As an agency recruiter or ‘headhunter’ I have always looked for ways to use technology to help identify top candidates, improve internal processes and basically improve the service my firm and I provide while also saving time. Recently I decided to give a new video interview platform a test run and thought I would share my experience so far as well as see if anyone had some feedback on their experience or thoughts on the use of video interviews.
As a busy professional, it can be hard to identify a good time for an interview with an agency, however the obvious benefits are tremendous. Agency recruiters often have excellent long term relationships with the hiring managers at great companies. In fact, often agency recruiters work on jobs that are never posted on job boards due to these relationships and the hiring managers immediate need to find talent without spending weeks or months sorting through job posting respondents. This has been amplified in the last couple of years due to the increase in unemployed folks in the market.
This is the main reason I wanted to test out video interviewing. The platform I decided to work with allowed both a live 2 way interview, as well as a one way interview that sends several questions and allows the candidate to respond in a set amount of time. The question can be re-recorded as many times as the candidate would like until they finalize the submission, and the interview can be taken anytime within a certain time frame, such as within the next 7 days.
I thought this could be a convenient way for candidates to shoot an ‘interview’ whenever they have time, after work, on the weekends, etc. After the first month, I am seeing some interesting results. It has been a great tool and has identified several good candidates that I have started working with, however some candidates that have agreed to take the video interview have not.
It is too early to determine if this tool is a keeper yet. I am 50/50 on it currently as it seems like some candidates are not quite up to a video interview or not quite technically savvy to go through the step by step process. I definitely think this technology has some great implications, especially being able to see the strong ‘soft skills’ that an individual displays who may not have a resume that JUMPS out immediately. I will continue testing video interviews as an additional tool for now.
If you have experience as a recruiter or candidate using video interview software, what has been your experience? Do you feel it was a good time saving tool? Did it help you sell yourself? Or do you think video is too intrusive or in some other way not a great way to showcase your skills? Let me know your thoughts.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140804142904-36808779-the-future-of-job-interviews-to-interview-or-not-to-interview?trk=prof-post
