this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Your company requiring video submissions for a fucking application is the easiest "this company is batshit insane and there's no possibility working for them could ever be worth it" red flag I've ever seen.
Yep. I literally told a company there was no legitimate legal reason they could possibly want this, and good luck with their search. What better way to practice racism, sexism, and ageism in the hiring process?
There's also that.
But purely on the premise of "you should take the time to record a video merely for the pleasure of maybe having us look at your application", their expectations are way out of whack.
This isn't like when Google put scavenger hunts or puzzles or whatever in ads and gave job offers to people who solved them. The people who got hired by those ads were following through out of curiosity/the fun of solving the problems, and that wasn't the main/only way to get a job. It's just a new absurd demand trying to push the threshold of what's a legitimate ask.
I dunno what country you're in, but in my country you are required by law to have a valid reason to reject a job candidate. That reason can be pretty simple, such as "your application was not as strong as other candidates" but you need to be able to back that claim up if you're challenged (and you can be challenged on it).
The recommended approach is to have a list of selection criteria, and carefully consider each one then write it down and keep a record of the decision for a while, incase you end up on the wrong end of a discrimination lawsuit. Candidates have the right to ask why they were unsuccessful (and they should ask - to find out what they can do better to improve their chances next time. As a hiring manager I would note down anyone who asks and consider offering them a job in the future, bypassing the normal recruitment process).
I rank each criteria from one to ten, then disregard the worst scoring candidates until I have a short list that I can compare directly (at that point, I wouldn't worry too much about numbers. You are allowed to say "you were a great candidate, but we had multiple great candidates and had to pick one. Sorry".
If your selection criteria includes "they need to wear nice clothes" then you're treading on very dangerous territory and could be breaking the law. The damages here are commonly six months pay at the salary of the position they applied for, and can also include a court order for you not to be involved in the hiring process going forward.
It's perfectly reasonable to require someone to dress well if they have a customer facing role... but that requirement should be implemented at work and not during the job interview. I'm well aware that a lot of hiring managers rely heavily on these things to make their decision but they should not be doing that. It's not as bad as picking someone because they're a straight white male candidate (which is also very common), but it's still a bad policy.
Australia. It's not clearly illegal but it's dangerous territory. Candidates have a general right to be treated as equals and you need to reject someone for reasons that are relevant to the job position.
Something that can easily be changed, like a shirt, might not be OK. ANZ bank (a massive bank with several hundred billion dollars in assets they manage), for example, requires customer facing staff to wear a branded uniform but back at the office? You can wear whatever you want. When they changed their dress code years ago to no-longer require a suit/tie the CEO deliberately wore ugly clothes for a while to set an example.
Obviously no candidates are expected to turn up to an interview in their uniform - they don't have a uniform yet. And if someone can wear a Marilyn Manson shirt in the office, then why not also at the interview?
The bank I'm with is even more relaxed - even customer facing staff can wear anything they want. Sure, if it's offensive they'll be told to wear something else, but that's a conversation I'd be having with the candidate rather than a reason to reject their application. I might reject them if I don't like their response.
Being recorded and interacting with someone in person are hugely different. Even
First of all, a person would give nonverbal feedback.
Secondly, there is all manner of body language that could be used for emphasis that doesn't make sense doing to a camera.
What legal reason(s) do you have for needing to see their appearance when making a decision on whether to hire them? You may have some, such as requiring a professional appearance. These need to be spelled out in the job requirements. It also opens the doors to claims of illegal discrimination, since this will be on full display. In the US, that includes race, age, and gender. Having a required video can also reveal protected classes like familial status and religion, depending on what's in the background.
Whether an action is "Legal" is almost always dependent on context, and the lawyers/courts involved. A common tactic by racist nightclubs is to set a dress code, particularly on shoes. The argument is they aren't refusing entry based on race, but on clothing. But the unauthorized shoes are the ones commonly worn by people of the race they're discriminating against. Different courts have made different rulings on whether this (and similar actions) constitute racial discrimination.
You should hate it as a manager. You're filtering out every single quality candidate because only a deranged nut job would even consider such an unhinged request. Submitting a video, in and of itself, proves they are not worth hiring.
You don't need to process every candidate. Just randomly take 5%, or 1%, or .001%, and do a real hiring process. Anything at all is better than requiring a video application.
I don't really get why people are up in arms at this stuff. I hate the idea of doing these type of interviews, sure. But my grad program had 3k applications, 1k video interviews, 300 in person interviews, and only 100 actual roles. How the fuck else do they expect people to handle the sheer size of applications in management/HR roles?
Yeah lol that's because you don't seem to have any empathy for the people you are hiring. Why is it important if you don't care about it? Easy answer is it isn't.
Not just that
You should do some introspection.
If you are baffled it's not my responsibility to educate you.
The implication that volume of work excuses dehumanizing people and your other comment that "excluding some people is OK, they weren't going to succeed anyway", is clear as day, I'm not going to waste time writing a proof about why you suck.
You are selecting for the people privileged enough to know how or spend the time figuring out how to record and send video. Even if someone has used teams every day for presentations, it's easy to avoid using recording features when videoconferencing is all live.
If your workplace creates pre-recorded videos for office use, then sure I guess it's a skill you can select for.