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Category: Video Chat

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To Millennials, The Resume Is No More Valuable Than The Paper It’s Written On

The traditional resume helped millions land that “dream job,” or maybe simply “that job to pay the bills.” But, despite its pervasiveness, I have to wonder if it’s time for an overhaul. The traditional written resume simply cannot convey why a person gets out of bed in the morning and what gets him or her excited.

The inability of the resume to communicate this type information also leads to inefficiency in the qualification process and results in bad hires. Yet, ascertaining this data quickly and effectively is exactly how you find the ideal new employee for your company.

 

The decline of the resume coincides with the maturation of millennials who have come to be known as creative, resourceful, energetic, outgoing, and–unlike their baby-boomer parents–they do not plan to stay at one job for the next thirty years. They want to be employed by organizations that support their ambitions, share their passions and work toward shared goals. Most millennials hope to live to work, not work to live.

 

In order to attract this generation of new talent, companies must consider the entire person. It seems trite, but it speaks to the fact that more than 50 percent of professional placements fail. The truth is that, when employees are happy overall, they are more productive and have longer tenure at the company–maximizing a company’s success. But no part of a resume communicates the passions, aspirations, likes, dislikes and other personal dimensions of an applicant. That is why the recruiting process has so many tedious layers, including qualifying resumes, conducting a pre-screen and then holding the formal interview. A traditional interview can take anywhere from four to nine rounds. There has to be a better way to both streamline the process and ensure successful matches between employer and employee.

 

The good news is there are technologies coming to market that can solve this challenge by integrating video and big data analytics to communicate all the dimensions of a job-seeker and the hiring company. A ivdeo of a candidate brings that person to life in a way that a resume simply cannot. Rather than words on a page, with video the jobseeker is suddenly an actual person with facial expressions, cadence and a style. This vital information is impossible to communicate with a traditional resume–even a digital one. Obtaining a holistic view of the candidate prior to the first interview enables employers to determine if this person has the right attitude and energy to work for the company. As a result, it can effectively eliminate the “pre-screen” step in many instances. In addition to saving time, this is important, because phone screens rarely tell the full story considering up to 80 percent of communications comes through non-verbal queues. Such insight is simply not possible with a resume.

 

Additionally, many online tools enable recruiters to spam potential job seekers, which is counterproductive for everyone. A more prudent approach is to contact job-seekers only when they are ready to make a transition to a new opportunity. The same goes for companies looking to hire people.  The vast majority of responses companies get from a posting don’t meet the requirements clearly spelled out in a job description or posting. Candidates and companies should only engage when: 1) A candidate has expressed an interest in transitioning and has clearly articulated what they are looking for in their next opportunity, 2) A candidate meets the requirements the company needs and they represent a strong match based on mutual goals.  Again, this reduces the time associated with wading through and interviewing countless applicants that would never be a fit for the position.

 

This type of technology empowers businesses of all sizes and job-seekers at all levels to find the perfect match with one another. A resume may find a job or a new employee, but it rarely finds a “perfect match.”

 

If recruiters begin to look at all aspects of a candidate, they will attract talent that is a holistic fit for the company - resulting in longer employee tenures. This heightens productivity and maximizes investment. This is particularly important, considering that it can cost upwards of $18,000 to select a new employee. Even worse, the cost of losing an employee can be up to 213 percent of the employee’s salary. Recruiters and hiring managers must look to more robust technology than the resume in order to drill into a candidate’s passion and goals. And job seekers must employ these same tools to sell themselves in a more effective way and let companies know they are passionate not just about the work, but about their personal ambitions.

 

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Why Country Music is Just Like Tech

I can’t help it. I’m the guy who notices the background music. Good or bad.

 

At red lights I open my windows to hear what’s coming out of the car next to me.  In elevators, Muzak covers of Talking Heads make me crazy. But sometimes I get surprised – – pleasantly surprised.

 

The first thing I noticed when I walked into San Francisco’s Moscone Center for the Google Developers Conference last month (other than the 80-foot Google logo on the wall) was the banjo riffs of “I Will Wait” from Mumford & Sons. Nice touch.

 

Standing in line “waiting” for my badge, I was completely fixated by the music and by the thematic perfection created by the well-chosen song.  I imagined the Stanford educated, dutifully recruited and painstakingly interviewed Google Event Planner who carefully choreographed every detail – – including the soundtrack.  I started sequencing the next couple of songs in my mind: “The Waiting” by Tom Petty, the Chili Peppers’ ode to waiting in line “By The Way”, maybe even Rihanna’s “Willing To Wait”.  Did my musical insights have what it takes to be a Google event producer?

 

Apparently not. The next track was Brad Paisley followed by The Band Perry.  No more “waiting” songs. Country music was welcoming me to this tech event. EDM and classic rock may be what coders listen to while working — but apparently someone decided that country music was a better way to welcome us.

Was the choice of music random?  Just an accident?  I keep reading that folks way smarter than I – like Picasso and Deepak Chopra – reject the concept of accidents (a view I’m still getting my arms around).  I had plenty of time to think about this.  Apparently there is a disproportionately large number of engineers whose name begins with “L-M-N” (and almost none with “I-J-K” names – but that’s a different blog post).

 

If there are no accidents, is it possible that the soundtrack for RFO Basic! and Android SDK for Java is good ol’ fashioned country music?  Let’s look at this.

 

Our “forefathers” who coded NES games using Family Basic couldn’t imagine the capabilities of Rails any more than Hank Williams could understand Taylor Swift’s wardrobe. And isn’t it possible that Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard were the 8-bit programmers of their time? They relied upon simple structures and rudimentary tools to get their message across.  So how did we get from Lefty Frizzell to Tim McGraw? Is it the same way we got from Martin Fowler to Ruchi Sanghvi?

 

Heck yeah!

 

Curiosity, dissatisfaction with the present, resilience in the face of failure and hard work — the best catalysts for country music themes are exactly what are driving our best engineers.

 

I’ve heard that “foodies” are the groupies of our time. That may be true, but coders are the superstars. I was at SXSW 25 years ago and let me tell you – – it was mighty similar to the crowded halls of hyper-motivated virtuosos at Google I/O 2013.

 

If Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Dolly Parton were Millennials, they’d be writing code, not ballads. And they’d be working damn hard at it, too — ‘cause country stars know that success is about working, not worrying — and definitely not whining.

 

Country music is also a good reminder that the people who use our apps and our handsets are real people. Wonderful people busting their asses to raise their families, make ends meet and relax a little bit on the weekend. Our customers aren’t just other coders and engineers — or folks obsessed with trying to figure out how to become the next David Karp. Apps that get shared in Palo Alto are nice, but the mobile apps that folks use to connect and share moments with friends and families, to improve lives, and to reach out to each other at both critical and casual times – that’s the software they’ll feel good about when they stop at a light and “On the Road Again” is coming from the car in the next lane.

Larry Lieberman is chief marketing officer of ooVoo – the world’s largest independent video chat app with 78 million registered users (adding 100,000 new users daily).  This summer, ooVoo releases a new experience in social video for PC, iOS and Android devices.  Larry is a marketing innovator who has been rewriting sales and business rules since he was a tour roadie for Pepsi working with Tina Turner, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson.  

 

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