Recently, I decided to make a twist in my career and leave the company I was working at for almost 6 years, to join a start-up that operates in a totally different industry. For the last 5 years I have been focused on Customer Experience Management and Customer Care, becoming an expert in both subjects. My attention was largely on market strategy, KPI’s and how to use technology to improve the overall customer experience and to increase customer loyalty. I decided I wanted a bigger challenge, so I changed to the Recruitment industry. I joined a software company that offers both live and automated video interviews to be integrated into the hiring process of companies.
It turned out that at the end, the change was smaller than what I had initially thought, with regards to what the industry is looking to achieve. Previously, I was helping companies to improve their Customer Experience as well as their efficiency in their customer care process. Now I am helping them improve the Candidate Experience, as well as their efficiency in the recruitment process. It sounds pretty similar, doesn’t it?
A customer is to a sales person what a candidate is to a recruiter.
I came from, what I considered to be, a more mature industry in terms of providing service to the end consumer. It is great to see that the recruitment industry is now focusing, perhaps more than ever, on the Candidate Experience. Something that many companies didn’t care about in the past but they consider something they should put their efforts in today. At the end of the day, their candidates are their customers.
Companies now realise that candidates, like customers, are hyper connected and can spread positive or negative experiences faster than before. In an era where companies find it difficult to find the best talent, a candidate’s bad impression in the recruitment process could seriously hinder the organisations ability to hire the best of the best.
Video interviews give candidates the possibility to show more of themselves. Communication and interpersonal skills, empathy, self-confidence and creativity are, amongst the many skills, very difficult to evaluate on a phone interview, and impossible to ascertain by just looking at a resume. You are hiring “personas”. You need to use a more interactive way to find the best talent, faster in the process. Candidate’s time should also be valued. They will always react favourably to a company that has made good use of it with a live video interview as opposed to taking a day off of work to travel to an interview.
And of course, regardless of whether or not you use video interviews, don’t forget to contact the ones who didn’t make it to let them know they weren’t the best for this specific opportunity. You may need them in the near future…
