A few years ago I’d have been reluctant to join a video call, regardless of whether or not I knew the person. The thought of video interviewing, in particular, would have filled me with anxiety.
Today I work for a company where we put video at the core of everything we do. I suppose it’s like anything new, to get better at it you have to practice — and with the way we communicate having changed so much during the pandemic, many of us are now accustomed to being on camera.
I feel totally comfortable on video now and many people I’ve spoken to say the same. It didn’t happen overnight, but in a world where Instagram Stories, YouTube, and TikTok are all part of our daily lives, extending that habit for video to the interview process doesn’t seem so unnatural.
An interview is the one place you are expected to sell yourself, and that’s exactly what any potential employer wants to see. But having worked in recruitment for 15 years I can confidently say that the CV is not the best way to do this.
How many times have you fired off a CV and wished that you had a better forum to sell yourself? Even knowing all the tricks of the trade, I know my own CV doesn’t do me justice and I’ve always fared better when given an opportunity to vocalise why I’m the right person for the role.
Instead, you have to hope that some text on a word document will inspire them to invite you to an interview. Surely there’s a better way to do things. I’ve felt for years that the CV element of the recruitment process is out-dated, particularly because it leaves a lot of room for unconscious bias.
A sizeable portion of my previous job was focussed on our temp business. Clients would trust us to identify talent based on our knowledge of their organisation and the job they required to be carried out — not which University the candidate went to, or how much experience they had.
We rarely sent CV’s to our clients. Instead, we assessed suitability based on the interviews with the candidates. There were countless occasions where we helped people secure opportunities they would never have been considered for had they been reliant on their CV.
The reason a lot of candidates secure ‘temp to perm’ opportunities is because hiring managers have the chance to get to know the person in front of them, not the piece of paper.
It’s fair to suggest that we have advanced ten years in ten months. Over 70% of HR Leaders said the world of work has changed forever, in a recent poll. So if we are to attract the best talent on the market, surely we must ensure the recruitment processes reflects these changes?
If we rely solely on a CV to decide if someone is worth progressing with, then we are using tired and slow techniques in a smart, fast-moving world. In order to be different, we have to do different. To learn more about how video can help you find the best candidates, email me at shannon.mckechnie@vizcareerdigital.com