Technology Innovation and Job Interviews
What if you could use TiVo for a job interview? The candidate does the interview at the place and time of his/her choosing. The interviewer reviews responses from multiple candidates when and where convenient.
HireVue is facilitating just that. They work with the recruiting company to develop a list of questions. Consistent questions for each candidate. Each candidate has 30 seconds to read the question, 2 minutes to answer; no opportunity to rewind or re-answer - simulating a real interview. The interview can be done wherever (HireVue sends them a high quality webcam - which the candidate is allowed to keep). Or at the employment office or increasingly at a campus recruiting office.
Once the interviews are on the HireVue server, the employer can post comments on each candidate. Fast forward or rewind. It's ideal for first round interviews. HireVue estimates it saves between 50 and 75% of costs to have people fly or drive in.
They have allowed candidates from Chile and China to be reviewed by employers in France and New Zealand. Mark Newman, VP of Operations, tells me they expect to be running 4,000 interviews a month by the end of the year. With little brick and mortar!
That's a terrific concept. I'd be interested in seeing how many different questions the employers ask. I bet it's not that many. And I wonder what the eventual impact will be ... will it spell the end of the interview as a useful hiring technique? Imagine if the majority of candidates practised the most common 100 (or 50, or 20) questions and nailed each during the video interview. Employers would need to make hiring assessments on the marginal questions rather than the bog-stock "What are your weaknesses?" questions. Anyways, just some idle afternoon thoughts.
Posted by: Doug Hudgeon | May 17, 2006 at 01:11 AM