Blogpost

How Amart increases screening efficiency with video

March 28, 2023

Australia’s leading furniture, bedding, and outdoor retailer with over 60+ stores has challenged its HR department to improve the efficiency of its recruitment process. Since the applicants come from all over Australia, the interviewing process can be very time-consuming, both for the candidate as for the recruiter.

Julie Hines, Leading Talent Acquisition, uses Video Intake’s video technology for candidate screening as the first part of the recruitment process after candidates submit an application. We asked to share her thoughts and experiences with this new technology.

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Why do you think video was a good tool for this challenge?

I think that video will soon take over the recruitment market. By allowing Hiring Managers to watch a 60-second video and review a resume of a candidate, instead of spending 15-20 minutes over the phone per candidate, it meant that they were able to review applications faster than ever, and as a result, could make faster and better recruitment decisions.

You’re done with the first round of recruiting, how did it go?

We are very lucky to receive a high volume of applicants for our roles. We wanted to make sure that we are giving our candidates an excellent experience and responding to them in a timely manner, and video allowed us to do this. By making the shortlisting process faster and simpler through the use of video, we were able to close roles faster and communicate outcomes to candidates. Above that the quality of the videos was excellent. Most candidates filmed their videos from their smartphones and no quality was lost in the footage during transmission.

Can you tell us what difference it makes when video is a part of the recruitment process?

In the previous round, when we didn’t use video, we invited 15 people and unfortunately, there was no match. In this round, we invited 4 based on video, from which 2 were suitable for the position and one of them was hired.

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Did you show or discuss the videos with your team in order to pick the best cultural fit?

Yes, we spent time with the Hiring Managers to coach them on how to assess a video interview. We partnered with them to coach them on eliminating bias from the process and supported them in their decisions.

How did candidates react when you asked them to submit a video?

We received quite a low percentage of videos submitted compared to candidates invited to submit. As video is still very new in the Australian recruitment market, I believe some candidates may have been skeptical about submitting a video as part of the job application, but within the next 5 years I imagine this will radically change and we will see a shift to video interviews as a standard part of the recruitment process.

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