Is Video Interviewing Ushering in a New Era in Talent Acquisition?
By Chris Higbee, VP, Marketing at HireVue
This morning Dr. John Sullivan of ERE wrote, “Based on my experience, I predict that within a few years the ‘interview from anywhere’ approach will become the standard practice for all but final hiring interviews,” in his most recent article on ERE, Interview From Anywhere: Live Video Interviews Are Now a Best Practice (Part I of II). You can read the article here http://bit.ly/10w4ma.
This got me thinking, are we on the threshold of “Talent Acquisition 2.0, led by Video Interviewing?
Talent Acquisition 1.0 – Talent Acquisition as we know it today – began to show it’s head in the late 80s with the advent of the ERP systems that included HR plugins like SAP and Oracle. It emerged with the likes of PeopleSoft and Lawson in the 90s but it wasn’t until the web became easier and faster that it came in to full maturity through the likes of Monster, Career Builder and Taleo. You might say that Talent Acquisition should include the prefix “Web Enabled” as it wasn’t until the web became pervasive enough that both candidates and hiring experts could use it to connect with each other.
But connecting is only half the battle. Today, candidates and hiring experts alike are showing signs of “overexposure” to each other. A couple of weeks ago I attended HCI’s Strategic Talent Acquisition conference and heard one large insurance company complain that they were receiving 40,000 – 50,000 resume’s a month and in one month received over 100,000! I’d say that’s overexposure. Even with the filtering capabilities built in to today’s Applicant Tracking Systems and the intelligent assessments available from the likes of PreVisor, DDI or Lominger – I heard several times at that conference that companies are still struggling to make a personal connection to their candidates.
It seems clear to me that employers are looking for a new recipe for hiring success. They want to get out from under the ‘track-and-pick’ model of recruiting and shift their recruiting methodologies and technologies to a more proactive relationship based model. Could this be Talent Acquisition 2.0? In my humble opinion, yes. that’s why you’re seeing companies drop their job board budgets and focus exclusively on social media and networking to build out their candidate pipeline and that’s why more and more companies are turning to video interviewing to qualify their candidates.
The hiring relationship is a three-way relationship; between the candidate, the recruiter and the hiring manager. Most of the time additional pundits provide input, solicited or not, that must also be taken in to account. Like it or not, building a “hiring” relationship with a candidate is about collaboration. Video Interviewing makes it easy to connect all interested parties more efficiently than a resume or even a shared online application or CV. But as I mentioned before, the connection is only the beginning. The video interview has to be recorded and there have to be tools for collaboration and workflow within the organization so that everyone has a chance to make a connection with the candidate early on in the hiring process. Only then can internal constituents synergistically and efficiently work together to bring the candidate in to focus for the organization. Let me give an example.
Phone screening has been the traditional ‘first date’ in the TA process. As a hiring manager, I loath phone screens. Sorry, that’s the truth, because even if I have a number of great questions already thought out and ready to wow the candidate, I don’t know them well enough to know if they’re giving me a line of garbage or if they really know what they’re talking about – especially when I can’t see their face! I once heard a communications expert say that we comprehend only as much as 30% of what people say but 90% of what they communicate through facial expressions and body language. If I’m trying to build a relationship, 90% comprehension sounds better than 30%.This is even more painful when you’re NOT the hiring manager but you’re expected to provide input on every single candidate!
But if I could start this process by reviewing a pre-recorded video interview of the candidate, I can determine in less than 5 minutes – less than 30 seconds in some cases, if the candidate is right for me. That just saved me hours – not to mention the countless combined hours others might have also been required to spend under the TA 1.0 model. If I can continue that process with a live video interview that lets me and the candidate stay in our respective places without spending a lot of time and money coming together, then I can ask some of the deeper questions and I already have a pretty solid understanding of who I’m talking to, so I know how to read their responses. And if these are recorded and available through a system that allows me to comment on, rank and share the candidate with others in my organization on their own time and in their own place. Then as far as I’m concerned, I’ve raised my hiring efforts from ‘track-and-pick” to fully realized relationship based hiring with minimal additional effort.
I think it’s time for Talent Acquisition 2.0. It may take some time to catch on, but video interviewing will stay right there at the forefront, leading the way. Dr. John puts it in to perspective, “If you doubt that this approach will truly grab hold, just look back at the uphill battle that phone screens had to fight before they became the de facto standard first step in the assessment process.”
Does this indeed do the trick? Does this really change the face of Talent Acquisition or am I just ‘drinking the kool-aid?’ I’d love to hear what you think. Comment here or feel free to e-mail me at chigbee@hirevue.com.
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