Video accelerates the
employee search

As the staffing of companies becomes harder in an era of record low unemployment, employers are outsourcing more of their recruiting in order to reduce the cost of leaving a position open or to avoid choosing the wrong candidate. Employers often consider outsourcing investment a bargain when faced with the alternative. More than $7 billion will be spent on professional placement services in 2002, according to one estimate.

Some employers estimate that an employee who leaves before a year is out will cost the company three times that employee’s annual salary, and does not factor in the cost of having the position effectively vacant until a productive individual can be found.

A recent report issued by the Corporate Leadership Council pegged the cost of losing a high tech worker at $123,000. In another survey conducted by Development Dimensions International, the average replacement cost for an executive vacancy was estimated to be approximately $750,000.

Certainly, every position and every company will realize a different impact from turnover. In general, however, business managers realize that quickly filling vacancies with the right candidate is imperative.

THE ROLE OF MULTIMEDIA

Filling positions in the high-technology sector is particularly challenging these days. Reports presented during congressional hearings on the subject in June 2000 indicate that there may be as many as 10,000 openings for people with technical skills in the U.S. alone. Though the qualifications vary in nature, the choice of employee is often tied to subjective assessments of “fit” with a company’s culture. Increasingly, a person’s presence and ability to communicate a vision to employees, partners, the investment community and customers is a key ingredient of a company’s valuation.

Real-time multimedia collaboration technologies are emerging as important enablers for a new breed of human resource consulting firms and recruiters specializing in finding high-technology executives. Ron Biscardi, president of Katron Inc. in Philadelphia, PA, says his company strives to bring its clients the most qualified candidates for consideration and to create an atmosphere that accelerates the evaluation and decision-making phases without compromising any aspect of this delicate process.

“Finding a person with great credentials is only one piece of the puzzle,” he says. “We have to get to know the candidates very well so that we can assess their presentation, as well as their skills. Sometimes, we identify a candidate for a position and, after the interview, we realize that they are better suited elsewhere within the client organization. If a candidate is very strong, he or she may be fielding multiple opportunities at the same time.”

For Biscardi’s organization to make these kinds of evaluations quickly, video is a valuable tool. “When we have a prospective candidate on the telephone, we are unable to observe any subtleties about them. With video collaboration, we can get much closer to the candidate and can make some critical assessments before incurring additional travel expense. By adding the visual component—facial expressions, gestures, body language—we are more equipped to determine whether or not there is a match.”

TIMELINE COMPRESSED

By using multimedia collaboration technologies in the process of recruiting, companies are also selecting those candidates who are comfortable changing their behavior with new telecommunications products and services to increase productivity. When a company wants to see a virtual presentation from a candidate, they will get a sample, of what their future partners, customers and employees will experience.

Another challenge that recruiters and human resource professionals face during the candidate recruitment and assessment process is the need for coordinating multiple interviews with various stakeholders, when these same people are often out of their offices on company business. Sometimes, identifying a mutually convenient date for the complete management team to meet a candidate may take days.

With multimedia communications, Katron is able to compress the schedule and interview cycles by 60%—from an average of 60 days without video, to merely 21 days—with the support of multimedia collaboration and a professional broadband communications provider.

“We have found that working with a broadband communication portal that provides multimedia collaboration services enables us to set up and coordinate interviews with all the key decision makers in a company in a matter of a few hours, without requiring that everyone be in the same facility,” reports Biscardi. “Using a multipoint conferencing bridge, video communications and self-serve reservation interfaces enables us to set up a visual conference quickly.”

Saving money is a consideration with recruiting, but time is a much more important element in Biscardi’s mind. “When a company wants to move quickly, it can do so with advanced technologies. Video communications reduces the time it takes to complete the recruitment process, without compromising the results. I believe that company builders will have to have video in their toolbox in order to stay competitive in the next wave of business growth.”

Hayward is president and founder of V-SPAN of Prussia, PA.