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Posts Tagged ‘JOB’

Executive Job Search for $100,000 to $1 Million+ Jobs..

Some recent Executive Jobs auctions on eBay:

NEW Jobs '98: From Entry-Level to Executive Position...
US $28.32
End Date: Monday Sep-06-2010 6:33:59 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $28.32
Buy it now | Add to watch list

BEST RESUMES FOR $75,000+EXECUTIVE JOBS
US $2.00 (0 Bid)
End Date: Tuesday Sep-07-2010 14:57:35 PDT
Bid now | Add to watch list

Executive Jobs Unlimited: Carl R. Boll, Good Condition
US $1.00
End Date: Saturday Sep-18-2010 19:11:08 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $1.00
Buy it now | Add to watch list

Technorati Tags: 1 million, auctions, ebay, executive, executive job search, executive jobs, JOB, num, Search, wprebay

Lastest Job Interview Videos auctions

Some recent Job Interview Videos auctions on eBay:

QUICK INTERVIEW VIDEO Mike Farr VHS job-hunting
US $25.00
End Date: Thursday Sep-16-2010 20:43:51 PDT
Buy It Now for only: US $25.00
Buy it now | Add to watch list

Technorati Tags: auctions, ebay, interview, JOB, job interview, Lastest, num, Videos

Next Step after first Executive Job Interview

From a Yahoo Answers question about executive job interviews: 

My dad applied for a job at alcon and he passed all the tests and they promised him a second interview.?

Does that mean he got the job?

 

Well, here are my thoughts for you, from 20 years of giving executive job interview tips:

 

Corporate recruiters have a process to follow, and that includes several steps that are done iteratively per candidate and concurrently with other candidates who are in the same process for the same job.  This makes it a numbers game in many cases — similar to a sales funnel.   They need to push X number of candidates through the first screening step to produce X number for the second screening step and so on.

 

Having said that, this process of recruiting is highly influenced by the humans who are running the process, including their personal preferences (often called their "gut feel"), their inside knowledge of the hiring manager's personal preferences, and the overall corp

What many people on the outside don't know:  recruiting is as much an art as a science.  There are really no cut and dried formulas (though some HR software vendors would have you think so) in determining the perfect candidate for a job.   In one company, the process may depend heavily on skills tests or a combination of skills and personality tests.  In another company, decisions may be made on statistics:  GPA, number of sales, number of years of C# experience, or even number of connections in Linkedin! Other firms may screen on intellectual agility in a high-stress group interview.  And still others may lean heavily towards team fit.

 

So, if one person inside a recruiting function tells an executive job interview candidate that they would get a second interview, it could mean different things: 
- on to a second screen in a series of X more steps
- on to someone else who will review the first screener's notes and ask more questions
- on to the first round of panel interviews
- on to a final interview with the decision maker

 

So, if your father passed the first round, you/he may never know exactly why he passed, unless the recruiter tells him specifically.

 

Tell your father that, at the end of any interview,  it is fine to ask what the exact next step will be, and with whom — especially if it is an executive job interview.

 

I might also add some unfortunate truisms that we find in this economy: job seekers tend to read a smiling comment about next steps as a promise, and internal recruiters tend toward making candidates feel good when they leave an interview.  So tell him not to be disappointed if he actually never gets a call back.   This economy, as you know, has more great executives vying for job interviews than at any other time in my recollection.  And if internal recruiting is a numbers game, then so should your plan be as a candidate!

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Technorati Tags: Candidate Screening, Colleen Aylward, company decisions, Executive Job Interview, hr software vendors, interview, JOB, job interview, job interview tips, job search, nbsp, number, personality tests, process, stress group

“Total Candidate Profile™” – Not “Video Resumes”

The phrase “Video Resumes” is in vogue, but these talking head productions are different than “video interviews”.  And whichever one you favor, they are really only one piece of a Total Candidate Profile™ which can contain most of the data out there on the web in one “showcase”.

Video is being used in Employment Applications in basically two categories:

1. Employer Branding Videos, wherein the employer company and its hiring managers are video taped evangelizing the company and/or the job and those videos are either placed on the company’s home page, or their career page (where their job listings appear) or are sent out in email campaigns or pushed out to YouTube and that YouTube link is used in email campaigns for hiring purposes.

2. Candidate Videos, which actually fall into two sub-categories:

a. Video Resumes which are canned, pre-taped videos of the job seeker basically speaking their resume… talking through the chronology of what they have done and why they are a good employee. Examples are InterviewClips and VideoResume.  Neither of these are a Total Candidate Profile™ containing rich content data representing all aspects of a candidate’s asset value.

b. VIDEO INTERVIEWS which are either canned or live/interactive, but include one or more formal interview questions chosen by the employer, and answered on video tape (either via webcam or family video camera or by a professional videographer). One example is HireVue.  Another is GreenJobInterview.

Video technology for the employment market is in its “first phase”, just as the written resume had a first phase and evolved to a digitized form. In the very near future, video will become just a part of a Total Candidate Profile™   that will be submitted for employment purposes rather than just a resume. These profiles will include readily available due diligence (data and media) about job candidates that can be grabbed from the web or input directly by the candidate themselves. For instance, InterviewStudio allows a job candidate to build a total online profile of himself that combines the traditional resume, his endorsements by former managers or co-workers, the results of a professional assessment test he has taken online, his LinkedIn or other social network links, his portfolio documents, and links to whatever Google or Yahoo or Zoominfo might present about him.

Gartner and other analysts call these new profiling software tools “mashups” since they mash together a lot of leading edge technology in one product or tool so that huge strides in time-and-dollar savings can be made with these combinations.

We call this a Total Candidate Profile™ and we believe they will become the standard in hiring and recruiting since they provide the employer or recruiting agency much more due diligence about a job candidate upfront, without the long drawn out iterative process that usually takes up to 90 days to seek this information online or schedule the job seeker to provide. In fact, a professional comprehensive profile can save recruiting departments from 2 to 6 weeks in the hiring process since they actually change the process that needs to happen: you may no longer need a phone screen or even a first face-to-face interview by a recruiter.

Technorati Tags: candidate, candidate profile, Candidate Profiles, Candidate Videos, email campaigns, employer, employer branding, JOB, job candidate, portfolio documents, professional videographer, profiling software, Résumé, Total, Total Candidate Profile, video, written resume

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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Technorati Tags: computer, employer, employment market, employment marketplace, Europe, interview, interview videos, JOB, Job Interview Video, Job Interview Videos, traveling in europe, video, video conferencing facility, video conferencing tool, Videos Interview

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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Technorati Tags: Anderson, behavioral specialist, bureau of labor statistics, business, elevator pitch, expedia, halloween candy, JOB, job seekers, online, Paul Anderson, recruiter, Search, Tacoma

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?

  1. Ignore the new hiring realities and keep trying the old ways to get in the chair across the desk from the CEO.
  2. Seek out a Recruiter who will market you into the CEOs
  3. 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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Technorati Tags: assessment tests, behavioral interviewing, CEO. Seek, CEO.  Get, CEO.   Provide, Endorsements, executive, executive candidates, executive job, Executive Job Interview, executive job search, golf foursome, hiring process, interview, interview selection, JOB, job interview, Josh, Josh Furman, market, market candidates, professional recruiters, recruiter, references

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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Technorati Tags: JOB, job seekers, keyword section, Mac, paper resume, Résumé, Resumes, search capability, technology marches, time, video

10 Things We Hate About Video Resumes (as opposed to Video Interviews)

Video Resumes

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.

2.  A Video Resume is a stand alone piece of information about a Candidate that, so far, has no home in Applicant Tracking Systems, which are the lifeblood of the corporations’ hiring processes and compliance databases. Until ATS vendors figure a way to present a video (meaning the storing, tracking, retrieval, and viewing) as part of the total due diligence on a candidate, it is still relegated to email sub-directories or separate files or stored URLs which become obsolete.
 
3.  Video Resumes that are sent unsolicited to Employers and Recruiting Companies may be just as irrelevant to a job opening as an unsolicited resume. At least with a resume, you can do a quick eyeball scan for Keywords, without wasting time listening and viewing 3-20 minutes of a video.
 
4.  Video Resumes take up valuable process time for viewing, and cannot be compared on an apples-to-apples basis with other candidates for a job. The key is to save time in the hiring process by utilizing tools that offer quicker and more in-depth due diligence so that decisions on applicants are closer to the mark. If the videos don’t contain the candidate’s answers to the same questions for the same job, how do you compare candidates on a legal, compliant basis? One step in the right direction is the HireVue product, which offers the Employer a structured video wherein the finalist candidates all answer the same questions submitted by the Employer.
 
5.  There are those who will argue that only certain personality types will shine on a video – those with spark and energy and humor – since that is the YouTube template that is going around, and that is what is currently tagged as “setting oneself apart from the masses”.
 
6. There is currently not a set of rules or standards for Video Resumes. No one vendor in the sky where every candidate can go and easily produce a quality video in a meaningful “first interview” format.

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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Technorati Tags: candidate, compliance databases, current offerings, hot new technology, JOB, ldquo, paper resume, rdquo, resume databases, Resumes

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 4thC” 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…

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