Job seekers, employers turning to video résumés - Military Careers, Second Careers - Air Force Times

Job seekers, employers turning to video résumés

Leveraging one of the Web’s most popular new formats, job hunters and corporate recruiters are adding online video résumés to their arsenals.

More startups make these high-tech résumés possible. WorkBlast near Phoenix and MyPersonalBroadcast in Atlanta just launched services. HireVue in Salt Lake City lets candidates record themselves answering questions to get a regular interview. Job candidates turn the camera on themselves to talk about skills and education and show work they’ve done.

Employment site Vault says 17 percent of 310 employers surveyed last month had watched video résumés. An additional 89 percent said they’d watch them if offered.

Videos better capture personalities of job hunters and companies looking for workers, says Allen Weiner, research director for media and tech at Gartner. “It’s more than text. You can show a lot,” Weiner says.

Job seekers started adding video résumés to YouTube about a year ago. There are now as many as 4,000, including Allen Ulbricht’s. The Atlanta resident created his to get a job last fall as a senior project manager at EarthLink.

Ulbricht, 30, wanted to show the hiring manager his Web 2.0 skills, such as creating online video, rather than just write about them in a regular résumé. “Action speaks louder than words,” he says.

He also wanted to show he’s a techie with a sense of humor. In the opening shot, he introduces himself as if he’s confessing to a self-help group: “Hi, my name is Allen Ulbricht. And I am a job applicant.”

Ulbricht says he and EarthLink decided they weren’t a good fit for each other. He’s now developing for Real Nice Software, a small-business software company.

Growing market

The forces driving employment videos are the same ones spurring the online video industry’s explosive growth overall: cheap technology and high-speed Web access. Ulbricht spent just $70 for a PC-mounted Web camera. He edited the video with the Microsoft Movie Maker program that came with his Windows XP.

“It’s just become accessible for a lot of folks,” says Christian Anderson, a spokesman for Jobster, the Seattle-based career site that started offering video two months ago.

Established companies are jumping in, too: CareerBuilder will offer video résumés by the end of June. (That site is partly owned by Gannett, the parent company of this newspaper and Gannett News Service.) Monster is considering them.

Both sites already offer video where employers such as Home Depot promote themselves as good workplaces.

YouTube’s success has spawned dozens of rivals targeting narrower niches, such as the lucrative employment field. Among them:

n WorkBlast lets job seekers create a free profile page where they upload videos, a regular résumé and their photo. They can then send a link to the page to as many e-mail contacts as they choose.

Employers pay $349 to post a job opening for 60 days. That price includes uploading a video showcasing their company, co-founder Nick Murphy says.

n MyPersonalBroadcast offers a similar service but with a twist: A tool lets customers track who downloads and watches their video.

Customers upload their e-mail contacts. Next, they write a message and attach a video, résumé or other documents. Then they schedule when the e-mail is to be delivered. The company sends them daily e-mail alerts showing whether anyone watched.

Customers pay $19.95 to $89.95 a month, depending on the number of e-mail messages they “broadcast” and the number of attachments included.

The company is targeting a youthful market: 17 million college students seeking internships, summer jobs and permanent employment every year, says CEO and co-founder Kurt Baumberger. “That’s clearly a huge opportunity,” he says.

n HireVue works with employers trying to save money on recruiting by screening job candidates through video interviews before deciding on a formal in-person interview.

Co-founder Mark Newman says such remote video interviews save U.S. employers money on travel costs, especially in the tech industry, where job candidates often live overseas.

Applicants go to HireVue’s site to see questions from employers. They get a moment to read each one before videotaping themselves providing answers. Then they get up to two minutes to answer each question before the next one appears.

Investor interest rising

More employment video sites and services are likely to be launched as startup investors look for the next YouTube, researcher Weiner says.

Venture capitalists invested more than $600 million in video startups last year, 50 percent more than in 2005, says the MoneyTree report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and other researchers.

Riding that interest, HireVue is negotiating with venture capitalists for about $3 million, Newman says. The company tried online video interviews two years ago, when few people grasped the concept. “We were a bit too ahead,” Newman says.

But post-YouTube, people see video everywhere. “Now, companies are saying they can use this in their hiring,” he says. “It’s been great.”