It has been a long time since I’ve written regularly on my recruiting blog (because I’ve been here.) There may be some folks who have missed me and there may be some folks who never realized that I was gone. I know that when I started the Confessions of an Executive Restaurant Recruiter blog, my readership was hovering around 4 for a long time 😉 but some really nice folks helped talk me up and my readership blossomed. I’ll give you a list of a lot of those helpful folks later on in my post.
The reason for my very sporadic posts here is that I’ve been working on a new startup venture that has literally eaten my time, almost every spare moment since back in February. In August things got really serious with a round of seed money and the addition of a full time executive team. Since August, we have been working tirelessly (well that really isn’t true, all of us have been tired as hell at one point or another) to bring our vision to reality.
Our Vision – "Hiring without barriers."
Today is a milestone for us. After months of work, thousands of hours of development, hundreds of thousands of lines of code, numerous focus groups, and weeks of public beta testing, we are now at soft launch. Our new venture is called Interview on Demand, and we provide hiring companies with the ability to invite candidates to take video interviews — online in a secure web-hosted environment. The hiring team then has the ability to review the completed interview, via internet browsers, any where, any time. Human resource professionals who are responsible for most of the leg work in filling positions can evaluate the respondents and forward the top candidates to hiring managers by email. This feature give the hiring manager the opportunity to view the best candidates without having to learn anything new, no new application software to learn, no new procedures, no new passwords or usernames — just open and email and review the candidate.
Our Mission – "To dramatically improve industry hiring practices by providing an on-line video interviewing service so powerful and effective that our clients cannot imagine hiring without it."
As of today, hiring managers can go to our website and sign up for a free trial and purchase additional interview ‘credits’ as they begin to ‘invite’ candidates to take interviews. Online, secure credit card processing using industry standard encryption makes the process painless. We have an extensive library of videos in the learning center to walk both hiring manager and candidate through their perspective procedures within the system. But the software is so simple that most people, even technophobes, can navigate successfully and complete their individual tasks without the need for any kind of help. Speaking of help, there is a complete help system and tool tips explain the function of almost every button and window on the screen. On the Career Video Expert Bullhorn blog, we discuss the use of video interviewing for many different angles – from how to implement within the your company’s hiring process, to comparing and contrasting it with video resumes, and even tips on how jobseekers/candidates can prepare and do their best in front of the camera.
There are tons of things planned in terms of future features but I can’t get into specifics here because of international trademark rules. Let’s just say that our soft launch, with the very well developed application suited for hiring managers serves but one part of the community of individuals involved in the hiring process that we see as having two other very important sectors – third party recruiters and jobseekers.
We also have launched a newsletter in conjunction with Interview on Demand – Hire Tech News. The newsletter focuses on the use of technology for the hiring process. It is distributed electronically on monthly basis to our list of over 15,000 recruiters and over 20,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals. Hire Tech News is also supported by an online blog with archived newsletters and full articles from the electronic distribution. If you’d like to sign up to receive the newsletter, just visit the sign up page, and choose from a list of specific interests. Also, if you would like to write an article for inclusion in the newsletter, just contact peggy (at) interviewondemand.com and she can give you all the details of how you can make a submission.
As promised, here is a list of a bunch of people who have been very helpful to me and the Restaurant Recruiter’s blog. It is by no means a complete list (I’ll be happy to add your name if I’ve left you out) but it is a pretty wide cross-section of bloggers form all different walks of life. Each has been helpful in untold ways. I hope that you will check out their blogs and make them part of your regular reading, if not part of your blog roll. They are presented in no particular order – so Animal, don’t feel slighted.
- Jason (not related to Jessica) Alba – we have both learned a lot about blogging from each other and he’s been a great resource to me. [and yes there will be a picture of Jessica at the end of my article]
- Dave Mendoza – a fantastic networker, he helped launch my online presence. Dave has a wonderful blog that gives back immeasurably to the recruiting community. He has won numerous awards, and will keep doing so. You gotta love Dave, heck you can’t be more than six degrees from him. 😉
- Ami Givertz– Ami is a wonderful fellow whose vocabulary dwarfs most dictionaries, I’m not smart enough to know what he is writing about half the time, but you might be.
- Dennis Smith – the fist person to ever post a comment on my blog. Dennis actually let me know that someone was reading my words and it felt good.
- The Recruiting Animal– who is an irreverent beast, has made much fun of me, and helped give me a platform for expressing myself. I’ve had to turn down many an invitation to his radio show (shows you how hard up he is for guests) but in the coming year, I think we will have a lot more to talk about.
- Julian and Shannon Seery Gude –who helped, probably without knowing by making some comments that made me think in new ways.
- Karen Mattonen – who provided me with a an opportunity to spar about numerous topics. AFAIK, Karen still doesn’t have her own blog, but you can find her in the Recruiting Lounge with Jim Stroud quite regularly.
- Steve (Mr. Clean) Levy – who has provided me with many hours of entertainment, but to be fair it was an even swap. He may be the reason that I give the "Improv" a shot.
- Jason Goldberg of Jobster – who provided me with a target for some controversial and outspoken posts.
- Jason Davis – who has been a great source of inspiration and information. Jason was the first person in the recruit-o-sphere who picked up the phone and gave me a call. I loved his leadership at RDC and he has quite the social network growing at recruitingblogs.com.
- John (Papa Smurf) Sumser – who provided me with lots of opportunities to disagree with his opinions, pontifications, and predictions. John showed himself to be a stand up guy by inviting me personally to attend the Atlanta Recruiting Roadshow.
- Tim Totten – who reminded me that you really can have a global audience.
Then there are the almost innumerable people that helped me with my blog boycott for breast cancer:
- Robyn Tippins of Inside Motherhood – Robyn wrote on of the most touching entries in tribute to Granny Jane.
- Christina Zola of Solo Mother who wrote a piece about her Grandmother (a breast cancer survivor) and her aunt who was dying of terminal cancer.
- Ruth Schaffer of Eating Fabulous –Ruth’s post actually put us over the top.
- Cathy Spalding of Chocolate Bytes – posted on her blog and pushed us well past our goal.
- Karen Weideman of Thrifty Mom –Karen was kind enough to post about my boycott. Thankfully she doesn’t have a personal connection to breast cancer.
- Liz Strauss of Successful ^and Outstanding Blog(gers)– Wow! Liz really answered the call. She was kind and generous and hooked me into her personal network of friends who pushed us past our goal. Liz even posted (against her own policy) about the boycott on her own site.
- Hsien-Hsien Lei of GeneticsAndHealth.com, AHeartyLife.com, PlayLibrary.com
and Cotton Pickin’ Days – Just like Liz, Hsien opened up her network and put out the call to everyone in an effort to help. - And special mention for Julian and Shannon Seery Gude. They were nice enough to post an announcement on all of their blogs –Exceler8ion,Localna8ion,That’s Wet ,Cute Little Bastards, and julians.name. I think if I had given them advance warning, they might have single-handedly gotten me over the hump by creating enough blogs to get the job done.
And finally "here’s a picture of Jessica Alba" 😉
