How do you choose your egg?

At this time of year across much of Europe, Easter markets fill town squares selling traditional handicrafts and delicacies of the season. Here in the Czech Republic, you’ll find lamb-shaped cakes, decorative palms, willow switches and decorative eggs. Blown eggs, glass eggs, wooden eggs, plastic eggs, each intricately decorated with local patterns and motifs, they are small multi-coloured works of art. It’s become a family tradition to head to our local market every Easter and each choose a new egg for the Easter “tree” that we’ll then decorate together, perhaps this Palm Sunday.

But faced with so much choice, it can be hard to choose our eggs. Should I choose an egg to complement the ones we already have? Or replace the one that my youngest dropped on the floor last year? Perhaps I should buy that beautiful ornate one over there? It’s the most expensive but that’s because it took more skill and time than the others. The children, spoilt for choice, hesitate, agonise, discuss, pick one – and then change their minds. Perhaps I’ll lose patience and encourage my daughter to buy the one she’s holding. Which she doesn’t want now because she’s just spotted a better one. Eventually we head home, mission accomplished, selection made, egg collection enhanced.

Today the candidate screening exercise can be as random and subject to whim as my family’s Easter egg selection process. The recruiter may, or may not, have a comprehensive brief from the hiring manager. Perhaps the proverbial six seconds is all the time they really need to spend looking at a CV to decide whether the applicant has potential. Perhaps keyword searches really do find the needles in the applicant haystack. Perhaps the recruitment team does have the time to spare to arrange telephone interviews. And rearrange them. And perhaps those telephone interviews really do tell them what they need to know.

Or perhaps not. But there is a way to improve the screening process. A way that engages hiring managers more closely - without taking more of their time. That offers all applicants, wherever they are, a level playing field, where each of them is asked the same questions, given the same time to answer and given the chance to show who they are. That gives the recruiter an insight into the applicants that is far beyond the ability of a telephone interview. That is more effective and more flexible than other screening tools. It’s easy-to-use, it’s affordable, it’s fun! You should find out more about automated video interviewing today.