The Video Interview: Skype or Hype?

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Career Development  

Even if you can do a video interview, should you? That’s a question many people face as they go through the job-hunting process. When the hiring market is tight or a candidate feels pressured in any way, they may choose to throw many cautions to the wind. Although it may seem a small matter to conduct an interview through Skype or a similar tool, it is an important internal discussion that everyone should have when the situation arises.

We are now more frequently being asked to forego the normal human contact of a face-to-face interview--even to bypass a simple and effective phone discussion--in favor of doing our occupational experience song and dance in front of a camera for the whole online world to see. Going in front of a camera--even in the best of circumstances--has become a process unto itself. For someone who uses their face in an industry (like an actor or model), job inquiries have always required that visuals of all sorts need to be included; but it’s starting to look like similar techniques will be practiced in other occupational fields.

In addition to those time-honored abilities you are supposed to have for “traditional” hiring meetings, video interviewing requires that you take into account a number of other variables. The basics of having a nice smile, using a friendly tone and making good eye contact are still important …

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