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“Good On Video” Is The New “Good On Paper” With HireHive (YC S10)
- paraschopra 16y agoDoes anyone else find the prospect of video résumé a bit frightening? Some people (myself included) are simply not that comfortable in front of a camera.
- rokhayakebe 16y agoWe did something similar with FacesForce.com and tried a few markets. Video is very tricky. It appears it is best to let users submit a video without being asked, but the issue with this is users do not want to pay. So the HH model will definitely bring in revenue faster. A few people are worried they may be discriminated against if they send a video, but if someone is going to disqualify you based on what they see, they will do it when you show up for interview. So at least you save time.
- kno 16y agoThe way someone looks on video is always so different from a face to face contact, discrimination most of the time has to do with perception more than anything. By talking to someone you get a better sense and generally throw off initial perception.
- rdl 16y agoI think it's a lot easier for one interviewer in a team of a few, going over a big pool of applicants, to reject people for personal/stupid/illegal reasons if he can do so anonymously. Say there are 20 women applying out of 100; if only 5 people are brought in for in-person interviews, and 0 are women, it's a lot easier and less open to potential liability than if 5 candidates include one perfect female candidate and 4 objectively-lesser male candidates, and the female still doesn't get the job.
- ericd 16y agoIt's so weird and perhaps a sign that the US hiring market has some deep flaws that the discussion here has focused so much on discrimination. That really shouldn't be at the top of a business person's mind when they hire - hiring an employee is supposed to help make the company perform as best as it can in the future, full stop. I see hire hives approach as great for everyone if they can execute well - it gives a much better idea of what a candidate is actually like than paper, without the expense or huge time sink (for both parties) of an in-person interview.
- kno 16y agoI think it all comes down to the lingering issue of how much of ourselves are we willing to record for all to see. Another issue that video resume may raise is what I will call, remote discrimination; how good your video is may decide whether you get a call for in-house interview or not.
- nicholasjbs 16y agoOne of our goals is to help people feel more comfortable recording short videos. We don't see HireHive has a "video resume" (i.e. something you agonize over carefully crafting long answers to) so much as a lightweight way to answer questions off-the-cuff. One of the challenges we face is to figure out how to set the tone so people can relax and be themselves. Is there anything that you think would help you feel more comfortable? Thanks for the feedback :)
- rdl 16y agoI think you're right to want people to be off the cuff, and also relaxed. I would personally try to emulate the traditional phone interview, optionally with video -- start off with some chitchat and background on the company to get candidates comfortable, and then ask questions which demand immediate and realtime, unrehearsed responses. You have the chance of making the process more efficient, especially when there are hundreds or thousands of applicants. Maybe use a video pitch by the interviewer, clip about the company, etc. to set the setting and make the candidate comfortable, and then do instant-response questions with video response. I might also start the interview with some super-softball questions, to get the user familiar with the system. "What's your name?" isn't really good, but some really easy tech questions or even general knowledge questions might be good. The main benefits to me in having a bunch of recorded interviews is that I can instantly drop one if the candidate is obviously a reject. It took me a few years of hiring responsibility before I got to the point of "I'm sorry, I have to end this now" if someone is obviously unacceptable 5-10 minutes in. A problem with doing that in real life is that you need to block out the whole interview on your schedule, and it's harder to fit other things back in once that is freed. Being able to outsource reviewing answers to other people in your organization would also be great -- e.g. sending the database question to your database guys. If you are really interviewing 1k people, you can have your database guy look at 10, grade those, and then have a junior person, based on those, grade any which pattern-match well, and refer the others back to the expert. I'd still prefer a written or executable test for most technical jobs, at least as my initial screen, and an IM or phone chat, but I could see the value of this for some roles.
- nicholasjbs 16y ago
- Harj 16y agoi agree the prospect of filming yourself is somewhat uncomfortable but i've been stunned during the YC application review process by just how much a video adds to the application. it's actually, for me, the most important part of the application while reviewing it. i believe employers will realize this too and once they do, they'll insist on having video as standard in applications. once that happens, uploading videos of yourself will become more commonplace and eventually feel less alien.
- starkfist 16y agoit's actually, for me, the most important part of the application while reviewing it. why?
- pg 16y agoIt is for me too, and the reason is that's it's so high bandwidth compared to text. At our stage, we care mostly about the people, and you can tell much more about people from watching them talk than from reading what they write, just as (though not to the same extent) you can tell more about someone from meeting them in person than reading a resume.
- rdl 16y agoMaybe I'm just paranoid and have low expectations for humanity, but I think the main demand for video interviews would be to do racial/ethnic/attractiveness discrimination on candidates. Early in the process, it would be a lot easier to discard all people of [unfavored group] without any allegations of unfairness.
- nicholasjbs 16y agoDiscrimination is a serious problem with all hiring -- people discriminate when they read names on resumes, speak with people on the phone, and when people come in for interviews. Like most tools, HireHive could be misused. We hope though that it will overall help people shine through who don't look super impressive on paper but are in fact awesome.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- kiba 16y agoBad discrimination will cost the company lot of money. Good discrimination will make the company lot of money. If a company discriminate based on race, they will get the kind of performance they deserve.
- rdl 16y agoDiscrimination can be done by employees even if it's not a company-wide policy.
- coryl 16y agoI'm perplexed by your statement about there being "Good" and "Bad" discrimination. In this context, discrimination means judging someone based on their looks or other visible features from their video. If nobody believes they should be judged by whether they're male/female, minorities, religious, attractive/ugly, etc., why would there ever be "Good" discrimination?
- kiba 16y ago
- warpwoof 16y agoMy initial response is definitely skeptical. If I'm asked to record a video for an interview question, I'm going to write down my answer first, and then read it in a casual way. You're going to be judging my skill at speaking into a little square at the top of a computer. I hope this isn't treated as a tool to judge interpersonal skills. What value is added, beyond making it easier to dismiss people based on appearance and personal preferences? I guess judging based on a perceived personality is kosher, but let's be realistic about the purpose here. I think a live video-call is totally fair-game, but something about this definitely rubs me the wrong way.
- nicholasjbs 16y agoI appreciate your skepticism :) We think there's actually a lot you can learn about someone by watching and listening to them speak, particularly when they're talking about what they're passionate about or why they want to work at your company. Another advantage is that, for some people at least, it's a lot easier to just record yourself speaking for 60 seconds than to write a cover letter (which have become engineered to point of being pretty bland, IMHO).
- ktsmith 16y agoThere's also the exact opposite issue for some people. I don't really have a problem opening up or making a personal connection in person. I cringe hearing or seeing myself on video. I can't stand it, even if I'm seeing a video of my son and I playing which I love. A company requiring a video recording as part of the application process would be an instant pass for me since you wouldn't be getting me, you'd be getting the extremely uncomfortable self conscious version of me.
- rdl 16y agoI think realtime interaction is the key element missing from most early-stage screenings, not video. I'd rather have an IM/irc/voice chat with someone, propose problems, and observe how he tries to solve the problem, than canned and rehearsed video clips. The only job for which I'd consider a canned video clip to be really useful is a job which requires producing canned video clips.
- cglee 16y agoI don't think anything is stopping you from using IM/irc/chat. The problem that video screenings solve isn't one that you face. For example, Thunderbird School of Global Management, a top international MBA program, is planning on using Active Interview as part of their admissions process. They're letting applicants answer a video questionnaire to replace 1 of 3 essays. It's purely optional. They have a full admission team of 10+ people, working full time traveling around the world screening applicants. Using a tool like AI saves tons of time and money in the early screening stages. Unless you are a organization like that, you won't truly feel the pain that Active Interview or Hirehive solves.
- bmcnamara82 16y agoGreat job on charging for service right out of the gate. My assumption would be that someone with a flair for showmanship can excel at this even if they are a mediocre performer. However, I could see this being useful for real time.
- MichaelGlass 16y agoI wonder how many of these comments are based on experience hiring. The challenge isn't from the applicant's standpoint but from the other end. Certainly video can be used for discrimination. But that is absolutely not the only use case.
- rdl 16y agoI have hired for or at 5 companies so far. I've never used video, and I have hired people based solely on phone conversations, or IRC conversations -- but usually phone/irc followed by an in-person interview. I can't think of any value of recorded video over realtime chat for anything except "create a video clip for me!" For a sales job involving in-person meetings with clients, a realtime video chat might be a bit better than realtime audio, but the difference is much less than the value of an in-person meeting. For a developer job, I would consider this totally without value. "IM presence" and "how well can he explain something in words" (voice or text) would be worth vastly more, and "sit next to me and do this task and explain it to me" would be the ultimate test.
- nicholasjbs 16y agoThe response we've heard so far is that companies have found the videos to be quite helpful. We don't see them as a replacement for the entire hiring process, and certainly for hiring developers it's still important to do in-person interviews, have them write code (which they can also do using HireHive, since we support multiple types of responses, not just videos), etc.
- rdl 16y agoIf you could be a framework for any kind of question/response (and I think timed and interactive would be a plus), that would be great. If you could then make the "grading and evaluation" workflow on the employer side support routing through subject matter experts, a prospective team, manager, etc., based on either employer-specified rules, or some kind of policies which you suggest and which can be tweaked, I would probably use this, even without ever using the video portion.
- cal5k 16y agoThe idea is actually a good one, but there is much talk of "killing" Monster.com - what's to stop Monster.com from developing a similar scheme and piloting it to its massive user base as soon as this idea catches on?
- nicholasjbs 16y agoThis is the problem every startup faces when going against established competitors. We have to compete by focusing, working fast, and always doing right by our users and customers :)
- riffer 16y agoThis is the problem every startup faces when going against established competitors. Only if the technology is trivial
- dannyr 16y agoThere is a startup called SayHired.com that does something similar but just audio. They found a niche with call center agents. I'm not entirely sold yet that this is good for hiring developers since some of us are probably not comfortable talking on video. Maybe the niche for this service is for hiring receptionists or sales/marketing people.
- nicholasjbs 16y agoWe're still figuring out the full range of positions HireHive works best for. We agree that receptionists, sales/marketing people, customer service, etc are good fits for the service and have had positive feedback from them so far. Thanks for the pointer to SayHired!
- dpritchett 16y agoI'd love to hear jl's take on this since she's YC's character appraisal specialist. Do these videos help her with that?
- fatguy 16y agoI am skeptical. Personally I am still in college, and want to get something going before I graduate so that I never have to work for another company, but if a company asked me to record a video clip as a response to their interview questions, I wouldn't do it. (Its a personal decision). I think it is really impersonal, and though I wish you guys good luck, and it seems it like the idea might catch on with big corps/YC-start-ups to screen candidates, it really reminds me of "Up in the Air" (a movie released earlier this year), wherein the company that the protagonist works for replaces live people with videos, and they just take the personal element out of the equation.
- old-gregg 16y agoI don't know either this is good for employers/customers but one thing for sure: this makes me feel even more terrified of failure, of becoming a "candidate" again. This company is making the world even more hostile for people who need jobs for reasons stated here by others. Let me explain: my wife is looking for a job now. She's not an engineer so the progress has been slow: hundreds of resumes emailed, no response, constant thoughts like "something's wrong with my resume??". Now you're telling me that she needs to sit down and film herself hundreds of times and then stare at the empty inbox and think "something's wrong with the way I look/talk?" That's just disgusting.
- coryl 16y agoInteresting way of looking at it. Although this problem is more of a self-concious/insecurity issue. Rejection is simply a numbers game; there's tons of applicants applying for single job openings. On the other hand, if your wife has a sparking personality and an average resume, video response might actually help her stand out of the crowd.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- shazow 16y agoNot necessarily hundreds of times. My understanding of HireHive's model is that you could film yourself answering a set of questions once and include it in multiple similar job applications (at least some day). I look at video as a substitute for phone screenings rather than a substitute for a resume. I hate phone screenings.
- old-gregg 16y agoIt is not: a phone screening involves a mutual time investment - there's a live person taking time to talk to you on the phone, so the "time complexity" for both parties is O(n). Posting a list of questions and requiring candidates to film themselves is free, so it is O(1) for the employer but still O(n) for a candidate. Don't be naive, if this service becomes popular, employers will recognize this advantage and exploit it in full.
- kingkilr 16y agoI was considering a startup along exactly these lines within the last couple of weeks, but for college applicants. I ended up not going forward as I wasn't personally super interested, and the friend who had the original idea said there appeared to be a patent covering it.
- cglee 16y agoThe skeptical comments are interesting. But it doesn't seem like they are the primary market. At Active Interview, we've been doing video interviews for a while now. We've gotten good traction among organizations who have continuous hiring needs and/or those who need to process candidates who are geographically dispersed. For example, One Laptop per Child used Active Interview to screen a couple hundred applicants from around the world. They used us to test: 1. interpersonal skills & communication 2. language proficiency How much time/money would it cost to coordinate and phone screen everyone? We've also gotten a lot of interest from academic organizations, who need to process applicants every semester. We've especially been working with graduate departments, like MBA programs, who have a high number of international applicants. They use us because: 1. Time shifting - it's difficult to set up a mutual time with candidates around the world. 2. Language - many international applicants have through the roof English scores and can write like Steinbeck, but can't speak a lick. 3. Normalize interviews - different recruiters assess candidates with varying degrees of leniency. Active Interview lets the entire recruiting team view, score and comment on every candidate response. The scores are tallied and averaged. 4. Most candidates like taking a video interview over writing yet another essay. I understand why some may be skeptical, but there's definitely a need for video interviewing for some types of organizations and I'm glad Hirehive is getting some publicity for all of us in this area.
- rdl 16y agoI see the value for some jobs, but audio seems like it is just as good as video, much cheaper, less intrusive, and vastly more accessible.
- cglee 16y agoThis is almost a thing you have to see to believe. Video just gives you so much more resolution and insight. Social science studies have told us many times that 90% of communication is non-verbal - audio only captures that 10%. Of course, nothing beats face to face, but it also comes at a cost (time, money). We built Active Interview to help those who need to quickly process a large number of applicants at as high of a resolution as possible.
- shelly 16y agoThis is actually a terrific idea... for applicants who are good on camera. I instantly get deer-in-headlightsy and stiff when the camera starts rolling, so a potential employer wouldn't get an accurate read on me.
- nicholasjbs 16y agoCan you think of anything that would help you relax so you could be your true self?
- exit 16y agoi sincerely hope your startup fails. i simply do not want to live in a world in which an expectation of passively recorded videos "scales".
- jagjit 16y agoThe idea is scary at first. But really makes sense once you think about it. I agree, it makes the screening process more human. I know the job market is not good right now for job seekers to be chosers, but if I have to apply with a video, I would feel more up to it if I see the hiring team's or manager's video too.
- sabj 16y ago"the higher bandwidth of video provides more information than text, which results in better informed hiring decisions" Not sure about this. Generally, I'm uncomfortable with all the room for discrimination that something like video brings into play -- even if it isn't intentional. See the case of orchestra auditions where female players did tremendously better when judged from behind a screen, gender being removed from the equation. Even if people feel unbiased about a lot of roles, they might still have them play out... ??? That, and I just think so many video things like this end up gimmicky. I can see it well applied, and also easily misused.
- xsive 16y agoSo it's not enough that I spend hours working and tailoring my CV and cover letter for every job application and hours more writing answers to selection critera. Now you want me to record and produce a video selling myself? Hah! Good luck with that.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- betterlabs 16y agoI think most candidates who are good will find this to be way too much work to prove their point. They won't do it. Secondly, depending on the job a lot of people may get disqualified just because they seem lame on video, though they are stellar at what they do. But as an idea, I like it for its novelty. The jobs space is broken in many ways and this is worth a shot. Just don't think it will work for every job type. For hiring at Crate & Barrel or Starbucks perhaps.
- gigafemtonano 16y agoSo it's a nock off of chatroulette with a business spin? How long will it take until The Gap sees that 90% of their video applicants are actually dudes wanking off?