Video Resumes

In an article about 'social media brilliance', Entrepreneur magazine categorically states 'Your next job search will take the form of a video resume'. I can categorically state, it won't. Video is hard for companies to process. You can read a resume in a couple of minutes and know whether the person has roughly the right experience for the job you're looking at. A video has to be watched for much longer in order to get the same information (if it's even in there).

Then there's all the discrimination issues which companies are keen to avoid. I've never met a hiring manager who was genuinely discriminating against candidates in certain categories, but the number of cases brought each year implies that in some places, discrimination happens. Video makes it easier for candidates to assert that they were discriminated against and harder for companies to prove they were not.

Finally (at least for here), the work that goes into creating great video is too much for most candidates. Many of the resumes we see appear to have been slapped together in less than an hour, not spell-checked, not punctuation-checked, not checked for sense or meaning let alone persuasiveness. If opening a Word document and working on it for hours over a week or two is too much, then video is a step too far, for sure.