This week we finally have a client who has specifically asked for anything but written CVs to be sent over for a fairly junior role. We had sifted through a number of applications and produced the shortlist of 5 CVs for the client to review. The feedback was fair enough:”These CVs look the same. How can I decide who to interview?”
We came up with the idea of putting questions to each applicant and asking them to video their response. The first list of questions the client has proposed are:
- Talk about your experience in private practice, and your like and dislikes of practice life.
- What specific attributes could you bring to the team, that you feel similar applicants would not bring?
- What is the best advice you could give to a property landlord at this current time who is suffering from the consequences of Section 24?
- Do you view this position as a stepping stone, or are you seeking to settle with us for a long term career? Please give your reasons.
The procedure of videoing responses is very simple – the candidates can use their smart phones and then upload the videos for us to forward across to clients. You can do this as a firm in any event – OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox will all suffice (video files tend to be huge and not emailable). If you are one of our clients we can set you up on our SSL secure upload service (we also operate high security transcription services hence the system).
Pros?
Instant decisions can be made without needing to spend time interviewing.
CVs that may look weaker may appear stronger once you have made a personal connection to the candidate from seeing them.
Weeds out the candidates who are not particularly bothered as it takes some effort to go through this procedure.
Cons?
A person’s appearance in a video could influence you in the wrong direction.
Senior candidates very unlikely to acquiesce to this and take-up by solicitors for example would be extremely low.
You have to watch the videos rather than spend ten seconds reviewing a CV.
Our thoughts
We suspect this may be a good addition for recruiting for junior roles, where CVs can look very similar due to lack of life experience to date. However we very much doubt its usefulness recruiting senior staff, who may well resent being put on the spot!
