Resumes haven’t changed much over the years. As a result, they offer up little more than a reductionist summary of the applicant in question, not even touching the surface of candidate-first hiring.

Obviously, it’s time for a change.

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What You’ll Learn

1. Candidate insights
2. Benefits of video interviewing
3. How to hire smarter using data
4. The top ten graduate trends coming in 2022

The post Show Don’t Tell: Building a Candidate First Hiring Strategy appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Disrupted, transformed, uprooted. Use whatever buzzword you want, but there’s no denying hiring has come a long way over the last 18 months. Traditional methods were cast aside under pandemic conditions, making way for next-generation solutions – like asynchronous video interviewing – to take hold.

Now we’re at a crossroads, one evidenced by the ongoing push and pull between candidates and employers, with one side advocating for a whole new system while the other wrestles with what that means in practice. Somewhere in the middle of this tug of war, there’s asynchronous video, an often discussed yet underutilized balm that soothes frequent hiring woes. 

Recognizing the role asynchronous video played – and continues to play – it is poised to positively impact hiring and turnover reduction in 2021 and beyond.

Here are six reasons why.

Candidate experience comes full circle.

In today’s candidate-driven market, employers need to do everything they can to make the process easier and more accessible. Given the pre-recorded nature of asynchronous video, these interviews empower candidates to respond to interview requests when and where they’re able to record.

This type of communication allows candidates and interviews to stay in touch without having to align calendars or chat at unfriendly hours. In turn, candidates get the chance to express themselves when it’s convenient for them, not when the company says they’ve available. Local or remote, active or passive, asynchronous promotes and preserves a solid candidate-employer connection. 

Competition remains fierce.

Likewise, the current hiring landscape means that employers need to come prepared for every candidate engagement – and that takes the right arsenal of solutions.

Back in February 2020, Aptitude Research found that less than 60 percent of companies surveyed used video interviewing in their hiring processes, compared to 74 percent just two months later. By October 2020, research from Gartner showed 89 percent were using video for recruitment.

These huge gains highlight the value video offers, a value that’s reinforced when resources are tight and competition remains fierce.

Data informs everything.

Metrics are everything, whether you’re scrambling to match candidates with roles or just keep business moving forward.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant recently explained, “In a stable world, it’s best to be data-driven. In a changing world, it’s best to be data-informed. Data can reveal patterns from the past. It takes judgment to predict how those patterns will evolve in the future. Data shouldn’t guide decisions. They should inform decisions.”

Asynchronous video interviewing solutions capture the data needed to inform multiple facets of recruiting, from learning about the candidates to attract to objectively screening and filtering. 

Mitigate bias through increased collaboration.

In theory, asynchronous might seem like an interview without an interviewer. But in reality, asynchronous video interviews introduce more interviewers into the mix, helping boost collaboration between stakeholders. Whereas meeting with a single interviewer might allow bias to creep into the process based on their personal opinions or beliefs, asynchronous video enables multiple interviewers to get involved, review candidates and share their differing thoughts and feedback.

As a result, various team members contribute, supporting the likelihood of selecting for culture fit (and ensuring no one person calls all the shots).  

Speed and quality in equal measure.

Right now, with a high number of jobs to fill and willingness and desire to find the best candidate for the position, speed of hire and quality of hire is in equal measure. As such, companies need tools that bring balance into the fold, letting them save time without cutting corners around their interactions with candidates.

Asynchronous video gives candidates the opportunity to showcase who they are beyond what the traditional resume affords. Employers can see for themselves how candidates will contribute and if their goals align with the company’s, all while cutting 60 percent off of their hiring time.  

Better hiring, less turnover.

With employers fretting over the ongoing “Great Resignation” and “Turnover Tsunami,” talent acquisition has become about more than making hires. It’s also about retaining them. And turnover reduction goes back to how companies approach recruiting – and culture fit.

When companies hire for culture fit (and train for any specific skills that may be lacking) they create better alignment, helping to promote happiness and long–term retention. Asynchronous video is much more useful for culture fit than any other means, working throughout the talent acquisition lifecycle to make interviews fair, flexible and objective, while providing structure, removing bias and delivering benefits to both sides. 

By introducing rigor and consistency, asynchronous video helps recruiting teams learn more about individual candidates, candidate pipelines and themselves. In turn, processes grow more efficient, and ultimately, decisions become more effective, encouraging hires that suit candidates and companies for the foreseeable future – not just today or tomorrow. 

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Here’s why.

For Recruiters

Encourages authenticity 

Resumes are static documents that give recruiters little context beyond a list of qualifications and accomplishments. Video complements the resume, cover letter, and application and takes the pressure off of in-person meetings. It’s an authentic medium that lets candidates show off their personalities and background. 

Promotes collaboration 

Video can be used throughout the recruiting lifecycle, from introductions to formal interviews, making it possible to connect candidates with various stakeholders easily. At the same time, video helps stakeholders collaborate once videos get recorded, able to create a shortlist, add their comments, and rate submissions. 

Streamlines processes 

The addition of video can also help recruiters save time, particularly at the screening stage. Rather than spend hours making call downs to candidates who look good on paper, recruiters can send out automated invitations, enabling candidates to answer a few questions on their own time. 

A force multiplier 

Right now, many companies are still considering what their workplace model will look like in the coming months and years. Video supports recruiting in all three scenarios, offering more options and giving recruiters the ability to source candidates from anywhere. 

Delivers deep analytics 

Traditional interviews rely primarily on the insights and understanding of the interviewer, whereas video adds rigor to the process. Analytics can help recruiters learn more about candidates, determine which questions get the most helpful responses and encourage data-driven decision-making. 

For Candidates 

Less busywork, more storytelling 

Being asked to tailor resumes, cover letters, and applications for each role is time-consuming. Video interviews can be short – five minutes or less – and give candidates the power to speak freely rather than fit their information into a box. 

Offers guidance

The internet is full of conflicting advice about improving resumes and prepping for interviews. With video, candidates get practical guidance from the hiring organization in the form of increased communication, something the Talent Board’s research finds is a key differentiator of a positive candidate experience year after year. 

Reduces the hassles

Interviewing can involve a lot more than simply showing up. Video gives candidates the opportunity to focus on answering the questions to the best of their ability, instead of whether or not the interviewer can see them sweating from across the room. 

Attracts passive candidates

Similarly, traditional interviews can be challenging for those currently employed. Video builds space for passive candidates, allowing them to proceed with the job hunt on their terms, something research shows 41% of the workforce is contemplating. 

Adds more structure  

Like the point made earlier about analytics, traditional interviews can be less structured, with interviewers following a line of thinking rather than a series of set questions, which sometimes lead to bias. Video can encourage consistency and ensure that all candidates receive the same experience during their interviews.  

And that’s just scratching the surface

Video interviewing is a better way to hire because it takes the process we’ve been using for ages and updates it for today’s world. It gives recruiters and candidates the tools they need to succeed – to get the job and get the job done. 

The post What’s Good for Candidates is Good for Recruiters: The Long-Term Benefits of Video Interviewing appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Resumes haven’t changed much over the years. As a result, they offer up little more than a reductionist summary of the candidate in question.

Just creating resumes can be confusing for job seekers, especially given the ongoing debates about what information to include versus omit.

Is a summary necessary? What about hobbies and interests? How long should the document be? Font type? Size?

At the same time, on the employer side, the resume review process has developed a bad reputation over the years, mainly due to some likely fictitious (or difficult to validate) statistics that get repeated in article after article.

You know, the ones that posit most recruiters only spend seven seconds on their initial screen.

Something has to give.

The underlying issue

Going back to the point made at the outset, the real problem with resumes is that they don’t do the candidate justice. Resumes ask complex, creative beings to reduce themselves down to a list of accolades and accomplishments in hopes these align with a series of bullet points listed out in the job description.

Employers do their organizations a disservice by trying to fit job seekers into little boxes. Few things in life are ever that neat or organized.

As anyone who has ever hired knows, perfect candidates do not exist.

So, why are we continuing to rely on this restrictive approach to recruiting?

Well, as you’ve no doubt heard before, “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” Perhaps the most stifling words ever uttered. But here’s the thing: the world has changed; from the technologies we use to connect with one another to the ways we interact with one another.

Everything is different, except this one document with roots that trace back to Leonardo da Vinci, if not earlier.

An overt opportunity

By recognizing that the traditional resume no longer supports modern hiring, it becomes possible to reimagine a process that enables us to see beyond the page. By acknowledging the limitations we’re putting on candidates, it becomes possible to reconsider what we’re looking to learn about job seekers.

If the point of a resume is to provide a summary of professional experience and achievements, why not allow the candidate to speak for themselves and show us who they really are, personality and all?

We have the technology to facilitate all this and more.

The hard part is breaking away from the “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mindset.

But if there’s ever been a moment in history when the world is ripe for innovation, it is now as we start to emerge from life under pandemic conditions.

We’re already starting to see it happen, too.

The New York Times recently wrote about the YOLO economy, where candidates are demanding change, spurring the call to return to the office and finding new jobs that suit their preferences.

And part of that change involves how we hire – candidates want a process that promotes better communication, which includes the chance to be heard.

Companies who don’t recognize this may lose out on top talent.

An idea for what’s next

It would be naïve to think the resume will get replaced overnight – hundreds of years of usage indicate otherwise.

That said, we have the chance to expand it, to make it more than a static document. We need to read not only between the lines but also off the page.

Hiring isn’t about how good they look on paper (or, in contemporary parlance, inside the ATS). We want to hire people, not resumes, which means we need to build a hiring strategy that helps us get to know candidates earlier on in the process.

Video is one such tool, having proved its value repeatedly over the last year and a half.

As a medium, it can fit at various stages in the recruiting process, complementing or even supplanting the resume entirely. Video resumes have existed for several years, as have video interviews.

More recently, we’ve seen the rise of video screening, a shorter, snappier use of video that frees up hours otherwise spent conducting phone calls to candidates.

That last bit is significant because it begs the question, why do those phone calls exist? And the answer is: to get the information not captured by the resume.

It’s time we stop having candidates tell us who they are and let them show us instead – which research indicates is what they want from the process.

Let’s do better and put candidates front, center and on screen.

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