Over the last week, we’ve been focusing a lot on our upcoming #rcnvs Video event, and it’s been a real eye opener. We did a quick interview with the event sponsor, The SeeV, that you can find here. I remember 5 or 6 years ago, everyone was talking about video CVs and general use of video within the recruitment process. And then nothing really happened. Yes, the market took an economic kicking a few years back, but the main reason for video going off radar to a certain extent has been the rise of Social, and now Mobile. You see, this industry can only ever really deal with 1 or maybe 2 major changes at anyone time. We’re simple like that. At the time that video should have been making a second coming, stronger and more mature, a lot like digital recruitment did, social came along, quickly followed by mobile and video was no longer the new and shinny.
However, the video in recruitment market is coming back strong. Most industry innovations are very similar in the way they come to market. Most start with a ton of money behind them, promising to take over the recruitment market, then they realise the market isn’t ready for them, the products fail to deliver and they then disappear into the background. The good ones carry on working on their product until the candidate market catches up with them, and they come back stronger and make a huge impact. Look at the job boards, who went through exactly that process.
Now, I don’t think SoMo will go that way, as they’re both candidate driven trends and to be honest, I think WE need to catch-up with candidate market, rather than the other way around. But I do believe the rise of SoMo recruiting can help fuel the growth of video in recruitment and this is why :
- Tools like Skype have made it very easy to video interview someone from half way around the world and we’re getting used to being in front of a camera during our job search.
- Recent research from our friends at 4Mat showed that the most viewed content on one of their clients mobile sites was, drum roll, video. It makes sense. Even with the latest iPhone, readying text on a mobile isn’t a nice experience. Watching video is a lot easier, so it should be obvious that people would rather consume video than text on a mobile site.
- And this is nothing to do with SoMo, but major issue 5 years ago was that people in the UK were uncomfortable creating video CVs or sitting video screening, but it’s an employer driven market now and the candidate that would have turned their noses up at such a process before, can ill afford to now.
Jamie, I couldn’t agree more, social and then mobile have taken the limelight from video as the most current innovations in recruitment, but they are complimentary rather than in competition. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets has meant that not only are candidates, passive as well as active, reachable wherever they are 24/7 through social and mobile but the use of mobile-friendly video will have far greater impact, and the candidate themself can use high quality video to make themself stand out. See this example I found today on Twitter from a Spanish pastry chef (if anyone wants me to translate from Catalan into English I am happy to do so!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70iSEMNVE_M
Really good post Jamie, as you know Tazio has been around for a couple of years, working away in the background developing our digital interview platform.
Last year everyone I spoke to told me that video recruitment was the way forward, but not just yet! I\’m pleased to say we\’ve seen a big increase in interest over the last couple of months, so I\’m sure the industry is starting to move video interviews up their agendas.
In terms of SoMo and Mobile, this is something we\’ve been working on and will be shortly launching our own iPhone, iPad and Android apps, along with the ability to post video interview invites directly to social media sites as well careers sites and job boards.
Tom