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From the New York Times, Job Market Section
February 1, 2004

A Powerful Résumé Speaks to an Employer. Grins, Too.

By LOUISE KRAMER

     WHEN Rob Kittay's twins were born three and a half years ago, he decided to look for a job with a steady paycheck and health benefits.

     Mr. Kittay, a self-employed sales consultant who has sold everything from license plates in Guatemala to credit card services in Israel, had little luck with a traditional résumé. He sent 1,000 of them to prospective employers, and landed only six interviews. Then he tried a video résumé. Out of 20 he e-mailed in six months, he got 20 responses. One led to a job offer, from ComTech21, a telecommunications management company in Wallingford, Conn.

     "It's a very simple and unobtrusive way to stand out," said Mr. Kittay, 37.

      Video résumés are starting to emerge as a new weapon for job hunters. The videos range from 20-second presentations of a job applicant candidate directly addressing the camera to four-minute mini-movies replete with graphics and photo montages. Some job seekers spend pennies to make simple home videos; a higher-quality video can cost several thousand dollars.

      In addition to helping certain job seekers stand out, video résumés can help employers faced with a huge pile of applications narrow the field without wasting time on first interviews. Still, the top-quality videos can be out of reach for some unemployed professionals. And some employment service companies have resisted the innovation, saying they are concerned that video résumés could expose employers to charges of discrimination in hiring.

      While there are no measures of the precise number of video résumés in circulation, a study conducted for Reel Biography, a New York production company that recently started making video résumés, found that they have so far been used mostly by actors, aspiring news broadcasters and high school athletes applying to colleges, that is, positions that are judged in great measure by appearances.

     Still, use of this new job hunting tool is likely to increase over time, said John A. Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the global outplacement firm. "I think it will become widely used, but its wide use is a decade away probably as video technology moves to the mainstream," he said.

     A video résumé "is still an unconventional tool but it could develop quickly," said Jennifer Schramm, manager of workplace trends and forecasting for the Society for Human Resource Management, a national trade group based in Alexandria, Va. "This might become the same sort of thing as Internet dating."

     Job seekers and employers both say that video clips save on time and travel costs, and can be especially helpful for candidates who do not sparkle on paper but shine in real life.

     AC Lion, a Manhattan recruiting firm that specializes in sales positions for financial services, technology and Internet companies, started sending its clients videos of job candidates along with traditional résumés in 2001. The added service has helped candidates stand out, said Daniel Goldsmith, the firm's managing director.

     James Kwiatkowski, executive vice president for sales and marketing for FutureTrade, a provider of technology services to financial institutions, said he engaged AC Lion specifically because of the videos. He said videos helped him weed out candidates before rounds of initial interviews. "In the first five minutes of an interview you know it is not someone you are going to hire," he said.

     Tara Farbent, 26, was working as a temporary sales representative for Binney & Smith, the crayon manufacturer, when she made a video at AC Lion to help with her search for work in her preferred field of finance.

     In the video, against a plain backdrop, she peers into the camera and ticks off her experience. "I consider myself well versed in training and I look forward to meeting you," she says. 

     AC Lion e-mailed the video to the Relegence Corporation, a financial information company; she was then offered a position as an account manager there. "I was lucky," Ms. Farbent said. "This was the first one I used it for and I got the job." Now, she recommends videos to friends.

      At the high end of the market, Reel Biography last fall started producing profiles of senior-level professionals who are looking for work. Mr. Kittay was one of the company's test subjects.

     His video resembles a professional television newsmagazine segment, complete with studio lighting and camera-friendly makeup for the star. Names and logos of Mr. Kittay's client companies scroll up the screen like movie credits. The tape cuts to an image of the license plates he sold in Guatemala, and zeros in on its picture of a quetzal, the national bird. "I am subtly aggressive," Mr. Kittay says in a gentle voice. "I know that asking for the sale is the most important thing."

      Marco Greenberg, founder of Reel Biography, said that so far he had made video résumés free as part of a test, but he plans to charge up to $2,000, depending on the complexity of the production.

      Swapjobs.com in Tampa, Fla., represents the other end of the video résumé spectrum. The company has shot videotapes of nearly 10,000 job hunters in the last two and a half years at more than 30 employment fairs and then posts the tapes on its Web site along with a candidate's written résumé. A six-month posting costs $89.

      Michael Patrino, president and co-founder of Swapjobs, said he expected video résumés to represent 40 percent of his business in two years, up from 10 percent now, as video technology on the Internet improves.

      Not everyone is optimistic about video résumés. Dale Winston, chief executive of Battalia Winston, an executive recruiting firm in Manhattan, said nothing replaces a face-to-face meeting for top-level executives. "There's an opportunity for these videos to be too cute," she said.

     Then there are the concerns about discrimination. Marcel Legrand, senior vice president for strategic research and planning at Monster.com, the Internet employment site, said some employers feared video résumés could put them at risk for discrimination charges.

     "Let's say I'm an Hispanic-American,'' Mr. Legrand said. "If I don't get the job, I can theoretically claim that I didn't get it because I have an accent."

     Monster.com looked into posting video résumés on its widely used site and decided against it because of such issues, Mr. Legrand said.

       But some employers who have seen video résumés say these concerns are unlikely to keep the new job search tools from spreading. Brendan Deakin, the hiring manager at ComTech21 who offered the position to Mr. Kittay, is one. "What is the difference in making a judgment in person or via a video résumé?" he said. "This technology helped me get a feel for what type of person the candidate was."

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