rooms for interview travel
- 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, the job interview video has lots going for it, provided it’s done correctly.
Stay tuned for the next blog installment on this subject…
InterviewStudio Endorsement: Stream Interview of Irene Hepburn
Irene Hepburn, Head of Administration at Optimum Energy, explains how InterviewStudio saved time and money for her company during a recent search for a top sales executive. With only 2 months to conduct an extensive search during the holidays last year, they turned to InterviewStudio to have candidates submitted to them quickly via stream interviews. In this way, they were able to do all their initial candidate screening in the first month, and avoid any wasted time on unqualified finalist interviews.
Visit www.interviewstudio.com or email info@interviewstudio.com to determine whether the use of stream interview tools would be valuable to your own organization.
Video Job Interview Data is Crucial Addition to Keyword Search for Candidate Screening
Traditional screening technology has created some obstacles for the Job Seeker that the video job interview 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 screening. 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.
Employers are still struggling to find and hire the right candidates… and have been doing so for the past 20+ years.
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 the video job interview.
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)
…the Video Job Interview 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 that first video job interview 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 an in-person interview, or even a Live Video Job Interview. A stored “on-demand” video interview 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 a stored video job interview for screening at any time, day or night, (and repeated visits to the same video job interview) 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:
- Fewer airline tickets for candidates
- Fewer hotel rooms for interview travel
- 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, the video job interview has lots going for it, provided it’s done correctly.
Stay tuned for the next blog installment on this subject…