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Video Interviewing: Is It Time to Make It a Regular Part of Your Tool Kit?

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May 2, 2012

You’ve whittled down your new employee options to just a handful of qualified resumes. Now it’s time to go through those resumes again to select only the very best.

If you choose too many candidates, you can waste time interviewing too many people. If you choose too few you might miss the right candidate for the position. A new, interesting third option is the rise of online video.

Online video interviewing won’t replace the traditional resume-based recruiting process, and quite frankly it’s not meant to. You’ll always need to sift through paper resumes to initially narrow down the most qualified candidates.

Saving time and money

It’s that middle step where video interviewing can really help with cost-cutting. Consider that in the time it takes to screen one phone candidate you can screen ten video candidates. That’s a lot of saved time!

Like the paper resume, the in-person interview will never go out of style. At some point, you need to see your most qualified candidates in person and evaluate. What video interviewing does is make the bridge from paper resume to actual human being sitting across from you more time-efficient. A typical recruiter has the resume-weeding process down cold, taking about six (6) seconds to look over a resume. It’s what comes after that can take up precious time, and with it, money.

One aspect of interviewing that can eat up resources is the group interview. It can be difficult to get everyone who needs to review a candidate on the same schedule. Yet it’s important that candidates are reviewed by the colleagues they’ll be working with closely. Rearranging the schedules of numerous people, however, can be time-consuming and costly. Especially if employees need to miss productive time in order to meet with several candidates.

A bridge from paper resume to final interview

The instant replay ability of video interviewing gives a good solution to this problem. Video interviewing gives the option of recording the interview for playback later. Now everyone on the team involved with the interviewing process can easily stay updated on the latest candidates.

Video is becoming an easy and affordable bridge from the traditional paper resume to the final interview. Imagine being able to ask a pool of qualified candidates questions without leaving your office and still have a greater sense of the job seeker than a simple phone call could afford. Video can give that sense of personality that only the in-person interview can truly afford, while being quicker and easier to arrange.

Video interviewing isn’t reinventing the recruiting wheel, just helping it to roll a little faster.