We're fortunate that in this day and age, there are lots of tools we can use that will help us conduct video interviews and even hire online. Even better, almost all of us have the necessary technology in our home office or our pockets to do just that.
Recent years have seen a proliferation of technology with Skype being the first to be really widely adopted. In 2011 Microsoft boughtSkypeand has been incorporating the technology into their own offering since, first with Skype for Business and then withMicrosoft Teams.
Other widely used video technologies include Hangouts by Google, Jabber by Cisco and even Uber has UberConference. All these tools have similar functionalities and are excellent ways to video conference or have video interviews when in-person job interviews aren't possible.
If your business or your employees don't have access to these platforms there are other ways. We're all now walking around with video conferencing capability in our pockets in the form ofWhatsAppvideo andFacetime on iPhone.
Some of these have free versions, that will work for a couple of people, but in the long run, you might need to pay for richer features like screen sharing and multiple attendees.
Amongst the biggest names across the corporate space are specialists, likeZoomandBluejeans.
For around �10-15 per month you can get set up quickly with these services and begin video interviewing or conferencing as soon as needed.
Video interviewing during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic
As a show of solidarity bothMicrosoftandGooglehave both recently announced that their enterprise versions of their software will be free to use for an extended period while unprecedented levels of people are working from home.
Video interviews are an incredibly effective way of maintaining hiring processes during improving candidate engagement and retaining a high quality of hire during this time. All the while ensuring you don't lose out on any talent you had lined up to interview, or disturb hiring plans you had planned in the near future.
If your company is unsure of how to set up video interviews or video hiring procedures please do get in touch, we'd be happy to advise over the phone, email or of course a video call.
In Cpl, we're well used to using this technology for running video interviews, internal meetings and 1:1s with remote staff.
Even without the current imperative for social distancing, they can be an extremely powerful tool to:
- Avoid costly travel
- Keep distributed teams connected
- Ask quick questions to and keep up engagement with remote colleagues
Within Cpl we use Microsoft Teams as it comes with lots of other benefits, from file sharing and chat to cool features like a secretary bot to help you find good times for meetings. It's not restricted to internal communications either which allows us, or your business, to add external parties to a conversation also.
This is particularly useful when holding interviews or meetings with candidates/clients as there is nothing for them to install on their laptops, and simply an app on their mobile.