Secure Your Next Sales Job With InterviewStudio

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As we said in our introduction, the future of sales recruiting will increasingly involve video resumes, in combination with online skill assessments and interviewing.

Consequently, we thought it would be a good idea to take a closer look at a number of these up and coming technologies and services.

You’ll will likely run into them sooner or later; as a recruiting sales manager or as a salesperson trying to find a new position.

Today we’re looking at a brand new product called InterviewStudio.

InterviewStudio - which was founded by Colleen Aylward, a veteran in the Recruiting Industry - offers a fairly simple yet powerful concept. Job seekers are given the opportunity to create a „showcase” which is stored on the InterviewStudio website and becomes accessible to interested employers and recruiters.

Creating your own InterviewStudio Showcase follows a straightforward 4 step process which includes uploading your written resume, taking an online test assessment, providing reference material and recording your video interview.

Let’s have a closer look at two of these steps; the test assessment and the recorded interview.

Your skill assessment is done online, using a common assessment methodology after which your skill and abilities in various areas, as well as elements of your personality, are rated on a 1-10 scale. The results of the assessment are in turn added to your InterviewStudio Showcase and can be viewed by interested parties.

The final step, recording your video interview, takes place at home using your webcam or at the studio of an approved professional videographer during which you answer a number of questions from an existing interview library. The great thing here is you can pick the questions you answer and your answers can be reviewed and edited until you’re completely satisfied with the result, greatly reducing some of the „interview stress” we all feel when we go through a normal interview process.

Once you approve, your recorded answers will be automatically integrated in your account. In addition, your InterviewStudio Showcase will integrate a view of your LinkedIn profile, as well as results for your name on Google searches.

When you’re happy with your Showcase, links to your profile can be emailed to recruiters and employers and stored in the online database.

InterviewStudio Shows can be created free of charge. Employers and recruiters pay for access to the system, either on a case by case basis or through a subscription model.

During the limited amount of time we played with it, we really enjoyed InterviewStudio.

From a job seekers perspective, the system is easy to use and seems to offer much of the elements one would want to include (video, assessment, resume, references and recommendations, links to your LinkedIn Profile) in a presentation to a potential employer. Since the InterviewStudio approach has a skill and competency focus, it’s not job specific and can be created once and used often. It’s a great way to stand out and offer a view on your skill and accomplishments that’s impossible to achieve with a simple written resume.

As an employer or recruiter, we think it can have a very useful role in exploring a pool of candidates and making a first determination on whether a follow-up conversation or perhaps a face-to-face meeting would make sense. From that perspective, InterviewStudio can help reduce cost and time expenditure for hiring sales managers.

There are a few things that need some additional research on our end, which we may be able to perform in the next few weeks.

For instance, as the guided tour online did not offer much specifics, we could not easily determine how well the library of questions would meet the needs of a hiring sales manager. In addition, what we could not establish from the demo is whether job seekers have control over who sees their completed InterviewStudio Showcase, or elements of that showcase - for instance the assessment results. We’d suspect the privacy and confidentiality element would be important for many job seekers.

Overall, we feel InterviewStudio is worth a serious look if you, as a job seeker, are looking to make a powerful and differentiated impression on a potential new employer. Similarly, hiring sales managers should take a look at this technology if they are serious about spending time with the right candidates and save money in the process.

Their website offers demo videos for employers as well as job seekers. We recommend you take ‘em for a spin.