3 minute read
SHOWCASING THE PERSON BEHIND THE CV
Lee Reynolds, Kingsley Consulting
Film has become an intrinsic part of most modern businesses’ activities. From customers to clients; partners to employees; video is an engaging, personal and direct form of communication that has been proven to provide results. Video connects your company to others, providing them with the opportunity to see the people they’re buying from face-to-face, whether they’re based two or two thousand miles away.
However, when it comes to recruitment, the most important aspect of film is in the candidate interview process. Anyone who has been involved in hiring staff will understand the difficulties in matching the right person with the necessary technical and soft skills to a role. Qualifications and experience are imperative, but an individual is just that – a unique human being with their own personality, values and goals for the future. Generally, it isn’t until that first meeting that a client is able to get a better sense of whether they will ‘fit’ into their business.
First impressions count
Video technology not only massively streamlines the hiring process but improves the level of service for everyone involved in the recruitment journey. It gives the client the opportunity to see both the CV and the person answering questions posed by the recruiter in real time via a video recording. It enables client and candidate to become more ‘connected’ during the process as responses are natural and genuine, creating buy-in from both parties in what can be a congested job market.
Because of this, it allows the client to save on hiring costs as it creates space in diaries; instead of taking every suitable CV at face value and setting up multiple meetings that may go nowhere, only ten minutes are needed to watch a video of the candidate and form an initial impression. Better decisions can be made at the front-end as clients have the opportunity to ‘meet’ candidates before any face-to-face meeting takes place, removing needless first stage interviews and barriers to location.
Suiting the candidate
With a current job market that is 90% candidatedriven, it is imperative that recruitment consultancies and their clients create an experience that suits candidates’ needs. Video aligns with the way that modern jobseekers look for work. A recent study has found that 89% use mobile platforms to search for jobs and 16% of applications are submitted via mobile. Watching a video job posting is a much easier proposition than trying to read screen after screen of text on the go.
Time to hire benefits
Lee Reynolds, Managing Director of Kingsley Consulting, has been successfully implementing video technology for over 18 months. “We have seen numerous benefits to both clients and candidates,” he explains. “Candidates who apply for roles that utilise video technology become far more invested in the process. In these cases, our experience of successfully getting candidates to interview is maintaining at 100%. When it comes to more traditional methods candidates turning up to interview is at the industry standard of around 75-80%.
However, it is in the ‘time to hire’ aspect that video really comes into its own. “The typical recruitment process is fairly simple but can be very time-consuming – advertise job, source candidates, CV submission, first and second interview and offer or rejection,” Lee continues. “Video as part of the submission process combines the initial CV review and around two thirds of the first interview. In addition, clients can pre-determine questions to be asked, further recreating the value of a first interview and sometimes mitigating the need for a second interview. This can reduce the time to hire even further.”
The flexibility of video technology is also a huge benefit. “We find that many roles require stakeholders from various departments and locations to be part of the first interview, which carries cost and time implications to the business,” Lee comments. “A video profile can be shared to multiple users to view, comment and provide feedback, and can be viewed at any time or location.” Whilst video can never replace the impact that a face-to-face meeting creates, it can attract more candidates to a role, connect and engage the people in the process, reduce time to hire and increase success rates. For modern recruiters, video is the future of the industry.
