By Ravi Krishnamurthy
Life online just got a bump. The Corona Pandemic has redefined many a thing and has forced us to relook at some basic tenets of the way we live and conduct our businesses. There is a new normal and there is no denying it. This new normal brings a new way of doing things. There is a reversal of sorts when it comes to the ratio of online vs offline, virtual vs real. The scale is decisively tilting towards a life which is going to be more “online”. Human supply chain management is certainly impacted. It is believed that the pre-pandemic trend of 1 out of every 7 getting hired online is going to change and reverse to at least 5 out of every 7 getting hired online. 85% of all hiring is going to be done online. And that changes a lot of things in recruitment.
Sourcing has been an impediment, an Achilles heel if you will in recruitment for ages now. It is an impediment because the rate of candidates getting selected is a mere 8 out of every 100 interviewed. Let us put this into perspective – here are some conservative numbers. A recruiter must roughly sift through 1600 resumes to shortlist 800 of them to be invited for an interview. 400 of such invited candidates respond. 200 of such people who respond commit to attend the scheduled interview. Only 100 turn up. And a mere 8 of the 100 interviewed candidates get selected. Simply put, to get 8 selects, a recruiter must have read through 1600 resumes, and contact 800 of them. We are not even talking about the effort in following up. There are several factors that play a part in the conundrum from correct job description to authentic information to job roles and compensation to copied and pasted resumes on job sites to distance to frustration to small pools of ‘available’ resources.
Usually, sourcing is limited to “Availability”. Which means, companies spend energies and resources only in sourcing candidates that are available – those who are located in a specific geographic area, in and around the companies’ places of work and those who are free of other engagements, “available” to take up the job offered. The availability quotient is a major contributor to the conundrum of the 8% hit rate. First it limits the source pool size to a geographic area and second to add to it, it misses out sorely on those candidates who are not ‘available’ on the scheduled day and at the time the interview is scheduled. Companies cannot afford to have recruitment drives eternally as it takes a considerable amount of effort and time and money.
All this is now compounded by the Corona Pandemic. It has simply driven people into the apparent safety of indoors. People are not ready to risk meetings because no one knows who a carrier of the virus is. This means, the numbers I have discussed above are depleted further.
The answer is online recruitment – from sourcing to interviewing to on job training. And as a consequence, Video resumes are going to be what word and pdf documents used to be. Here are some reasons why
They are easier – Video resumes are going to be a lot easier to deal with. It is easier to see a 2-minute video and understand something rather than reading 2 pages of text about it. Also, video resumes reveal much more than just copied and pasted “goals and objectives” “skills” and “strengths”. Video resumes reveal more than they hide unlike word and pdf documents.
They are faster – Video resumes eliminate the need for general elimination rounds like group discussion and basic communication evaluation which saves energies and monies spent in assessment and evaluation. Video resumes do what these rounds do resulting in faster turnaround time in the recruitment cycle and they are cost effective too
Authenticity – In a sea of resumes that are mostly copy + paste of resumes, finding an authentic self-composed resume of candidates are hard to find which makes the effort and time spent in sifting through them futile and ineffective. Video resumes provide for originality. They cannot be copied! Video resumes demand a certain amount of genuineness. Video resumes can help unmask some basic traits that are usually masked in text documents which makes it easy for the recruiter to make a more informed decision on whether to engage with the candidate any further.
Hit Rate – With video resumes, the hit rate of selection is going to be that much higher as only those candidates who are most likely selects are invited for interviews which increases the interview turn up rate as well because further rounds of interviews are going to be online video based interactions too. The problems of availability, distance and location are overcome to a large extent.
Video resumes connected to video-based recruitment events are going to be the new normal. The value they offer cannot be ignored. It has started and I see it growing by the day with more patrons adopting it. It is in my view only a matter of time before we see video resumes replacing the traditional text resumes. And it is going to be sooner than later.
