We Eat Our Own Dog Food – InterviewStream Edition

As a Marketing Manager for InterviewStream, I can obviously go on and on about all the wonderful benefits of video interviewing technology – particularly with our product – but, I rarely get the opportunity to see the tool in action (aside from the awesome, 20-minute demos our Video Technology Consultants conduct.)

This all recently changed when I needed to recruit and hire two Public Relations interns for the coming semester.

Now, as you know from this dogfooding series, we at InterviewStream are big about using our own tools to solve our own business needs. When I was interviewing for my current position and eventually hired, I was screened through our pre-recorded video interviewing tool and really enjoyed and appreciated the flexibility it provided.

I was pretty satisfied in my position with another organization at the time, but reached that point in my career where I was open to other opportunities, but not wanting to “rock the boat” in my existing situation. Being able to conduct the pre-recorded video interview from my iPad around 11pm at night from the comfort of my living room was a BIG draw as a candidate; I didn’t need to make an awkward excuse to my boss about requesting time off for a phone screen or initial in-person interview.

It obviously worked out for the best and I am working happily ever after at InterviewStream – and my superiors are clearly pleased with my work since they are letting me write this post!

But I digress, as this was all from a candidate perspective – only over the last two weeks was I able to experience the powerful benefits of our tool from a hiring manager’s perspective.

In filling the two open PR internship positions, my first step – like most – was to create and post the job listing in all the usual places online: social media outlets, job boards, college career center websites, etc. (You KNOW I included an ivMessage of myself describing the position in more detail…)

The resumes began pouring in for the opportunities within hours. The posting was online for about one week and I realized we had MORE than enough qualified applicants based on resumes to move forward.

This is where the magic started. I decided for a more personal effect, I wanted to record my own position-specific questions and give the applicants a preview of who they would work with, rather than use the 7,000+ questions already available in our database. Even building my own unique interview, this whole process took me about 10 minutes to complete – for those counting, that’s about HALF the time of ONE phone screen.

Once I was satisfied with my interview settings and questions, I generated a URL to send along via email to the selected applicants – this was about half of the students who submitted resumes. I then sat back and watched the interview responses flow in!

No hassle with scheduling, which with college students can be particularly tricky, or loss of valuable work time. I was able to review and compare the candidate responses, share them with my marketing colleagues for feedback, and easily select the students for a final round of interviews – all at my convenience.

At InterviewStream, we believe a lot of the magic in the hiring process comes from the final in-person interview. After reviewing the pre-recorded responses, I knew who was a good fit for the final round (and who wasn’t – boy was I glad I hadn’t wasted time on them…) and invited all four for the in-person interview. Only one was unable to travel during the necessary time, so we scheduled a live interview from our platform.

All of the interviews went great and even though one of the candidates was unable to join us in person, I still had the opportunity to introduce them to other coworkers as our live video interviewing platform allows for multiple users to collaborate in the session.

In the end, we selected two amazing PR interns who will join the InterviewStream team next week. As part of their introduction to the group, I have shared their initial pre-recorded interview responses to the questions “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you want to work with InterviewStream” with everyone in the office so the whole team feels better acquainted and has some talking points for their first day!

I can’t imagine how much more stressful and lengthy this whole process would have been without the use of our pre-recorded video interviewing technology and I am SO thankful for access to it.

Check back on the blog for posts from our new interns to see just how well the process worked – they’re pretty great! Until then…

Happy Interviewing!

Alison Pruett

Marketing Manager – Client Engagement

@InterviewStream