Jump the Skills Gap With Video Interviews

video confAre you in danger of falling into the skills gap? This large space between the skills job candidates present and the skills your clients are looking for seems to grow wider every year. In fact, a survey by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) showed two-thirds of organizations are having a hard time recruiting for specific job openings.

The road to finding someone with the right qualifications, especially if you’re dealing with a highly skilled STEM field, can be a long path to travel. Some high-level jobs can take anywhere from 21 to 90 days to fill. When the jobs hit the VP level, suddenly you can spend as many as 180 days to find the right person.

So it should come as little surprise a recent Bullhorn survey of staffing professionals found 33 percent cited the lack of skilled candidates as the number one problem facing the industry. The skills gap is very real, and jumping the breach is no easy task.

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This is where video interviews can come into play. Utilizing online video technology, video interviews help staffing pros build a bridge to the best candidates without wasting a lot of time in the process.

So what are some ways the video interview can help jump the skills gap? Let’s take a look:

Skip the phone screen
It’s no secret that the traditional hiring process can be time consuming. And one of the least efficient parts of this process is the phone screen. After sorting down your candidates to only the best resumes, you want to connect with them on a more personal level and see if they’re as talented in-person as they are on paper. But you don’t have time to take unlimited in-person meetings, which means the phone screen becomes the middleman of the hiring process.

A typical phone screen takes about half an hour, but most staffing pros will know within the first 90 seconds or so if someone is all wrong for the job or the company culture. This leaves you wasting more than 20 minutes talking to someone all wrong for the job. Not very efficient.

In a video interview, you can get a more personal feel for your candidate without getting stuck on the phone for longer than you’d like. In a one-way video interview, for instance, candidates answer your written questions on video. These answers can be viewed at any time, meaning if the person is all wrong for the job, you can merely move on to the next candidate without wasting more minutes.

Expand your reach
Jumping the skills gap isn’t easy, but expanding your pool of talented candidates can increase your odds of finding the right person. This is especially true when it comes to highly skilled candidates who are in demand. The right candidate might not live in your client’s backyard, but this doesn’t mean this talent wouldn’t be willing to move if the right opportunity came along.

By limiting your search to only local job seekers, you also limit the amount of highly-skilled candidates you can find. However, opening up the search to far-flung destinations comes with its own set of challenges. Chief among these issues: The amount of money it costs to fly in a candidate for an in-person meeting.

Video interviews enable you to skip the airfare price tag and still connect with talent in real time. In a live video interview you can connect with a candidate just as if they were on the other side of your desk, even if they’re actually on the other side of the country. Plus, these live video interviews are recorded, so you can share the best and brightest candidates with clients, letting them know you’ve got great people on the hook for their positions.

Busy schedule? No problem
The one-way video interview also makes it much easier for staffing professionals to convince candidates of all kinds to take time out of their schedules to meet. Passive candidates and busy job seekers might not have time to take your call or come out to your office, but it’s likely they’ll have time to record a few video interview answers.

By cutting out the complicated scheduling process, you open yourself up to talent who might not have been willing to go through the traditional hiring process–yet these people might have exactly the skills and qualifications your client needs for their open positions.

While there are more candidates in the job market due to high unemployment, the skills gap is making it harder for staffing pros to find the kind of talent you need for open positions. The video interview can help you build a better bridge over the skills gap, connecting you and the best talent for your client’s open jobs.

What are some ways you can use video interviews to jump the skills gap? Share in the comments!

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Josh Tolan

Josh Tolan
Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, a video interviewing platform. Learn more about using video interviews for staffing and connect with Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter.

Josh Tolan

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