Posts Tagged ‘time’
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.
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 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…
Resume Writing Tips for Executive Resumes: Tip #1 Length of Resume
How many pages are appropriate for Executive Résumés?
The one-page synopsis is a thing of the past. And now that I’ve said this, all you employers please put your teeth back in, take a valium and read on.
First of all, length is really irrelevant compared to content in executive resumes. Put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager for a moment and I’ll explain why. The hiring authority must sift through dozens, or even hundreds, of executive résumés to choose a first list of candidates who MIGHT be qualified. Give him a break! And not by giving fewer words, but more meat. When you synopsize, you run these risks:
1. You assume the reader will read between the lines and come up with the correct evaluation of what it is you can do, or will do. As a recruiter, I get very frustrated with this. I can’t tell whether you are lazy, modest, or have no idea why anyone would want to hire you.
2. You assume the reader knows the size and structure, the product or service and the marketplace of your current employer.
3. You assume the reader will be impressed by your title(s) and know where you fit in the hierarchy of responsibility in your corporate structure.
4. You assume that using vague business platitudes on an executive resume will “sort of cover every possible job opening” and therefore, not limit your chances.
5. You assume the reader is in the business of using his own time and imagination to try to figure out what your potential could be within his company, in other words, what his company could do for you to help your career growth.
When you make these assumptions, you are putting the responsibility [of translating your executive resume content] onto the hiring manager. Your chances of being chosen for an interview are only 50 – 50, because the reader can only relate to your verbiage from his own experience in the business world, and his own pre-conceived ideas about certain companies, titles and résumés AND his own time table for filling this position. Don’t limit your job search chances by vagueness. TAKE CONTROL. BE SPECIFIC. Don’t make more work for a hiring manager than he already has. The only “limiting” this will do is limiting the amount of time wasted by you and the interviewer. Remember that executive resumes are a tool to obtain face-to-face job interviews.
Appropriate Length for Executive Resumes:
Unless you have only 1 or 2 short jobs to relate, executive résumés can easily be 2 pages without being overkill. The longest executive résumé I have seen without any fluff is 8 pages. Of course, this included 3 addendum pages of appropriate publications, languages, and key business relationships, and was a paper customized for a Marketing position that called for detailed technical writing skills.
The point here is that if you write a very full, factual, chronological résumé you should be covered. A skimmer-type of hiring manager should be able to skim and see the important facts jump out. A detail person will be able to glean the answer to all his basic questions and also get a good sense of you as a person.
Don’t be shy. Executive resumes need details. Not only will a hiring manager “get you” on the first skim, but the online ATS (applicant tracking systems) will find all those keywords and phrases that will catapult you to the top of the pile of executive resumes.
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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.
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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…
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