Update on the Pizza Hut 140 second interview

A few posts back I wrote about Pizza Hut running 140 second interviews at a recruitment event to find a new social media director. My understanding was that they would then run a second round of interviews via Google Hangout to get to know the candidates a bit better, it turns out I was wrong.

They did run interviews via Google Hangout, but only for people who weren't able to make it to the face to face interviews held on the 10th March. These Google Hangout interviews took the same format as the original interviews - to sell yourself to the panel in 140 seconds! This really does require an additional level of skill, not only requiring a level of confidence that the technology is going to work, but the skills to set it up right. It is crucial that the audio levels are right so that your 140 second pitch can actually be heard!

During our webinar project, we found that although it might seem easier to run a webinar (or Skype, Google Hangout etc) without wearing a head set, using the built-in microphone and speakers, the audio does really suffer and often leads to people having to repeat themselves - if you only have 140 seconds your certainly don't have time to do that!

To read the article in full about the Google Hangout Interviews, click here.

Pizza Hut's 140 second interview!

Today Pizza Hut are holding interviews that last only 140 seconds at a recruitment event in America, according to Forbes. They are interviewing for a new social media manager, thus the 140 second reference to Twitter's 140 character limit, but interestingly they intend to hold the next round of interviews via Google+.

I assume this will involve a Google Hangout and will require some of the skills our students have been learning about whilst participating in our project. This is another example of the rise in video conferencing and webinar technology in recruitment. Click here to read the article in full.

The BBC reports on the rise of the Skype interview

The BBC recently reported on the rise in use of Skype and other video conferencing software for job interviews. This rise fits with our own research that showed 16.4% of the 256 students we asked had had a job interview by phone or video conferencing. 

The article discusses the benefits and issues around online interviews and outlines a number of top tips on how to prepare for them. This included the advice of sitting in front of a plain background, which one of our recent webinar guest speakers did, see our NUS webinar post, as you can see this worked very well and helped the audience to focus on the presenter.

To read the BBC article 'Skype interviews: Is it more tricky to be grilled by video?' click here.