TIME TO HIT PAUSE ON VIDEO RESUMES

Written from a recruiters perspective.

Video resumes create liability, legal exposure for your company

By Raghav Singh

I recently became aware of a recruiting innovation: the online video resume. The first site offering these is RecruiTV. Video resumes have been around for decades but had little popularity because of the logistics of creating, distributing, and viewing them.

However, now anyone can get a webcam for under $50. Distributing videos online is simple, so video resumes are going mainstream. While it sounds like an interesting idea, their value is somewhat questionable and in fact could be downright detrimental to the recruiting process.

Defining the Video Resume
While a video resume introduces applicants on camera, the value such visual imagery adds is debatable. A text resume allows for specific pieces of information to be parsed out and compared across candidates. When the information is delivered verbally, recruiters need to glean the details themselves.

This can be tedious and time-consuming given that there's no way to jump between sections of the "resume." I also doubt that many recruiters are eager to watch hours of amateur video. Candidates often demonstrate an acute case of verbal diarrhea, carrying on endlessly in rambling sentences that would test the patience of Job.

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