Having promoted and evangelized video recruitment to talent acquisition experts over the years, I recently found myself in front of an entirely new audience of… job coaches. Together with Aaltje Vincent, well known author, trainer and expert in HR and outplacement, we were invited to host an evening workshop organized by NOLOC (Dutch Association of job coaches) to introduce the participants to our world of video recruitment.
What does a job coach do? There are tens of thousands of job coaches in The Netherlands alone and they have a very important role to play. They help people to find a career that fits with their ambition, skills and passions. In order to do that they assess, coach, counsel and support in all areas related to finding a matching opportunity. Writing a CV? A job coach will help check and advise where to put emphasis. Doing an interview? A job coach will practice with you and provide feedback to help candidates get their message across.
Whereas the recruiter supports the employer, the job coach helps the candidates. They are two sides of the same coin of career match making. I do wonder if recruiters see job coaches as match makers from the dark side or if job coaches see recruiters as the agents of Sith (sorry for the Star Wars analogy). In any case, it is actually great to realize that in many situations both employers and candidates have a coach at their side.
Job coaches should obviously take an interest in the workings of recruitment since they are counselling candidates in the recruitment process. Therefor the topic of video recruitment made sense and was met with high interest of the participants. Prior to the evening all attendees had been invited to conduct a video interview. This resulted in the following feedback:
Although many interviews had room for improvement, it was great to see how much the group appreciated the feedback on their video interviews and how much they were also able to coach each other. You could really see that feedback and coaching is at the heart of the profession. It also made me realize that we have an ongoing responsibility to educate and prepare both candidates and their coaches. The participants had really benefitted from the content that we have in our platform and on our website to make sure that you can make the most of your interview.
The expression goes that “Practice makes Perfect”. In video interviews “perfect” is actually not the goal. It is important that candidates can show who they really are and be comfortable in being authentic. It is great to have enabled a group of job coaches to help their candidates even better with the practice that they had. My partner in crime at the evening, Aaltje Vincent, has made it an ongoing mission in her publications and trainings to ensure that job coaches are best equipped to help their candidates to shine.
HAPPY COACHING.
