Recruitment Agents: Are you doing it via Video?

These days, good recruitment agents need to compete & stand apart from the many online recruiters & self-service sites. They need to prove their value-add & show they have the best people on the books. They need to choose candidates wisely & have a wide recruiting base to pick the best candidates from.

“We are a recruitment agency based in London. We have a video conferencing system in our office, and we now conduct about 90% of our consultancy interviews via video. Our recruiting base is now UK wide, not just in London, and we build a much better picture up of the person now we can see them, rather than just talking over the phone.”

Like our customer above, many recruiters are now using modern communication tools, such as video conferencing & video collaboration tools, to make sure they stand out from the crowd. So what ways are recruitment agencies using video communications?

• Interviews via video, not via phone
  Where facial gestures, posture & dress code can also be taken into consideration 
• Talent recruited from a much wider candidate pool
  More candidates & better candidates can be found for every job 
• Recruitment agencies add value organising & chairing video interviews between candidates & recruiters
  All at very low cost, but proving the agents worth & value-add for future business 
• Improve relationships with freelancers & subcontractors
  Many people regularly use agencies to find work – and you want them to choose yours 
• Improve relationships with HR departments
  Ensure large businesses carry out on-going recruitment through your agency

And these are just a few. Video Conferencing offers many tremendous benefits to recruitment agencies in both terms of flexibility and opportunity. Reducing costs associated with travel, reducing the time taken to interview – book interviews to take place within hours, not weeks – and improved services as part of your package – i.e. recording of video interviews for secondary analysis – can only benefit your organisation by proving that your agency is going to provide the best candidates for the job.

What Solutions are Available?

With a changing client base and the need to connect with different people, on different devices, in different locations, a recruitment agency needs to invest in a solution that can be accessed by the candidates – for a low cost or for free – and with businesses who will have stricter rules on security, network access & firewalls. Skype is regularly used by small businesses or consumers who don’t require a secure, high quality or resilient business solution, but free consumer designed solutions just don’t cut it at corporate business level – and often just will not work. And is it really reliable enough when in meetings with your most important clients? Not really.

There are a huge number of solutions for recruitment agencies. Virtual Meeting Rooms in the cloud, desktop solutions, low cost meeting room systems… it all depends upon who you will be talking with, what devices they may be using & what value you want to add.

Solutions such as Lifesize Cloud with Lifesize Icon endpoints installed at head office provides free WebRTC browser access with no plugins so any candidates or clients can immediately connect, without any downloads, and without any cost. This solution provides the highest quality video for multiple people, and each conference can be recorded – perfect for adding your value.

Cisco Jabber video for telepresence is also one of the leading Video Conferencing desktop solutions, with outstanding HD quality video & audio, and highly secure & firewall friendly, providing you connectivity with anyone, at any time. Plus, Cisco Jabber video for telepresence has a free Jabber client download for your candidates to connect.

Are you in recruitment? Do you use video conferencing to conduct interviews? Tell us what you use, how you use it and the benefits your business has gained – we’d love to hear your thoughts!

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