Pre-Recorded Video Interviews
The Client
Based in London, England, GradBay is a recruitment agency specializing in pairing recent graduates with growing businesses in the UK. Experienced recruiters at GradBay set questions for graduates to answer in a video format, and these video CVs are added to the graduates’ profiles on their website. In doing so, GradBay has built a large database of searchable candidates for employers across many sectors, making the hiring process more efficient.
The Challenge
Recruitment can be a costly and drawn out process. Businesses either have too many applicants to filter through or not enough people applying for the advertised positions. GradBay allows employers to search a tag-based system to evaluate applications, or share their job specifications with the GradBay team to shortlist candidates on their behalf.
GradBay works with hundreds of clients and has managed nearly 1,000 placements over the past 1.5 years—despite having a small team of five people. But they wanted a better way to streamline the creation of graduates’ video CV profiles to accelerate their matchmaking.
The Solution
GradBay implemented VidCruiter’s pre-recorded video interviewing technology into its recruitment agency. Now, despite having a small team, “we’re able to cope with a large volume of recruitment roles and placements,” says Ben Hazan, co-founder and managing director of GradBay.
Years ago, it was a much more manual process. “We were bringing people physically into our office where we had interview rooms with tripods and video cameras,” explains Hazan. “We were interviewing them, going through a number of different takes, uploading the ones we wanted to a video streaming service, then getting links to embed into our CRM system and onto our website. VidCruiter sped the process up.”
Hazan credits social media for young people’s increased comfort in uploading videos of themselves online. “It’s been a huge shift, culturally, which has allowed us to use this kind of technology to greater effect.”
GradBay tried using other video interview providers, but they were frustrated by the lack of functionality and poor customer support. They were bombarded with questions from graduates about how to complete their video CVs. Since switching to VidCruiter, “it’s like chalk and cheese (to coin an old English expression),” says Hazan. “It’s quite a different experience.” Hazan’s cofounder, Sam Bloom, seconds this sentiment.
The Results
Implementing VidCruiter into GradBay’s recruitment process is helping graduates create video CV profiles more easily, so they can better promote themselves to potential employers. The videos allow employers to make more informed assessments before inviting candidates for an in-person interview.
VidCruiter helps GradBay staff focus on other business priorities such as liaising with clients, understanding job briefs, and shortlisting candidates. “Video allows us to do a lot more with fewer resources,” says Hazan. Bloom adds, “Having a library of videos refreshes your memory about certain candidates. As good as your note taking may be, it’s not the same as being able to play back a video.”
VidCruiter is also helping GradBay save money. In one year, they’ve saved about 50,000 pounds from not having to hire staff to chase candidates to get videos created and added to their website.
“We are selling the benefits [of video CVs] all day every day to our clients,” says Hazan. “By having that initial video screening stage, anyone you bring in face-to-face for an interview is already ticking some boxes, whether it be the cultural fit, the communication style fit, the education fit. Video gives you a layer information you simply wouldn’t have without it.”
Since implementing VidCruiter, GradBay’s monthly volume of grad profiles is over four times what they were registering before.
“The use of video is making the whole process more efficient,” says Hazan. “It’s also more environmentally friendly because it reduces the carbon footprint [from traveling to multiple interviews around town]. As a business, anything we can do to be more sustainable is hugely important to us. VidCruiter is definitely a tool that allows us to do that.”
“The support team has always been incredibly helpful and very quick at responding.” 