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Automated video interviewing: fad or future of recruitment?
What do you think about automated video interviewing- where applicants are sent link to a portal where questions pop up and are given an allocated time to read and answer the questions? Have you used it? How do you like it? What are the benefits? Aren't you running a risk of getting pre-written/researched answers?
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8 Answers
Hey Jeanette. I think that video interviewing can be a very powerful tool for companies and recruiters. I've tried out a few different video interview companies and have identified some positive and negative points. Overall, I really think the positives outweigh the negatives. Here are my thoughts:
Positives:
*When used to replace a phone interview, it proves to be a much better screening tool.
*No scheduling necessary, and you view the results whenever you want
*You get to view candidates' presentation skills
*It's easy to share video interviews with line managers for input
*Makes it much easier and cost effective to interview out of state candidates
Negatives:
*Many of the video interviewing companies are priced too high to make the service worth trying (example: Hirevue charges $159.00 per completed interview)
*Video interviewing may seem impersonal to candidates
*Older generations may be more nervous about video interviewing than younger generations
There is actually a service out there that offers a "multi-media interview", which I like better than the video interview. Zuzuhire.com allows you to write your own questions and select which format (video, voice, essay, yes/no) you want candidates to respond using. So it incorporates video interviews, but takes it a step further and allows you to test out their writing skills, evaluate their phone presence, and even use yes/no questions to screen out candidates based upon the "deal-breaker" job criteria.
There are also companies out there that have automated the phone interview process. One I’ve tried out is Toomah.com. This site let's you type out questions, enter a candidate’s phone number, and send them a link via email. Then an automated system calls them and asks your questions. Not a bad idea either.
Hope this helps! It's exciting to have so many new recruiting tools out there!
Jeanette, the truth is people are actually quite themselves. The ones that are pre-scripted look fake and don't actually get hired. The main advice we give all our clients at VidCruiter for people who buy our www.vidinterviewing.com product is to not rehears your answers or have scripts since it appears fake.
And the beauty is that now the recruiters doesn't need to do phone interviews anymore. so the time savings can now allow to focus on quality applicants.
We used video interviews but in a very rudimentary way. We simply asked people to provide a video either hidden or public on YouTube. It was great as people didn't have to travel, no meeting arrangement and the people had at least a chance to prep a bit. I feel the preping is important as some might be just too nervous. I didn't know about the tools mentioned here but even our rudimentary approach was very successful. Definitely checking the tools mentioned.
What we did in addition to the interview was asking people to share their social presence using XeeMe so we could get a more complete picture of the person. It helped us to find their social presence and helps the candidate to make sure we look at his or her profiles and not mix it up with same name people. Also it helps us to look at what the candidate feels is appropriate to look at without sniffing behind their back. And we interacted with the candidates in the social web prior to a face to face meeting.
Obviously we did a F2F meeting in the end but that was a very casual confirmation meeting.
When we needed to hire an Accounts Payable person activeinterview.com caught our attention for a couple of reasons. First, it's a great way to filter out fake candidates that mass-submit their resumes to popular job sites. Active Interview provides an option where only serious candidates can participate in questions that you specify in advance. Second, it only took us a few minutes to get started which says a lot about its intuitive design and ease of use. We will use it again for our next hire.
We've used cvplay.com for our recruitment and interviewing process and in some instances we cut back costs over 90%.
It's really easy, you just send off all your video interview requests to candidates, when they're complete, you get email notifications.
They have more information video interviewing on the cvplay site..
I think that video interviewing services like that can be quite impersonal and sometimes, a simple Skype interview will help break the ice ( and a video call is free for a start ). Besides, not all candidates with the best answers, resume and portfolio can fit into your company culture. Though video interviews can help you screen applicants much faster ( and you can even review these video recordings the next day ) - a live chat gives you the closest thing to a face-to-face interview..
Jeanette, we offer an automated interviewing product, www.icandidatescreener.com, and I can give you a few positives in addition to the ones Ty provided above. Our tool does not allow the candidates to see the questions in advance so their responses are unrehearsed. This way it closely simulates an actual interview. Also, since the interview is recorded, hiring managers can review and re-review the video more than once and compare one set of candidate's responses to another set. Since all the candidates for a particular opportunity are answering the same questions, there is no bias in the interview. From a candidate perspective, this can be much easier than a phone screen because of what Ty mentioned above. No scheduling hassles. Candidates and Hiring managers don't need to schedule inconvenient after hour meetings. The candidate completes the interview after hours when it is convenient for them and the hiring manager quickly screens through the interviews on their time. Because the recorded interviews are hosted on our video server, there is no downloading and the interviews can easily be shared with colleagues.
We don't suggest this should take the place of face-to-face interviews but it surely helps cut down on the number of candidates one needs to interview and thus saves time. Also, we are priced much, much lower than the pricing mentioned above. We offer several subscription models which can drive the price down to a few dollars per screen.
Hi
Just putting this out there: http://www.videoview.com offers video interviewing solutions at a very affordable rate. We decided to keep focus on simplicity, flexibility, reliability and ease of use for candidates.
If you want to try it out, just go to our website and give it a test-run, we offer 10 free interviews so you can even do an actual recruitment round with it if you'd like.
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