CareerTV, which touts itself as “the most-trafficked career video website, with the largest collection of employer videos online,” is ditching its video resume service. Says Helen Luttemo, director of public relations for the company,
Because there is not enough interest from employers. Since there is no standardized form for what a video resume should include, it is not time efficient, not very useful for employers.
Resumes in video format are a real quandary for both vendor and employer (although the public at large seems to appreciate it).
Do videos help put a face to a job candidate? Sure. And that might be the biggest problem. With federal regulations the way they are, especially in the U.S. (Monster has video resumes in India, but not the States, for instance), the perception is employers shouldn’t touch video resumes with a 10-foot pole. And like most things, regardless of sound arguments for, perception trumps reality. As video resume services pop-up, this has to be taken into consideration.
In an article entitled Time to Put Pause on Video Resumes, Raghav Singh summed it up by saying, “It’s not a reach to believe that a creative lawyer can make a case for discrimination if it’s known a video resume was viewed before an individual was rejected.”
ERE’s CEO David Manaster adds:
Employers are wary of video resumes because they put front and center information that it is illegal to use for hiring decisions – information like the age, race, and gender of their candidates.
But the real kiss of death for video resumes is that there is currently no effective way to review them quickly. A recruiter may be willing to watch one video resume for three minutes to learn about a candidate, but it is not uncommon to receive a hundred resumes for some positions. It is not realistic to expect them to spend five hours just to wade through them on a first pass.
There seems to be little doubt that video as a tool for employment branding, or even as job description, is a trend that will take hold. Large and small are leveraging online video to create a clearer brand. However, if CareerTV’s move is any indication, the video resume has a long way to go before making it to prime time.
Luttemo helps paint a picture for the future, saying “What [CareerTV] will offer [job seekers] instead is a more sophisticated ‘video profile’ where the employer can see and hear how a candidate answers a number of ‘industry specific questions’ relevant for the very position the employer intends to fill. The white paper resume will prevail as a selection tool, and the video profile will save time and money for both recruiters and jobseekers.”
Popularity: 21% [?]
November 7th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Employers skim paper resumes to view only the information they’re interested in. Perhaps a standard video resume format paired with a technology like veotag will bring this idea to the next level.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Video resume……does anyone think that will ever work?
Also, as I source numerous site, I find the quote”…… with the largest collection of employer videos online”, questionable. After counting all of their videos on the browse all option, give or take, they have approximately 200 and there are a number that seem to not to be employment related (no I don’t have that much time in my life…..just want to prove a point that self proclaimed quotes are crazy). I encourage you to view the following link and look at the TV symbol next to the company name: http://phoenix.jobing.com/jobfair_main.asp . I believe there are approximately 300 employment related videos and this does not include any of the other video content on this site, which equals about 800. The best part is, this is only for one market out of the many Jobing.com is located in.
VIDEO IS THE WAY OF THE FUTURE!!!
November 8th, 2007 at 8:55 am
This is right on target. A video resume is not something that will take hold. While I don’t believe there is specific litigation regarding discrimination as the result of a video resume I certainly do not want to be involved in the first case.
Video used in Job advertisement to establish employment branding is here. I’ve just started to incorporate Video. http://www.vcruit.com/se/se_player.html Vcruit is the vendor I’ve been using. I anticipate we will quickly see video in job advertisement become a standard.
I hope the job boards will keep up with this technology.
Bill Opal
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Feedback from the use of Video Resumes in Australia:
Candidates Alive have had an excellent response from jobseekers, recruiters and especially employers who have used video resumes. Jobseekers relish the opportunity to stand out from other candidates and be seen and heard first by employers.
Recruiters finally have a way to win new clients by offering them an innovative solution to the recruitment process which ultimately saves employers tremendous amounts of time.
Candidates Alive launched in October 2007 holding seminars in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Auckland and the response from all parties including the media has been fantastic.
We provide recruitment agencies with the opportunity to create high quality candidate video resumes from their offices and then showcase these candidates to employers.
We spent 12 months researching the market and trialing our system to ensure the needs of recruiters, jobseekers and employers were met. Currently we have a number of recruitment agencies using the system and creating video resumes for their clients.
We are not a job board and privacy and confidentiality are of the utmost importance to us and our clients. The recruiter controls and manages each video resume and can discontinue a video resume link at any time. Candidates have the option of going on video if they choose and many of them see this as a great opportunity to stand out from other jobseekers.
Recruiters have found it frustrating at times to get their candidates in front of hiring managers. There are many candidates who have outstanding communication skills and vibrant personalities. To convey this to an employer in black and white or over the phone is can be difficult.
Through our user-friendly system, an employer can instantly view a candidate video simply by clicking on a URL link that has been sent via email by a recruitment consultant. In such a tight labour market, responsiveness wins in this game and it is critical to get good candidates in front of hiring managers fast.
With regards to discrimination, video resumes are just like any other step in the recruitment process. Whether it be an initial telephone conversation with the candidate or a face-to-face interview, all employers must abide by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Act.
Ultimately, if an employer uses video resumes in the right way, while abiding by anti-discrimination laws, they are at no risk and will enjoy the benefits of a faster recruitment process.
We believe that with the technology now available, video resumes are the logical next phase in global recruitment. The feedback we have received from jobseekers, employers and recruiters suggests that video resumes are here to stay. Like any new concept, it takes time to evolve and some will jump on board quicker than others – and that’s ok.
March 13th, 2008 at 1:06 am
It’s true that video resumes do have a long way to go before they are accepted by mainstream employers. However, for convenience it is a nice concept when applying for a job cross country and without means. The ability to send an employer a video resume and answer interview questions via video from one’s home in New York without having to fly out to the job site n San Francisco, for example, is a great concept.
I particularly am fond of http://www.jobrific.com because of their incorporation of a fantastic job board similar to an easy post concept like craigs list uses. This combined with jobrific.com ’s video resumes and fantastic array of work break videos (their catch phrase for videos non-work related) breathes new life into a technology careertv says is ailing.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Video resume is definitely useful for film/TV/fashion industries. But in other fields, I don’t see how video resume is going to help job seekers. The whole hiring process is not only about the job seeker looking for a job, but also the company looking for a good employee, so it’s two-way. Using a video resume puts the advantage to the employer side. They get to see the job seeker before even lifting a finger to call him/her, or maybe even looking at their paper resumes.
True, some job seekers exaggerate in their resumes and sometimes an interview is a waste of time for the employers as a result of that. But honest job seekers could also find out more about the job at an interview that he/she would find not suitable and end up as a waste of time as well. A face-to-face interview will solve those issues for both parties. Yes, it’s potentially a waste of time, but life is full of risks, nothing is a guarantee (except death and taxes, as they say). If an employer wants to see how I communicate, call me up for a phone interview. If they want to see how I present myself, call me up for a face-to-face interview. A good potential candidate is worth the time, just like a good company is worth the time for me to go in for a visit. Besides, if I don’t get to see the internal operations and job details of every company I’m interested in a video, why should I put my face out there for them to see?
A paper resume will make things as fair as possible in an unfair world, especially when job hunting can get very political.
Just my 2 cents.
May 5th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
We are particularly fond of the idea of video resumes. So much so we created GoodMustard.com which we hope will be a portal for video resumes. I think like any new concept, people are going to be resistant. Recruiters believe that it will raise the concern about descrimination, but companies can find other ways to discriminate.
We are hoping that this will show people that their is another way to present your credentials. We are not trying to replace paper resumes, but enhance the process.
May 24th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
If someone wants to put themselves out there then the video resume is the way to go. I am a finance exec and it would definitely set me apart from my cookie-cutter colleagues. It makes me more competitive against those that are camera shy. Recruiters and hiring organizations should admit they prefer it too. It makes most of all hiring related processes much more efficient. If companies take the defensive and feel the need to hide behind legality then they are too bureaucratic anyway. Encountering such bureacracy pre-hire is a great preview of what to expect when working for such an organization. I know dozens of hiring managers that not only welcome video resumes, but would look at video resumes before reading any of the other ones. Which would you start with while sitting at your desk at work when assessing candidates? If you have the guts to produice and distribute a high quality video resume then you are an early adopter on the right track…and in the lead!
August 15th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Video resumes are making a push in the economic downturn, but let’s address the other HR issues at hand. Large amount of supply of qualified talent, thousands of resumes for each job posting, hundreds of online job boards promising results and the employee looking for work is shut out having only the online channels to create resume awareness. Are we really supposed to believe that 1-2 page resumes all receive the same diligence? NOT AT ALL!
Sure computers and software for HR departments make some tasks more efficient, but it’s also eliminated head count. With budget cuts being very real and HR generalists, recruiters and departments struggling themselves with running lean shops – the people who suffer are the companies who truly need certain skills, abilities, talents and competencies.
Most working managers don’t have time to source, interview and control the hiring process, but they don’t trust and can’t depend on HR departments to handle the responsibilities accordingly. So they take into thier own hands.
The biggest problem facing HR departments today is the number of candidates applying for jobs and the lack of internal processes, procedures and systems in place to handle the increase of supply. Forget the fact that HR departments have recruiters, generalists and other personnel who don’t really care about helping thier organizations go out and attract, let alone secure the best talent available at the time of need. HR has become lazy and too dependent upon softwares and databases which only find relevant candidates through data crawlers and once found, candidates who are truly qualified have to rely on the recruiter to handle their due dilligence which doesn’t happen very much due to the lack of accountabilities internally for HR departments.
We have taken the people out of the people business. We must have more innovative HR professionals who truly re-organize the environments and shake it up, solve more problems as opposed to putting more things into tiny boxes of data stored away out of sight hoping some recruiter is diligently going through them to find you the best talent. It doesn’t happen and if so, the positive numbers compared to the truly talented ones never receiving phone calls is staggering.
I’ve worked in the staffing industry as an IT recruiter as well as a systems analyst for an enterprise wide envionment and I promise you when I say this – WE NEED 21ST CENTURY INNOVATION TO HUMAN RESOURCE DEPARTMENTS!
If HR professionals keep copying what they learn from job to job only to implement those strategies into thier new endeavors then our economy won’t ever strengthen from within because the systems we rely on currently are flawed, understaffed and rely too much on the software as opposed to outside the box recruiting and hiring solutions.
I appreciate the space to break open a very solid topic requiring more buzz!
August 25th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
I absolutely agree with Enoch. As an HR professional, there are too many risks to the company for a video resume. Bad Idea!
August 27th, 2009 at 9:55 am
If you are looking for a edge in today’s job market, why not use a video overlay on your resume? Video will get attention, and that’s the whole idea, isn’t it? A quality video will also demonstrate your aptness for new technology and cutting-edge ideas. Employers will also appreciate the pre-screening process it allows, at it will save time and money at the back end of their search.
Check out http://www.executivepreview.com, a new video overlay service for resumes. Executive Preview is a professional-quality video overlay that is displayed in almost 3-D effect. This service allows applicants to present a brief introduction video that is layered in front of their resume.
Get video and enjoy the career search!