Imagine you’re sifting through a pile of printed resumes sipping your coffee and, all of a sudden, the door of your office bursts open and a candidate is standing in front of you. They jump into a speech about their skills and professional experience. What do you do? How do you treat them compared to the other candidates? If you’re in your home office sitting in your PJs, the answer is simple, you kick the candidate out and call the police. All joking aside, how would you treat a candidate that came into your office and started to give an overview of their skills? You’d likely direct them to send their resume to you via email or via your online candidate portal. What if it wasn’t that simple? Video resumes create a new challenge for organizations and recruiters as well as a new opportunity for everyone.
Welcome to the Future Of Recruiting – What to do about video resumes.
It’s no surprise that by 2018 69% of total internet traffic will be video . Do you go a week, or even a day without watching some type of video on your favorite social media platform? For me, the magic number is four. Looking at each of my social media feeds, approximately one in four posts is a video, and that’s growing almost daily. This trend is exactly why we spoke with Lucy Brown about video resumes. Lucy is an expert on video resumes and the Managing Director of Digital Dossier . In this blog post and interview, Lucy helps map out what the future of recruiting looks like using video resumes.
What are video resumes?
Lucy describes video resumes as “mini personal ads that covers what’s in a resume, but in a concise format”. Don’t pull out the popcorn, yet. Despite video resumes being more concise than a written resume, they won’t save you time. At least, not just yet. Most organizations have no process for accepting video resumes. Lucy warns that employers need to be careful, “employers who receive video resumes will need to start putting policies in place as to how and when they will use them”. She also stresses that organizations need to determine how much weight they’ll put on the video and the written resume.
It’s all about the structure!
“It needs to be part of their policy, it’s not an add-on, they need to decide from the beginning”; Lucy again stresses the need for a structure. When we spoke about the adoption of video resumes across industries, Lucy pointed out that athletics and entertainment have been using video resumes for some time. “I’m not sure if employers in the corporate world are going to embrace this as much… there are many benefits of a video resume; it saves time and it saves effort, instead of shuffling through stacks of paper trying to find the best candidate, you can look at a video resume get an overall sense of the person, then possibly back it up and looking at their resume”. A structured resume review process is needed regardless if you’re using a written version or video version. However, using video resumes is even more important “you cannot only accept video resumes, it’s against human rights and employment rights, you need to make it accessible for everyone who’s interested applying for the position”. A structure also ensures you have standards, “so that you’re not receiving five or ten-minute video resumes when you only wanted two-minute video resumes and you also need to let them know what should be included in that video resume”.
Related: How I Learned to Hire For the Future
Could a video resume be a good way to see if someone is a culture fit with an organization?
“Video resumes are a perfect tool to see someone’s personality fits into the culture. Video resumes will demonstrate if someone is a good culture fit, it lets their personality shine through”. Lucy highlights that, in fact, yes- video resumes would help to determine a culture fit. Candidates can demonstrate who they are and why they should be hired especially with the help of companies like Digital Dossier, who helps individuals creatively market their skills and accomplishments with employers and recruiters using video resumes. But, video resumes alone shouldn’t be the only factor in determining candidate selection.
What’s the downside?
The first concern we discussed with Lucy was biases and discrimination and her response is perfect. “Unfortunately, whether or not you’re using video, there will be bias”. She provides examples of biases around schools or previous employment etc. Lucy says that “it may actually be easier to track, to see if there is an obvious bias” when using video resumes. According to Lucy, as of the time of this interview, there had been no cases in Canada or the US that have been filed against an organization for using video resumes.
Video resumes can help recruiters save time and help evaluate personality and culture fit for an organization. They provide an opportunity for a candidates’ personality to shine and highlight the most important skills. But none of this can be achieved if there is no structure or policies in place. Whether your organization will be an early adopter of video resumes or a late bloomer, use these five tips to prepare. Because one day, the written resume may be obsolete.
Accepting Video Resume Tips
What you do with resumes and how important they are to your recruiting is only one component of the recruiting process. To hire talented employees who are excited about the culture of your organization takes effort and strategy. How does your recruiting process rate? Take the recruiting process audit to find out. Click here to start the 3 minute recruiting process audit.