YouTube: A free video resume distribution service

Lest anyone doubt that YouTube is disruptive, I was reminded again of how much a couple of weeks ago when I received an email from a cousin I haven't seen in 20 years. What struck me about the email was that it was so mundane, so commonplace in the new web world, and something that couldn't have happened just a couple of years ago.

I'm not talkiing about the ping from a long-lost relative. I get those (and have sent some) from acquaintances who are trying to reconnect after 5, 10 or 20 or more years on a semi-regular basis.

Rather it was the attachment of a YouTube video which not only provided me with the update that he is now an actor, but included a sample of some TV drama work that we could easily forward to anyone that we might know in the business. And I just thought how remarkable it was that it was so cheap and so easy to send out a video resume for someone in his line of work.

Shawn's demo tape

I'm sure that actors have been sending out video tapes to studios and agencies and in advance of commercial auditions for years. But think about it. To get just a couple of hundred tapes professionally copied and then couriered out would have been a minimum of a couple of thousand dollars. Although necessary, it was hardly within the budget of a "starving actor".

But now, it's not only free to reproduce and send, you can instantly send it to everyone you know, and by extension, reach their network of contacts as well, or be searched and seen randomly by anyone in the world. So now we have lower cost, broader reach, and persistence (doesn't get thrown in the trash).  And, that doesn't include getting posted on my blog, where potentially dozens or hundreds of marketers and advertising specialists might see it and think he's just perfect for a shoot they have planned.

Not Aleksey Vayner

It's worth pointing out that this is not a tragic-comic self-congratulatory career killer like the famous Impossible is Nothing Aleksey Vayner video "resume". If you haven't seen this, I heartily recommend you watch it a few times, both for a good laugh and to study what not to do.

Aleksey's disaster

It's also not the goofy sort of bad job posting site like Vidrez.com.  When you check out this site-provided sample, you'll know what I mean, and wonder why on earth anyone would do this and what value it adds.  If you're desperate for a job, and considering this, all I can say is "Don't".  Just stick with Monster and the traditional resume.  For the life of me, I can't discern any good reason to pay these folks to be hidden behind the site's registration requirements, rather than simply doing it myself for free on YouTube (a key consideration for low end disruption).  Besides, this is just too icky for me.

Perhaps the time is coming in the not-too-distant future when video resumes will become normal outside the acting business. That has huge disruptive potential, although It seems like if it happens, it will be critical that job seekers carefully consider the appropriateness of what they do.  Is a mock interview a good idea -- or does it come across as boring and phony?  If you're in the media or artistic expression fields, showing a sample of your work certainly makes sense.  If you aren't, it's probably best combined with a blog (which shows off your thought process), and only with a sense of self-awareness, humor and humility.  Then again, the persistence and accessibility that are a big advantage when you're young and broke could well come back to haunt you 20 years later when you're being considered for the SVP position at Bank of America.

The idea seems to have most potential for disruption when combined with other media, such as emailing links to friends and family, as Shawn did, or including a link on LinkedIn, or as part of a website or blog. It would also be a useful tool with judicious screening (no pun intended) -- if I'm an executive recruiter who's narrowed down a set of candidates to 5 worth presenting to an employer, and I've vetted the content, asking each to respond to the same 3 questions, it could well be useful to the employer to prepare and to save long distance travel expenses if one candidate is clearly inappropriate (a bad fit culturally, for example). Much hinges on whether we are mature enough as a culture to get over the "equal opportunity" objections that are inevitable, even though all the same objections could be raised about an in-person meeting. It sure raises interesting ideas about how something as simple as a public library of free and searchable video will change the way we are doing things in just a few more years.

Other Points of View

http://blogs.msdn.com/heatherleigh/archive/2006/10/17/the-exploding-video-resume.aspx

http://hirevue.com/blog/?p=16

http://www.ere.net/articles/db/DDFA0ECCDE2C4005A476D53EEFEC18A7.asp

http://www.recruiting.com/the_newest_job_hunting_skill_videographer

Services that Overshoot the Need

http://www.gocvone.com/cvone_live.244.0.html

http://www.vidrez.com

... and Video Interviewing

http://www.hirevue.com/

Comments

[Mark Newman]

Thanks for linking to us at HireVue, we are doing more video interviews for companies every day. Video resumes are here to stay as a novelty but you really nailed it in the sense that there needs to be some sort of structure (recruiters asking three questions of top candidates for example) and less over the top videos.

Mark Newman
HireVue

[Robyn McMaster]

Paul, thanks for sharing this really ingenious new way for folks to let prospective employers see what they do!

[Sean Howard]

LOL.

Course nothing on vidrez can compare to the infamous Aleksey.

The body building part still makes me cringe.

Has anyone ever found out what happened to Aleksey? Did he ever get a job?

I'm interested in how you see video disrupting the process. It's hard for me to see remote web interviews but that said, I have witnessed initial interviews via vid-conferencing.

And the costs of having someone answer three questions and upload them to a service like YouTube are drastically cheaper and easier to coordinate as well. No high end vid-con facilities are needed.

[Paul]

Hi Sean:

It isn't the video part that is disruptive per se. You could have gone to a professional production studio, created a video resume on VHS tape and mailed it out, but for someone who's career isn't acting, that would be cost prohibitive and of virtually no value.

There are a couple of factors that make this disruptive. One is the fact that it is a low end solution with lots of limitations. For example, you get a small picture, low resolution, viewable on a computer screen only (although Apple TV is changing that), poor sound quality, maximum of a few minutes long and something anybody can create on a consumer camcorder for free. (The fact that Shawn had his professionally produced doesn't matter.)

Another factor is that the new medium has no bridge to the old. For now, a VHS tape (or professionally created DVD) is still of higher quality, but there is no easy way for the old technology to encapsulate the new. This increasingly relegates the old form to very high end applications, and eventually obsoletes it and squeezes it out of the market.

Third is the fact that YouTube is free (low or no cost), but is superior in one very important way to the old technology --> the distribution footprint. Anybody, anywhere can view this if they have an internet connection.

Clearly video resumes have application in the acting and modelling niches. The question is whether it has application anywhere else. Using old technology, or something like VidRez, I'd say "no". It costs too much, and doesn't add value compared to YouTube. However, there are possible applications in traditional job interviewing, such as one I described where an executive recruiter has narrowed it down to 5 candidates to present to the potential employer. They could set up a pretty primitive arrangement with a camcorder on a tripod in a office, and tape the candidates answering the same set of 3-4 questions to give a thumbnail snapshot for the employer to rule out one or two and save the cost of a flight. The final interview is still going to be done in person, because for that important a decision, there is no substitute for face-to-face.

So, it's the enabling technology from YouTube that is disruptive and that makes video "recruiting" possible and practical, and the characteristics of the medium that I described, not the fact that it is video-based. It is these factors of cost, ubiquity and accessibility that potentially will create the opportunity for video resumes to grow from a tiny niche to become mainstream.

[Sean Howard]

Interesting. I got ya now.

And the fact that no one has seen it as a threat is yet another sign, eh?

It seems to me that personal profile sites are getting pretty advanced.

Personal websites used to primarily CV based on the IT world. How many bloggers haven't used their growing status and visibility to leverage better jobs?

So beyond just the application of a specific video resume service, there's the potentiality for someone liked linkedin or another service to launch video CV profiles to further round out a professional or unique position online.

Neat! Gotta go right a video extension business plan now. ;)

[Paul]

Well, I think the real message is that there isn't an opportunity here for all the specialized sites that want to do video resumes. There can only be one leader, and why go with proprietary and costly when there's already something that's open, free and disruptive? Assuming the market can evolve to accept video resumes, there is still no point to what they offer, because between LinkedIn, YouTube, The Ladders, etc. all the bases are covered.

There is still opportunity to build widgets or mashups that integrate these things together intelligently. (Is that the bizplan you want to write?) It would be nutty for LinkedIn to compete with YouTube and vice versa - makes a lot more sense to partner, or for Google to buy LinkedIn. And, if someone cracks the nut for how to create a video add-on to a traditional resume or online profile that isn't a self-parody or tacky or harmful, there could be an opportunity to start a professional services company, but I don't think we're there yet culturally.

Certainly agree with your observation about blogs. But they are a different animal, because they allow someone to demonstrate skills and knowledge in a direct way far beyond what a resume can do, and to control their (the author's) online presence meaningfully. Funny that with those benefits, so few of us (relatively speaking) are doing it yet.

[Video Interviewing Fan]

Video interviewing is definitely the future of recruiting. As a new generation of workers graduates, they have grown up with the internet and are very comfortable using video as a means of communication (see iPhone FaceTime feature). Its just a matter of time before we hit the tipping point on uptake. I think it'll be especially relevant in admissions and for new graduates, where its hard to differentiate on just a resume.