HireVue Conducts Millions Of One-Way Videos To Help Quickly Connect Candidates With Companies That Are Hiring

How hot is the job ? We’re hear­ing a lot about the new war for tal­ent. To get a sense of the employ­ment out­look, I spoke with Kevin Park­er, the CEO and chair­man of Hire­Vue. The offers video inter­view­ing and recruit­ing automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy. Park­er’s com­pa­ny has con­duct­ed mil­lions of inter­views and has the data to show what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, hir­ing deci­sions have been left to a hir­ing man­ager’s “gut feel­ing.” To avoid bias­es and “just wing­ing it” inter­views, Hire­Vue cre­at­ed struc­tured inter­view ques­tions and rat­ing guide­lines to smooth out the process and make it easy for both can­di­dates and com­pa­nies who are hir­ing. 

Hire­Vue is a lead­ing com­pa­ny in the “hiretech” space. Its pro­pri­etary enables com­pa­nies to record videos of job seek­ers by answer­ing a stan­dard set of inter­view ques­tions. Hire­Vue offers a unique way to eas­i­ly inter­view any­time or any­where. It could be in your car, at home or on the beach. All you need is a com­put­er, lap­top or smart­phone. The tech­nol­o­gy lev­els the play­ing field by high­light­ing the per­son, in addi­tion to their résumé. 

Park­er is enthu­si­as­tic about the job mar­ket. He’s seen a great rebound in inter­views and hir­ing. Sec­tors that looked like they’d be side­lined for years, such as trav­el and cruise lines, have seen a boom­ing resur­gence. His com­pa­ny has been busy. Around 1.3 mil­lion col­lege grad­u­ates con­duct­ed inter­views with 500 employ­ers on its plat­form. About 55,000 peo­ple on a week­end will have video inter­views. More­over, 5.6 mil­lion job seek­ers con­duct­ed the one-sided video inter­view ses­sion. 

Park­er shared with me some of  the find­ings of his recent sur­vey of the job mar­ket.

Here are some of the highlights:

  • Over 2.3 mil­lion can­di­dates have com­plet­ed an on-demand inter­view this year, an increase of near­ly 50% from the same peri­od last year. 
  • Com­pared to Q1 2020, Hire­Vue cus­tomers have more than dou­bled the aver­age num­ber of inter­views per day in Q1 2021.
  • The indus­tries that have seen the most increase in vir­tu­al inter­views over the last few weeks are con­sult­ing ser­vices (up 200%), retail (150%), construction/mining (near­ly five times), gov­ern­ment (near­ly times) and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals (200%).
  • Job seek­ers are attract­ed to high­er wage jobs: its top 5 cus­tomers offer a min­i­mum wage of $14 per hour or high­er.
  • Indus­tries where start­ing salaries are tra­di­tion­al­ly low or employ­ment has been at high risk of redun­dan­cy in 2020—transportation, food and bev­er­age and hos­pi­tal­i­ty and recreation—are sig­nif­i­cant­ly down.
  • Around 50% of inter­views in the U.S. are tak­ing place out­side of typ­i­cal work .

Other Key findings include:

  • Diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion isn’t just a nice-to-have. One-hun­dred per­cent of respon­dents say DEI is “extreme­ly rel­e­vant” or “very rel­e­vant” to them.
  • Vir­tu­al inter­views are here to stay. Fifty-four per­cent said vir­tu­al inter­views result­ed in a speed­i­er recruit­ment process, and 41% say it helped them iden­ti­fy the best can­di­dates.
  • Hir­ing lead­ers want less busy work and more can­di­date con­nec­tion. Fifty-one per­cent of respon­dents say they want to spend less time on sched­ul­ing and more time engag­ing with can­di­dates.

I was curi­ous about how peo­ple could piv­ot or rein­vent their careers in this new post- envi­ron­ment. Park­er shared that his firm, as well as his client com­pa­nies, have become much more open-mind­ed and flex­i­ble. In the bat­tle for tech tal­ent, he did­n’t have to sole­ly rely upon appli­cants with­in a com­mut­ing dis­tance. As remote work became stan­dard, Park­er hired soft­ware and engi­neers across the coun­try.

He does­n’t rely on pedi­grees either. Park­er has offered jobs to peo­ple with non­tra­di­tion­al back­grounds. He brought aboard soft­ware pro­fes­sion­als who learned through cod­ing boot­camps. Park­er has also hired peo­ple based on their abil­i­ties and not expe­ri­ence. You don’t have to have a col­lege to be part of Hire­Vue. 

Park­er shared an encour­ag­ing sto­ry. The founder of the com­pa­ny, Mark New­man, was 20 years old and attend­ing West­min­ster Col­lege in Salt Lake City, Utah. He could­n’t seem to find the right job. So, he made one for him­self. The young man found­ed Hire­Vue. This anec­dote is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant today. It feels that we’re enter­ing a new roar­ing 1920’s type of world. There is pent-up demand for every­thing: shop­ping, trav­el­ing, attend­ing con­certs and sport­ing events and cre­at­ing new busi­ness­es. You can piv­ot to new jobs and careers or rein­vent your­self. You no have to rely upon find­ing a job with­in a rea­son­able com­mut­ing dis­tance. If you have the abil­i­ties and pas­sion, you can go for that dream job and not wor­ry about the lack of a four-year degree.

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