While businesses around the world are currently facing unprecedented challenges in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, hiring managers are also struggling to adjust recruitment strategies to deal with this situation. On the other hand, millions of people are exploring job opportunities to earn bread and butter for their families. Consequently, remote interviews have acquired a crucial role during the past couple of months.
According to LinkedIn’s global recruiting trends report 2019, soft skills are more important than ever today. To help support this growing need of evaluating soft skills, LinkedIn has started testing a new video intro feature that would allow recruiters to improve the overall efficiency of the hiring process. With video, HR teams can learn more about a candidate’s communication style, motivations, and “soft skills” early on in the recruitment process.
As for the job seeker’s experience, the new tool provides a good opportunity for candidates to detail their background and soft skills, though keep in mind that using video intro will be optional. Because video can be quite intimidating, and candidates will also be able to re-record their answers before submitting them for review.
The company explained the functionality in a blog post today:
With video intro, once you receive applications for a job posting, you can invite the most qualified candidates to answer up-to two questions from a list of options that include questions, such as “Tell me about yourself,” “What is your greatest strength?,” and “Describe your most challenging project.” Candidates can choose to submit their answers via quick video recording or written response.
For LinkedIn users that will be invited to test video intro, here are a couple of ways you can set up this feature:
- Add video intro to your job post: On the last page of the posting process, you will have the option to add video intro to the job posting.
- Set up video intro in your settings: You can also set up video intro at any time under “Project Settings” in New Recruiting & Jobs (NRJ).
- Invite individual applicants: When looking through your applicant list, you can select “invite to video intro” under the “…” overflow action menu. If you do not yet have a video intro set up, you will be prompted to set one up to complete the invite.
LinkedIn said today that this new feature is gradually rolling to LinkedIn’s customers around the world using the company’s New Recruiter and Jobs. The professional social network will also seek feedback to improve its new product before making it generally available.
