By Rushan Ziatdinov
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Video CVs are not new in the Western world, but are almost unknown in South Korea. In 2010, Forbes released an article entitled, "Viral Video Resume Wows Potential Employers," about a job hunter from London who managed to get the attention of potential employers.
According to an article published in The Guardian in 2014, video CVs are a great opportunity to show one's presentation skills and they tend to be most appropriate when applying for creative or customer-facing roles in sales, media, marketing, PR, and advertising.
There are many opinions about using video CVs during job applications. Some people may think that this is a creative and innovative way that can give an advantage over competitors, others would claim that it can be a quicker way to discriminate against older and non-attractive applicants. Additionally, employers can discriminate against candidates based on language level and dialect as well as pronunciation.
Undoubtedly, all these negative things related to discrimination may also happen during regular job interviews or even at the stage of evaluating applicants' traditional resumes or CVs. Alas, discrimination against job applicants by age, gender, national origin, race, etc. has become an integral part of capitalist economies, and readers can find thousands of articles and case studies related to this.
In 2020, the U.K.'s Glamour magazine published an article entitled "Instagram CV accounts & TikTok resume videos: The genius ways Gen Z are applying for jobs in the pandemic." The magazine mentioned one applicant who used Instagram to create a full-fledged video CV by choosing pictures that showcased her personality and adding captions to describe her skill set and expertise. Others are choosing TikTok, the platform of choice for Gen Z, instead of LinkedIn to share their resume and make short videos.
As we know, there can be found many templates for creating traditional CVs, some great ones written in LaTeX markup language can be found at the Overleaf portal. But what are the ways of developing a video CV? Foremost, one simply needs a smartphone with a good camera, a tripod, an external microphone, and a nice background. Let me describe in a series of steps.
1. Prepare yourself (hair, makeup, attire, etc.), and use an environment with an appropriate background and good lighting;
2. Work on your voice before you start recording the video (a vocal warm-up won't do any harm);
3. Use minimum HD resolution in your video, and employ a YouTube standard aspect ratio of 16:9 if you plan to host your video CV online. Keep in mind that most viewed video CVs on YouTube are about 1-3 min in length;
4. To ensure quality sound, it's better to use an external microphone or a digital voice recorder. Recording audio separately will enable you to editing and enhancement ― e.g. noise filtering ― digital audio editing software. Audacity is a popular free audio-editing software title;
5. Some free software, such as Kdenlive or various others, can be used for video editing;
6. If your video CV is narrated in a language other than English, subtitles can be written in English. This may be used as a sign to an employer that the applicant has interest and/or ability in languages.
According to Cojocariu et al. (2020), the process of recruitment and the methods for accessing the labor market has changed due to the new information and communication technologies. As a result, the new generation of managers and companies are increasingly using the video CV as a tool to find qualified candidates or to land jobs more easily.
Video CV facilitates the recruitment process for the employers when they are at the screening level, during candidate selection. It enables the human resources department to choose a candidate quickly and easily for the next phase of the interviewing process. By displaying one's personality and natural reactions in a video CV, a candidate may highlight his abilities and experience in a way that is very similar to an in-person presentation.
Video CVs are not yet extremely popular, nor are they subject to much active research. However, it can be considered a useful tool for a student's self-promotion in the labor market.
Rushan Ziatdinov (ziatdinov.rushan@gmail.com) is a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Keimyung University, Daegu.
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