7 Benefits of Video Interviews during Unprecedented Times
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Digital Republic hope you are keeping well in these very challenging times. No doubt you are currently dealing with a number of challenges, one of which is how to keep your team, operations or even company going and perform essential duties as well as take advantage of demand you still may be seeing from your customer base. As a result, you still may need to conduct important meetings or screen candidates for business-critical positions that you are unable to put on hold even though you are not in the office.
If you do still need to hire there are limited options you could employ, one of which is the phone interview but if you are thinking of making important recruitment this could be deemed suboptimal.
Fortunately, we live in an age where technology allows us to ‘press the flesh’ or ‘feel the cut of the job’ whilst not actually technically doing either and video interviewing has a number of benefits which is being taken advantage of by many employers at the moment;
- Safety
You are probably already self-isolating and understandably are probably loath to invite people onsite and risk the health of yourself or team. Key method companies such as Facebook have been using to overcome this health and safety issue is video conferencing.
- Time/Efficiency
Your in-tray is a mile long and using video interview method means you don’t have to arrange rooms or feel an obligation to spend extra time with candidates because you have invited them into the office. It is very easy to set up and it can be done anywhere assuming you have a laptop or mobile.
- Logistics
With planes grounded and most of the workforce population working from home, this presents major logistical issues to companies that video conferencing can overcome if set up correctly.
- Cost Efficiency
Hiring specialist talent can often involve flying candidates or managers into interview locations and taking up the time of people who could be generating important revenue. Video conferencing could be very useful to enhance cost efficiency.
- Data Protection
We live in a world where data security and protection has become a major issue for business leaders. Video conferencing provides a great way of screening potential talent without inviting strangers into your offices.
- Extra Screening Opportunity
It is often true that people are on the ‘best behaviour’ when interviewing and it can be difficult to assess their real value when going through the screening process. Apart from the questioning format, you can often spot signs that may give you a steer as to whether the person sitting in front of you is a credible potential employee such as whether they are taking the interview in an appropriate location, whether they are dressed appropriately or if they have the TV on!
- Increase Candidate Pipelines/Identify great talent
There are two certainties that we will see as a result of the current problems and they are that demand from your customers will return once the situation improves and there will be candidates on the market that would ordinarily not be available and video interviewing allows you to increase your pipelines of potential hires for business-critical roles now and to hire quickly when the economy returns to normal.
The main video conference facilities used are Zoom, Skype and Google Hangout but there are many more that our clients are using to keep their operations going. Check out the articles below if you want to learn more about the respective merits of the different platforms.
Contact us to find out more about what our clients are doing, how you can successfully apply video conferencing to your operations or just to learn more!
Some useful articles:
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-hangouts-vs-zoom?r=US&IR=T
https://www.trustradius.com/compare-products/google-hangouts-vs-skype-for-business
https://www.techradar.com/uk/best/best-video-conferencing-software
Originally posted by Richard Manso, Managing Director of Digital Republic.
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