Video Resumes – Lights, Camera, Action

A few years back Aleksey Vaynar pioneered the video resume.

His effort will be remembered as the way NOT to do it, and has contributed to huge cringe factor regarding the concept of video resumes. However, it could be that we are almost ready to give it another serious try.

The best software available I have seen is Talent On View, a video platform that enables recruiters and corporate businesses to take advantage of innovative technology during all stages of the recruitment life cycle.

It allows you to:
* Record or upload candidate videos
* Share videos with clients and hiring managers
* Allow candidates to upload videos remotely for assessment
* Send videos to multiple contacts at one time

I have also been testing the new SkypeCap application that allows you to record your Skype audio and video.

Another notable is Candidates Alive. This company offers the ability for the candidate to record themselves. The end product is a live link, professionally presented with your corporate branding to your clients.

Increasingly, recruiters and candidates are under demand to provide more information about themselves and their candidates to employers. These are tools designed to meet that demand.

In case you missed it…

Video Resumes Discriminating The Facts.

Pull up a seat. Let’s have a chat about video resumes. There’s a lot of talk about how this phenomenon could be a vehicle for discrimination. And I think we all agree that discrimination sucks and I know I do my darnedest to avoid it. But if you do harbor discriminatory views, let’s say you’re more partial to folks of Vietnamese origin to those who are of Chinese heritage, or if you prefer women than men, if you are going to think within this framework, the only thing that a video will do is enable you to call upon these biases one step in the process earlier. Point is, ultimately a candidate has to make some sort of physical appearance and if they’re up against a bigot, or misogynist, there ain’t much they can do to shield themselves from these sorts of prejudices.

For those of us in the industry who are not lame-brained enough to let any personal feelings against certain groups in our society ameliorate our abilities to find the best candidates for the jobs, video resumes will allow an increased sense of the candidate; their manner, grooming, level of charisma. None of these factors alone would be the determining factor for whether or not they make it to the next stage, they assist in the task of putting together a well-informed conception of the candidate.

Anyway, video resumes are more-than-likely going to take the form of a video-interview. These will be clips put together by companies like Hirevue where candidates, via a web-cam, will be asked a series of predetermined questions and allocated a certain amount of time in which to answer. How they answer the questions will enhance enormously the recruiter or employer’s sense of the candidate, cut out a lot of wasted time and be of great assistance to inter-nation hiring. This is a good thing.