The future of job interviews might horrify you. It horrified Jake Rosen.
A recent graduate of UCLA, Rosen was applying to be a page at NBC (yes, yes, just like Kenneth) when he learned he wouldn't be going to an office to talk to a human being about his skills. Instead, he interviewed by webcam, on a laptop.
So Skype, right? Nope, nothing as personal as that. He recorded his answers and sent them back to a hiring manager at NBC for review at the company's convenience.
It's the robo-interview, and it goes something like this. In the more humane experience, a hiring manager, who also isn't all that practised in the art of digital video, delivers taped questions. Or, if it's truly Mr Roboto, a question pops up on the screen. You have a limited amount of time to answer. You talk to your computer, record the responses, and send them back to the company. Sometimes there's a practice question to get prospective employees used to talking to a camera. Sometimes there isn't. Often, at the end, you have the chance to re-record your answers.
For shy people, it may be a dream come true. No firm handshake needed, and sure, you smell fine. And wouldn't we all love the redo option after making up an answer and mumbling it, too?
For everyone else, it's awkward at best. It's a pretty slick encounter, a little like FaceTime, except you're forced to stare at your big, nervous face as you wax on about why you want to work at the company. It feels more like performing for an invisible audience than having a conversation, because that's essentially what it is. Not used to being on camera, Rosen felt flustered from the first question, which coloured the rest of his interview, he said.
"I'm not a YouTube star, obviously," he said. "It's such a weird experience talking to a camera. It honestly was pretty horrible." Jamie Black, who suffered through the video interview experience for a job at a school, said it felt "more like a game show than an interview".
For many of us, the experience will soon be unavoidable. The human-free video job interview is on the rise. HireVue, one of a handful of companies making video interview software, works with 600 large organisations, including Deloitte, J P Morgan Chase, Under Armour, and most of the major US airlines. This year, the company will do 2.5 million interviews, up from 13,000 five years ago. Nearly 90 per cent of those are "on demand" interviews, with nobody live at the other end.
For a hiring manager, the draw of the video interview is mainly efficiency.
"Companies want to get to know way more people," said Mark Newman, the founder of HireVue. A recruiter can only get through so many 30-minute conversations in a day. And that doesn't take into account time lost to scheduling or on bad candidates.
With a video interview, human resources staff members only have to review the answers, and can do so on their own schedule, without having to travel for on-campus recruiting. Using HireVue, Hilton got its hiring cycle down to 4.5 days, almost 20 days shorter than the average interview process. All of this saves companies money.
© Bloomberg
