For years the recruitment and human resources industry has been saying the future is video.
A lot of focus was on isolated use of video throughout the recruitment journey: things like video CV’s, virtual tours of workplaces to put on your company website, performance management and training videos. Video was most certainly not hard coded into the DNA of hiring, and it was mostly used as a creative embellishment to existing products or features.
Post-pandemic, of course, everything has changed, and video has quickly become an essential facet in day to day business operations (consider the 1.7 million daily users of Zoom in November 2020), as well as becoming a key part in sourcing, vetting, interviewing and onboarding staff in almost every major job sector in the UK.
Video has now become an essential partnership service in the recruitment environment - they’re ideal for the mobile generation, they’re accessible and engaging and they’re a crucial component of storytelling, both from a candidate and a client’s perspective. They are here to stay, and you have to learn how to utilise it to the best of your ability. Video has moved from creative outlier to industry expectation.
As the country lurches slowly towards a soft reopening, and hiring confidence starts to rise again, will we see video slide back into the shadows of recruitment? Far from it.
The challenge now is how best to import video into your hiring strategy and what to discard as workplaces reopen: it’s all about building a form of video-based communications into your human resource culture that augments certain parts of your business, your brand, or your staffing procedure.
We urge every business leader looking at bringing talent to your firm to critically pull apart every level in your recruitment lifecycle and assess whether or not video would better that process.
Sourcing
The first hurdle in recruitment is, of course, sourcing the right talent from your candidate pool. Whether or not you have a well curated network of potential candidates, or whether you’re leaning on a recruiter to attack and administer job ads via major jobs boards, the vast majority of recruitment strategy at this stage is focussed around advertisement, outreach, and administration of your job into networks and communities.
At this stage, video isn’t necessarily involved in advertisement but it is a vital component of branding and building company purpose and value. A vast percentage of candidates will research your brand and look out specifically for brand engagement and curation of content online, especially on social media. Even though video at this stage isn’t directly involved in recruitment, it is an essential marketing tool that will and can impress and inspire candidates.
Vetting and Selection
Selecting your shortlist can be a laborious but rewarding affair, and once you’ve selected your shortlist, video can be used as a much more engaging, personal “invitation to interview”.
Interview
Video has been incredibly effective in making interviews safe, personal and easy to access during the pandemic. There have been guides written to prepare candidates for making a great first impression via video, and companies like Zoom have gone from tech outliers to mainstream communications stalwarts. However, video interviewing is still limited - there are still elements of rapport gauging, trust building and conversational ice breaking that only a face to face meeting can give.
Looking to our near future, having video interviewing in your repertoire will be a vital tool, but if you’re still unsure about how to use it, look at setting the right expectation for your candidates. You’ll find your use of video interviewing will be determined for you, for example:
If you’re holding multiple stage interviews primarily for local or national candidates, (and the closer we move to reopening, the easier this will be) see if your candidate can hold both video and in person interviews. The fact you have flexibility to offer both, or either, means there’s a much fairer, more equitable relationship built from day one.
If you’re hiring internationally, video is now your friend, and as the systems of scheduling and planning are now so ingrained and accessible your candidate can be well supported throughout.
Follow Up Interview / Job Offer
Although it seems counter intuitive, this is actually one of the most important areas where video can make the difference - use video to make personalised introductions to the company, welcoming them to the team and better describing your onboarding process.
Negotiation and dealing with Counter Offers
Video may play a part at this critical juncture in the recruitment process, but sometimes less is more. If you have a recruitment partner working with you they will more than likely take the lead in discussing terms and offers. When candidates are often doing this within their workplace, discreet video calls from home, or out of hours, is key in making them feel comfortable throughout the process and keeping the personal touch.
Acceptance and Onboarding
If you still aim to have remote teams, or some sort of hybrid workplace, remote onboarding will incorporate video at almost every stage. From team welcomes to virtual lunches, quizzes, introductions to processes and programmes, training days and more.
Although many companies will not incorporate video at every stage of the recruitment funnel, video use has moved so far away from just creative additions to CV’s it’s now a recruitment mainstay.
Video gives you a place to improve your recruitment branding, it adds a dimension to your onboarding that incorporates modern expectations and encourages your candidates to be communicative, even as we still fight with the pandemic.