According to Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, more than 25 percent of the content that workers view each day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio by 2013.

As of this past February, emarketer.com ranked YouTube as the fifth-most popular website in the United States, eclipsed only by the likes of Google (who owns YouTube), Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Video, combined with the Internet, is a game-changer for recruiting. Used together they create a better candidate experience and raise the likelihood of a better hire. They also enrich recruiters by giving them a much deeper perspective on a candidate, in less time, than has ever been possible.

Video is particularly attractive to Gen Y — those young people between 20 and 29 who total about 70 million people. They are avid users of video and expect to be marketed to, taught, entertained, and recruited by video. Go to an Apple store and watch what young folks are doing: watching videos or movies or looking at pictures using the Internet. I rarely see any of them reading an article or an online newspaper.

They have been raised on television and those in the 25 to 34 age group watch more than 140 hours of it each quarter. The percentage of people watching videos and movies on the Internet has nearly doubled since 2006 and is now over 60% of all Internet users.

Some organizations are already leveraging the Internet and video to give them a competitive edge in reaching the millions of people who regularly use such sites as YouTube and Hulu.

Here is how they are doing it:

To showcase their company
They are creating career sites that are heavy with short videos featuring tours of the company, interviews with executives, candid chats with employees, and day-in-the-life scenarios of what people in particular positions do all day. They may include videos about the local area or videos that have been made by news agencies about the company. Examples of excellent career sites that contain video include those of KPMG, Deloitte, and Whirlpool. These have all won awards for excellence based on the success they have had in recruiting the talent they need using their career site. Companies such as RecruitTV and Thinktalk provide the expertise and service to help you produce these kinds of videos.

An interactive, video-based website is the core requirement for employment branding and may be the single best thing you can do to improve your success in attracting and hiring the people you want.

To post or distribute jobs
It is now possible to make a short video specifically describing a particular position, and then use that video instead of the usual written description. In London, three career magazines now provide this as an alternative to the written word. A Twitter-like application called 12Seconds allows you to make, yep, you got it, a 12-second video about a job and distribute it to a group of followers.

Monster Canada allows you to insert a streaming video into any job posting. And climber.com posts your video job description focused on Gen Y candidates to 45 different video sharing sites.

To hold career fairs
Virtual career fairs have been around for a while, mostly focused on college recruiting. CollegeGrad.com offers this type of virtual careers fair. For a broader audience CareerBuilder, Unisfair, and InXpo. A virtual career fair has much greater reach than a physical one and allows candidates to learn more about the positions you have and your organization. They are cost-effective ways to reach out to a broad geographical slice of people, quickly.

To do targeted marketing
Advanced and emerging uses of video include, for example, having your job video display when a person goes to a particular website or webpage. All clicks on your job display are tracked so that you can see who and how many show interest. This information will allow you to narrow down the sites where you display the ads, improve the content of the videos, and control costs.

Product marketers have used similar technology for a while and are now making it available for recruiting. As this technology matures, it will be possible to greatly reduce the number of unqualified applicants by limiting who actually sees a job ad.

To interview candidates
Interviewing candidates by streaming video is becoming more popular now that more than 60% of Americans have broadband access from their homes. With a simple webcam and a decent Internet connection using Skype, a recruiter or hiring manager or both together can interview a candidate from anywhere. This lowers costs and time to offer and provides a candidate and the hiring authorities an experience that is often as good as if not better than a face-to-face appearance.

Many companies offer video interviewing including Greenjobinterview.com, Clooks.com, and Hirevue.com.

For assessment and screening
A final way that video is being used is in candidate assessment. By creating scenarios and games that stimulate real-world experiences, recruiters can gain insight into how people would potentially react to them. These job simulations have been used by the U.S. Army and by retail stores intent on seeing how potential sales associates might respond to different customer problems. The U.S. State Department has recently started using a game to assess potential Foreign Service officers. It is called American Diplomat and recreates many of the scenes and issues a diplomat may encounter.

Another aspect of assessment is the self-assessment that candidates make when they actually see what it is like to do a particular job. Shaker Consulting does a good job of creating validated job previews that help candidates self-assess, as well as help recruiters and hiring managers.

Video is rapidly becoming core to recruiting success. Organizations that do not start to build video into every aspect of talent acquisition will find that they are at a competitive disadvantage, especially with college students and younger experienced hires. This is the age of video and we all need to learn to use it better.

We rely more and more on pictures, graphics, and videos to display data, deliver the news, give us instructions, and keep us up-to-date with our families. The facts are amazing. Using Quantcast as my source, here is a rough idea of what’s going on. The online version of the New York Times, for example, has a monthly readership that averages about 14 million people in the United States. And that’s the largest readership of any print media I could find. The online Wall Street Journal does a paltry 4 million and even the prestigious Economist does only 3 million globally and most are seeing declining readership.

On the other hand, YouTube averages about 71 million viewers monthly — just in the U.S. And its rivals are also doing well and growing. Veoh does about 23 million, Hulu about 19 million, and Break about 15 million globally.

This indicates a decisive trend: more and more of us are getting information and education from video, rather than from words – whether in print or online.

We have already seen video slowly gaining in popularity and importance in recruiting. All top-tier career sites incorporate both pictures and video. Usually the videos are of employees talking about their jobs, but some include campus tours or chats with the CEO or a hiring manager. Many recruiters have received a video resume, and chat rooms have buzzed with concerns over the legality of such resumes and whether they should be accepted.

I don’t believe there is any serious legal issue in using video resumes, as long as your organization has a policy about how they are used. They are no more discriminatory than a face-to-face interview and may actually help to showcase communication skills and other positive traits. They can speed up the pre-screening process and may even eliminate the need for the number of interviews we subject candidates to.

Younger candidates, who are just entering the job market, may prefer to create a video resume as it reflects the media with which they are most comfortable. I can also easily imagine a time when the face-to-face interview is replaced with a live, virtual interview, perhaps with the hiring manger and several others also present virtually. The use of video lowers costs, expands the number of people who can participate in an interview, allows asynchronous viewing, and makes it more convenient for a candidate.

Here are just four of the ways organizations are using video.

1. Branding and position promotion. Many organizations are including videos that showcase the organization or promote a specific job or group of jobs to prospective candidates. For example, KPMG, Starbucks, and Nike all incorporate at least one video on their careers’ homepage. Many other organizations include clips of chats with employees or even take you on a guided tour of the company, as does Tivo. Just as the Internet allowed sites such as Amazon to provide more product information and user ratings, candidates are now starting to expect the same from career sites. The practice of incorporating videos about the organization and about available positions will expand over the next few years as candidates expect a much higher level of information and awareness than they did even two years ago. Several companies produce these types of videos. One is a Dutch company, C-Looks, which is able to provide videos for a variety of purposes, including promotion. Another is RecruiTV, which allows you to make and embed videos in your career site. Still another in this expanding arena is Vipe, an organization that serves both the corporate marketing effort as well as the candidate.
2. Screening or interviewing candidates. Another growing use of video is to screen candidates. Sites such as InterviewStudio and FaceHire allow a recruiter to set up an online interview easily. InterviewStudio was founded by Colleen Aylward who is the author of a fabulous white paper that I recommend you download a video called “Unmuddying the Waters.” Here is an example of a tool that allows a recruiter to video chat with a candidate. Candidate screening via Skype or other webcam service seems to be inevitable and a great way to expand the limited capabilities of a telephone.
3. Resumes. The practice of candidates submitting their resumes as video clips is just beginning. From as far back as the first CD/ROMS, candidates have been intrigued by the idea of submitting their resume in a video format. Video has advantages – it allows candidates to show their communication skills and it is often easier for a candidate to be expressive about past achievements when telling a story to a camera. Although these are not a substitute for an interview, they are a way to pre-screen candidates and develop a more complete picture than one gets from a written resume. If you are doing a lot of college hiring or are looking for entry-level people, the video resume may be a good way to differentiate candidates and a way to get more qualified people to apply. Many younger people who lack in-depth experience but feel they have other qualities might rather put together a short video than write a resume. The Dutch site C-Looks allows candidates to easily make their own short resume using a webcam. John Younger, President and Founder of Accolo, a San Francisco-Based RPO provider, says, “While I don’t think videos designed to replace a complete resume will ever take off, short videos where a candidate answers one or two particular questions will become very popular and useful.”
4. Outplacement. Videos are a wonderful gift to outgoing employees as part of their severance package. A creative organization could provide the tools and coaching to help each person create a video summary of their experience and capabilities that could be circulated to organizations that are hiring. A copy could be given to the employee to use on their website or as part of en email job-seeking campaign. Once again, C-Looks provides this service as well.

Over the next few years, all recruiters will come to embrace and more effectively use video to brand, inform candidates, receive resumes, provide information to candidates and hiring managers, and provide onboarding for new employees. Are you ready to join?

Your Views on Video Resumes
It’s a question we see often on ERE discussion boards … are video resumes “just a trend?” Dianne Pierrot is looking for feedback that might be helpful for candidates rather than employers. After reading several posts on this topic, I think any vendor selling video resumes might be in trouble. Jeff Altman sums up the views of others when he writes “DON’T DO IT.” Jeff, Pam Claughton, and David Rees warn that video resumes can be dangerous for both candidates and employers. Not only are they time-consuming, but they expose candidates to unnecessary biases and leave employers at risk for violating EEO compliance. At HP, David Rees and other recruiters conducted all interviews over the phone to “reduce the influence of looks, dress, and the possibility that a disability might influence the decision.” On a more positive note, Paul Davenport feels the video can help employers identify skill sets for certain job roles such as field sales and marketing.

Monday’s Question of the Day
After reading a list of 10 ways to keep recruiting costs down, I wanted to hear what ERE members are doing in today’s economy to cut costs. Michael Finnell argues that now more than ever, recruiting goals need to align with overall business goals. Recruiters need to act more as consultants and work with hiring managers rather than outsource entire recruiting functions. Sound like a need for workforce planning during these tough times? Michael also recommends negotiating with your job boards for a better rate, and requesting referral fees from recruiting firms to use in your recruitment budget. Sounds like Rosita Cruz would agree with Michael, and offers some specific tips to cut costs including cutting benefits, turning to virtual workplaces, and automating phone messages. Josh Letourneau offers some comic relief on a sensitive topic and Michael Finnell closes his post with some encouragement: “Whatever you do, don’t give up!”

Should Corporate Recruiters Share Silver Medalists with Other Companies?
Sean Rehder thinks so. It can build strong relationships, and ties into an earlier ERE discussion about today’s recruiting field being more open than in the past. After a few heated posts and a little miscommunication, I think we found consensus … if a resume does not come from a TPR, “sure” — forward away. However, if a resume comes from a TPR, it is bad policy for a corporate recruiter to forward without the consent of the recruiter, and the recruiter who sent the resume is entitled to a fee. Rebecca DeBoer had a recent situation where her resume was passed over to another department and she was not informed. She asks, “why do people think our business is not for profit and that our bills are less at the end of the month than other businesss?”

Jobless Rate in CA: 7.7%
Maureen Sharib posts the “highest statewide unemployment rate since March 1996.” Danielle Canon brings the discussion to another level when asking how many of these individuals actually have degrees. Tessa Adler steps up to the plate by reaching out to the State Development Department to find out. They thought the question was very relevant and will provide us an update through Tessa soon. Although Jeff Altman argues that many of these jobs affect teachers, government workers, and manufacturing, Tessa learned that the mortgage and financial industries have been hit the hardest … not a huge surprise. In addition, CNAs and home workers have been heavily affected in California as nursing homes were losing money. One question Maureen brought up that I have also heard several times … is this recession different from past recessions because it is now impacting government hiring? What do you think?

Job Boards
Ah…the inevitable question of the week…what job boards are best? Dan Vaughn is joining a large insurance firm and wants to know what job boards will bring results in his industry. Are Monster and CareerBuilder worth it? Tim Davis and Scott Wilde recommend www.greatinsurancejobs.com. Scott also uses CareerBuilder. Denise Street-Roth is less enthusiastic about CareerBuilder and Monster. She has had success with closer.net but advises Dan to look beyond job boards. She contacts insurance-training schools, networks with insurance professionals and even real estate lawyers, professionals, and mortgage brokers. Good luck, Dan! Keep us posted….

Now what do you do?

Lucky for you, there’s no shortage of good choices. (Alas, there’s also plenty of bad ones, too, not to mention the CEO’s wedding videographer neighbor.). Large employers with big budgets that work with a full service recruitment advertising firm can simply turn the job over to the professionals there. But when that’s not an option, consider the job boards. In the last year, CareerBuilder (profile; site), Monster (profile; site) and others have joined Jobing.com (profile; site) in offering video branding services.

“Our clients told us they want video, but they needed help getting them done,” says Jason Ferrara, vice president of corporate marketing for CareerBuilder.com, explaining the company’s decision to launch a video service last year.

When it launched Video BrandBuilder in September 2006, CareerBuilder became the first major national job board to offer employers a complete video production service. But it certainly wasn’t the first job board to offer the service. To whom that distinction belongs is not clear; however, Jobing.com certainly has a strong claim to the distinction. The fast-growing regional job site began creating employer videos back in 2001 when they were produced by whoever on the (then) 10-person staff could work the handheld camera, including CEO and founder Aaron Matos.

Today, Jobing has what may be the largest library of employment videos of any job board in the world. Joe Cockrell, director of public relations, told us Jobing has 10,000 employer videos online plus another 15,000 community videos covering topics from “How To Tie A Necktie” to a feature on the Denver Urban League that was a finalist for a Webby in the online video category.

The employer videos are just what they sound like — employer branding videos that are part of Jobing’s subscription package. The community videos are produced by staff videographers in every one of Jobing’s 18 offices.

“Video,” says Cockrell, “is a very powerful tool.”

You can’t go to a recruitment conference these days or read a recruitment site without hearing about the importance of employer branding videos. Monster’s Eva Bitteker, video product manager, said there are four main reasons for having an employer video: to attract quality candidates; to surmount or promote geography and facilities; to convey a company’s value and culture; and to reduce turnover by offering a preview of the job.

“Some companies,” she explained, “do videos to get fewer applicants. They are looking for fewer, but higher quality candidates. By giving them a realistic feel for the job they can eliminate (the unqualified and the less than committed) jobseekers.”

Monster’s service is the newest and priciest of the three job boards, starting around $20,000. Jobing’s service is the least expensive: About $1,000 for an employer not on a subscription plan. CareerBuilder, starting at $5,000, falls in the middle.

Here’s a look at the service offered by the three job boards:

CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder’s pricing starts at $5,000, but that’s a rock bottom cost and it’s easy to spend more. Larger employers may want two or more videos to use for different purposes.

For your money you get a production team that will meet with key stakeholders to gather information, write a script, scout the locations, shoot the video, and edit it to 60 or 90 seconds. The turn around time ranges upwards of two weeks. For companies with multilingual needs, videos can be produced in almost any language.

Jason Ferrara, corporate marketing VP, called the production “a real collaboration.” Involve the C-level people, Ferrara says (as if you could keep them away!). “We counsel them to be successful,” he tactfully explained, answering a question about those awful situations when the boss wants to do all the talking. “We try to educate the employer on what makes a good branding video,” Ferrara says. “Reflect on what the company’s goals are; what impression they want to make on jobseekers and to look at things from that perspective.”

But if the CEO decides wisely or not to be in the video, Ferrara adds, “it’s not up to us to be the police.”

The completed video is owned by the company, which can use it however it sees fit, including embedding it on the corporate career site and linking it to CareerBuilder job postings. CareerBuilder hosts the video and handles the technical details.

Jobing

The first of the job boards to offer a turnkey video branding solution, Jobing is the only one to have videographers and editors on staff. The company prefers photographers with TV news experience, because they are accustomed to sizing up a situation and working under deadline. That’s why, says Jobing’s PR director Joe Cockrell, an employer can have a video produced in under 48 hours. (He told us of an auto dealer who ordered a video in the morning and it was up and online, fully edited and approved, by the end of the day.)

The Jobing process begins with an outside sales rep who gathers all the basic employer information, including the goals and those ’special’ requirements, like who gets to go on camera and who doesn’t. The sales rep briefs the videographer who formulates a plan, then goes on site. By then, a story line is developed, the video shot, and the edited work submitted for approval.

“As an employer, you’re giving jobseekers a look inside your doors,” Cockrell says. “That’s what our production teams work with an employer to accomplish.”

For employers with regular hiring needs who have or become Jobing subscribers, the video is included in the price of the subscription, which is as low as $500 a month. Employers with casual hiring needs can buy a video at the $200 hourly rate. Cockrell says that even with a team on site and the post-production work, the cost can come in under $1,000 for a 60-90 second video. At that price, even small employers can afford to have a video made and many do. One look at a Jobing site and you’ll see veterinary hospitals, trucking firms, municipalities, and security firms among such national firms as Wells Fargo and Citibank.

Employers own the video and can embed it on their career site and link to it from job postings, regardless of where they may run. Cockrell told us that some employers burn CDs of their video to use at job fairs and other events.

Monster

With a price tag of $20,000 or more, Monster’s video service is for the bigger employer with competitive or special needs. Monster partners with MadDash E-Media (profile; site) for video production and hosting services. Its teams are trained not only in videography, but are also knowledgeable about privacy and, of special concern to hospitals, patient confidentiality.

The MadDash teams can spend up to a couple of days at an employer site on a shoot, getting footage that can be edited to create multiple videos or to freshen an aging one. A producer meets with the client and stakeholders to scope out the location, participants, and the story the video will tell. The video team, which can number two, three, or more depending on the situation, put together the final edit.

Unlike the CareerBuilder and Jobing videos, those produced by MadDash are not completely owned by the employer. The employer has unlimited use of the video for two years, after which it’s taken down from the MadDash servers where the video is hosted.

Perhaps because of the cost and the time limit, videos on Monster tend to be more limited in number and dominated by the largest companies like AstraZeneca, Home Depot, and UPS. Of course a company doesn’t have to use Monster’s production service; independently produced videos can be used.

Bitteker, Monster’s video product manager, suggested that HR departments seek to have other departments share the cost of video production. “Videos can be used in a bigger campaign by the company. It’s not just an HR function, but a marketing function for the whole company,” she says.

The slickly designed site launched a few weeks ago with a handful of employers. More are to be added when the site officially opens up to employers, who, like the jobseekers, can also post videos to supplement traditional job postings.

There’s nothing especially remarkable about FutureResume. CareerBuilder has been offering video resumes for more than a year. FutureResume takes it a further step, making the video the main attraction, rather than an additional element. Even though jobseekers can post a “paper” resume and skip the video, they’ll be discouraged by the $14.95 monthly fee FutureResume will begin to charge next year.

“Candidates who post on FutureResume.com are serious job seekers,” says co-founder and CEO Theo Rokos. “They’ll go to the trouble of putting their best foot forward in a video introduction, plus, after January 1, they’re willing to invest a small fee to stand out from the crowd on job boards. Employers will see the difference.”

FutureResume will accept do-it-yourself candidate and employer videos. Jobseekers in the Los Angeles area (the company is headquartered in Southern California’s Newport Beach) can come in to the FutureResume office to have a video shot there for $100. Employers can have Future Resume make a video for them for $500, plus monthly posting charges.

Brothers Theo and Greg Rokos founded FutureResume this year, after careers in sales and executive search respectively.

If you have been viewing more video resumes (or, what I like to call “vesumes”) recently, then you are aware of a growing trend that is replacing the standard 8 1/2-by-11-inch paper resume. And, with the speed of technology in our future, you are sure to see more.

Since I’m located in Hawaii, I have viewed a number of resumes as a part of my candidate searches, and it gives me a better picture of the candidate. Here is my advice on the 10 things that make a good video resume.

1. Video Quality. Just like a paper resume, presentation and quality are important, so attention to detail means a lot. A good-quality video resume can range from something that someone shot at home on an old camcorder to a professionally-shot video that could have been paid for, not unlike a resume writing service. These productions are much better and come with clear pictures, excellent sound quality, and an overall professional look.
2. Appearance. Did the person invest time and effort in making his or her vesume instead of shooting the entire video in one sitting and at one location?
3. Language and Business Acumen. Does the person on the video speak clearly and with the knowledge and business acumen that grabs your attention?
4. Substance. With most good vesumes, you will have the following: an introduction, objectives, history, knowledge or special skills, education, and a summary. It won’t always come out exactly in this order, or you may be missing some of it.
5. Creativity. Perhaps the best thing about a vesume is the creativity that you see with what may otherwise be a standard candidate on paper. I like to see creativity because, generally speaking, if it gets your attention, it will get the client’s or hiring manager’s attention as well.
6. Background. You will notice a lot about the quality of the video and often something about the person just based on the background or location.
7. Character. My favorite part of viewing these videos is that it shows the person’s character and that may play a significant role in a good fit. It is a great way for candidates to show their stuff and be creative in the process.
8. Editing. Review it for mistakes, errors, accuracy, and content. If you are new to reviewing vesumes, you can miss critical errors like something in the background or something that was said or was not said. So, if you are new to watching video resumes, watch them a couple of times. It will be clear after watching it more than once whether the candidate edited the video for content and clarity.
9. References. One of the best vesumes I have reviewed actually had three very credible and desirable references at the end of it. It went a long way toward presenting a high-quality candidate.
10. Length. The best video resumes are not epics. I like three to five minutes in length.

Recently, I wrote about video resumes and their somewhat dubious value to recruiters. But a recent conversation with John Sumser has prompted me to expand on what I wrote, since maybe video resumes need a second look.

In my earlier commentary, I said I was unclear about anyone’s motivation for creating a video resume, given that the resume is often unflattering to the candidate. These resumes are amateur videos, usually produced without any script or editing and are far from the slickly produced ads for politicians. The overall effect can be the opposite of what a candidate intends; instead of impressing recruiters, a candidate may turn them off. Then again, well-produced video resumes don’t necessarily work either. (Just ask John Kerry.)

But video resumes are likely to grow in popularity, given their appeal to the crowd that frequents sites like MyFace, SpacedOutBook, etc. A video resume is the antithesis of a paper resume. And what is a paper resume but a document that has been stripped of all personality and is the fa?ade the candidate presents in hopes of ensuring that a search engine will lock on to the key words and move them to the top of the list.

When jobs are scarce, candidates make every effort to hide any sign they don’t fit. Show your authentic self, quirks and all, and you risk being summarily rejected. When jobs are plentiful, as they are now and are likely to be for a while, candidates know they are in the driver’s seat.

I’m reminded of the late ’90s when we last saw such a situation. At the time, a Fortune cover story featured a candidate who demanded as a hiring condition that his employer give him a place to bring his pet parrot to work. Problems ensued: the parrot didn’t like the employee spending time on the phone and would start screaming and biting. And it used the employee’s desk as a bathroom. Apparently it was worth it to the company; desperate times call for desperate measures.

The recession of 2000 to 2002 erased most employers’ memories of those days, given how candidates are generally treated today. So much of hiring resembles a game of liars’ poker, with each side trying to figure out what the other is doing while hiding some information about themselves.

Half of all resumes are estimated to contain some false information or outright lies. Employers routinely hide embarrassing facts about their organization or anything they consider has the potential to turn off a prospective employee. Candidates tolerate this when they have no choice, but with demand for candidates exceeding supply there’s no need for them to put up with it.

Enter the video resume: a manifestation of all that a candidate is. It would admittedly be easier for recruiters if candidates could just be slotted into nice little boxes and we didn’t have to deal with any outliers, but that is not going to happen.

Like it or not, we need to accept the new reality. That doesn’t mean we have to relinquish all control. The recommendations I made in my last article, such as demanding a transcript of a video resume, still apply. Our hiring processes will have to adapt to include these and that will not be easy. Creativity is not encouraged or supported by our systems.

I recall a visit to a resume-processing vendor who showed me a resume submitted for a marketing job at P&G. The resume resembled a box of Tide. It literally was a three-dimensional box. The vendor had no idea what to do with it. I assume the candidate never even made it into the hiring process. This is an extreme example, but the point is that we have virtually no capability to deal with anything that’s outside some very narrow boundaries.

This is exactly what we confront with video resumes today. Hiring is still very much a structured process and we have to make video resumes work within those confines. There are technologies emerging to address this need.

HireVue is one company that has launched a service that eliminates many of the barriers to using video resumes. Their process provides structure by limiting candidates to addressing specific questions, allowing for comparisons across candidates, and preserving a permanent record of the results. The service is really more of a video interview, but then a video resume is basically just an interview as well, with no structure. HireVue’s service gives the recruiter much more control, as well as an archive to help with in an audit.

Other solutions are also emerging. PeopleScreening gives candidates the ability to create a structured video resume and a virtual-interview wizard that walks job seekers through the most common interview questions. Once the job seeker completes the process, they can distribute both an attached resume and the video resume link directly from the PeopleScreening website. There’s even a teleprompter.

Video resumes will only gain in popularity. They may help employers hire better and have other benefits as well. Knowing that candidates are more than the sum of their work experience and education could even expand diversity to where it actually has some real relevance.

We may laugh at what many video resumes show today, but they will improve as standards develop as to what’s acceptable and technologies evolve to help staffing deal with them, as is already happening. What is certain is that they are here to stay.

I recently became aware of a recruiting innovation: the online video resume. The first site offering these is RecruiTV. Video resumes have been around for decades but had little popularity because of the logistics of creating, distributing, and viewing them.

However, now anyone can get a webcam for under $50. Distributing videos online is simple, so video resumes are going mainstream. While it sounds like an interesting idea, their value is somewhat questionable and in fact, could be downright detrimental to the recruiting process.

Defining the Video Resume

While a video resume introduces applicants on camera, the value such visual imagery adds is debatable. A text resume allows for specific pieces of information to be parsed out and compared across candidates. When the information is delivered verbally, recruiters need to glean the details themselves.

This can be tedious and time-consuming given that there’s no way to jump between sections of the “resume.” I also doubt that many recruiters are eager to watch hours of amateur video. Candidates often demonstrate an acute case of verbal diarrhea, carrying on endlessly in rambling sentences that would test the patience of Job.

Instead, the video resume could be used to augment a text resume since it may provide certain other information about the individual that can’t be assessed from a text resume. For example, an individual may be able to demonstrate exceptional communication skills.

Or a video resume may help where a candidate wants to demonstrate a specific skill that cannot be described well in text. This may only be relevant to an extremely limited number of occupations (no prizes for guessing what those are). In one case, a candidate applying for jobs at political lobbying firms created a political ad, featuring himself. That’s creative but it’s hard to envision equivalents for jobs in accounting, HR, engineering, or law.

Candidates wanting to differentiate themselves by showing some creativity in their presentations may find this quite a challenge since creativity isn’t an innate or easily acquired skill.

A casual review of available video resumes shows that creativity most frequently means some attempt at humor. Humor works in a traditional advertisement, but applicants might come off looking foolish. Add in the fact that most people are not comfortable in front of a camera, and you begin to wonder why anyone would do it.

Recognizing the Pitfalls

Video resumes are being pitched as a unique way for candidates to market themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a useful device for employers. There isn’t any legislation or guidance around the use of video resumes, but the EEOC is already warning employers not to let any information related to race, gender, or disability affect hiring decisions.

Someone should enlighten the agency that most recruiters (in fact, most people) can, after reviewing a resume, partially describe a candidate’s demographic profile. But that doesn’t mean they let it influence their decisions.

If candidates get rejected based on their video resumes, it’s more likely because they came across as unprofessional or worse, as a dim bulb because of their attempts at creativity.

Nonetheless, this is an area of significant uncertainty today. We do not know if viewing an individual’s video resume makes them a “candidate” in the legal sense and it’s not likely to be known for a long time.

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. Given how easy it is to find out where someone has been on the Web, recruiters may want to use an anonymizer to mask their IP address before browsing through video resumes.

It wouldn’t hurt if video resumes included a transcript of the presenter’s speech. That could be kept along with other documents relating to a candidate and make a recruiter’s job much easier. Since that’s not the case today, anyone receiving a link to a video resume should demand it, or else be prepared to take detailed notes.

There’s also the technical limitation that there’s no way to download the files for archival or capture a video resume in an applicant tracking system. That would be unreasonable to expect, given how new the concept is, but it’s still a problem. This is not a minor issue, and in an audit, it could be impossible to justify selection decisions without the original video.

Since there are no standards for video resumes, candidates may end up revealing information they would never include on a text resume. Most candidates (at least in this country) know not to mention personal details or things unrelated to their professional life on a resume. There’s a generally agreed upon structure that’s widely known and usually respected. But there’s no such limitation on video resumes. A candidate can say anything, and it would have to be included as part of their record.

Conclusion

For highly sought-after jobs, video resumes may help candidates distinguish themselves from the rest of the monkey troop.

But employers and recruiters need to consider the ramifications of accepting and viewing video resumes. If your business card doesn’t have a rabbit’s head, an elephant, or the Comedy Central logo, you might want to stay away from video resumes for now.

Frankly, these exist because the technology allows them to be created easily, not because they represent some great innovation or add anything to improve recruiting. Recruiting processes are designed to include highly structured elements to ensure consistency. Video resumes are, for now, at odds with the requirements of structured processes.

Due to the current explosion of online video sharing, it is inevitable that video resumes will make their way into your recruiting universe. Do you have the policies and procedures in place to deal with jobseekers’ non-traditional tools?

Just be glad we don’t have video job postings. But who knows what the future holds?

Corporations have been working hard to get us to buy their products and services for decades. Over the years, they have moved from print and billboards to television and movies.

They have learned to be sophisticated and fun. In fact, many of us email our friends funny and entertaining advertisements. Lots of people watch the Super Bowl just because of the commercials that corporations spend millions of dollars preparing.

Yet the only way an individual has had to brand themselves to a prospective employer is by creating a resume. And let’s face it: the resume is almost always a boring document that resembles the price sticker on a new car more than a promotional flyer. Lots of detail, but not much sizzle!

While we may embellish them from time to time or exaggerate the details of what we did, they are essentially a chronological record of our working lives, devoid of personal information that might make us more attractive to an employer.

The Internet has begun changing all of this. Over the past decade I have seen several organizations attempt to profitably provide a service to create and distribute video resumes.

All of these efforts slowly faded away for two reasons. First, they often did not understand how to make a video resume useful, compelling, and cost-effective. Some of the early ones showed candidates in a mock interview or, even worse, reading their resume. They were boring and way too long. Second, distribution was clumsy and slow. Candidates had to mail a CD-ROM to the recruiter or had to send it over the Internet with slow, dial-up connections.

A New Situation

With the advent of YouTube, cheap video cameras, and a sophisticated video-savvy worker, video resumes are now short, often funny, and to the point. If you type “video resume” in to YouTube you get several pages of them.

Some are clearly just spoofs and others are produced for people who are in the visual arts or music business. More and more are being made by people who are not in the entertainment business. Websites are reducing the number of words and adding more graphics, pictures, videos and live interviews.

A recent clip on YouTube shows interviews with a number of young people about how they react to wordy corporate websites. It seems clear to me that recruiters need to learn how to better sell their jobs using video and open up to the idea of video resumes.

Recently the use of video resumes has gained worldwide attention, after a video resume submitted to USB by Aleksy Vayner, a student at Yale University, was spread all over the Internet.

Some of the claims he made in the interview are suspect and much of it may have been a spoof. Yahoo! Video, on its Current Buzz site hosted by Conor Knighton, points out many of these claims.

However, the publicity surrounding Vayner has revived interest to the use of video resumes as a way to market and brand individuals seeking positions within competitive environments.

A few weeks ago, I was reading a blog written by Frank Mulligan, an executive recruiter and RPO leader in China. He referred to a service now offered by Wetjello that allows individuals to create video resumes and send links to prospective employers.

A simple Google search leads to numerous services that either help you make a video resume or provide a way to distribute your resume to employers. There are even job boards such as Virtual Career Agents that specialize in posting video resumes.

Here are a few thoughts on the use of video resumes:

• Video resumes may result in more applicants. Realize that if you are doing a lot of college hiring or are looking for entry-level people, the video resume may be a good way to differentiate candidates and a way to get more qualified people to apply. Many younger people who lack in-depth experience but feel they have other qualities might rather put together a short video than write a resume.
• Be clear on your website about your position on video resumes. If you think video resumes may be a way to improve your understanding of candidates’ abilities, let them know that. Give them some guidelines of length and what kind of content would be useful. Perhaps show a generic example. As this is new to lots of candidates, they would appreciate tips on what is helpful to you.
• Make the video interview something you initiate. Provide a list of two or three questions that you ask candidates to respond to via a video. This way you get them to show their verbal skills and creativity without the need to bring them in for an interview. By providing the list of questions, you ensure you will be comparing apples to apples as all the answers will be focused around the same issue.

John Younger, president and founder of Accolo, a San Francisco-based RPO provider, says, “While I don’t think videos designed to replace a complete resume will ever take off, short videos where a candidate answers one or two particular questions will become very popular and useful.”

If any of you accept or are using video resumes, I would love to talk to you or hear about your experiences and get your comments. Send your thoughts to kwheeler@glresources.com.

As I have frequently stressed in other articles, the Internet is quickly changing everything about recruiting. Video resumes, guided by thoughtful recruiters, can provide more depth and understanding of candidates at a lower cost than a face-to-face interview.