As businesses adjust in these extraordinary times, the need for business continuity is more important than ever.

The adage that ‘people buy from people, first’ still applies. First-hand person-to-person interaction fuels the empathy and trust that fosters all mutually beneficial business relationships.

This is particularly true in the services sector, where skills, expertise, experience and knowledge are the key currency for success.

Why Recruiters Embrace Video Conferencing Technology

As brokers of ‘human capital’, to use the dystopian HR vernacular, recruitment firms play an essential role in matching talent to teams and bringing new energy to enterprises.

With the advent of flexible working practices and the diversification of skills, the co-ordination of that all-important face-to-face meeting, between a candidate and prospective employer, has become both a geographical and logistical challenge.

As such, video conferencing technology has enabled screen-to-screen virtual meetings to become an acceptable alternative to a traditional in-room encounter. With that, the virtual interview has officially become a thing.

In his recent article, Steve Harris from 8x8’s Human Resources team shared best practice guidelines for hiring managers and recruitment firms seeking the best outcome from video-based interviews. The right strategies can help you make the most from using video conferencing with your recruitment.

Video Meetings for Every Business

However, until recently, business-quality video that combines sharp images, flawless audio and intuitive user experience has remained the preserve of larger organizations and required the investment in proprietary hardware and complex software. This changed with the advent of the latest generation video-based meeting solutions that were ‘born in the cloud’, unencumbered by the legacy of premise-based systems.

The Video Meetings product from 8x8 is a perfect example of an easy-to-use, high-quality solution that has gained widespread adoption since its launch last year as a free-to-use service at 8x8.vc. Unlike other free meetings applications, this is not a limited-time offer. Users of this standalone product have unlimited access to full-functionality HD video and audio and multi-user screen file-sharing capabilities at no charge. No registration is required, and all users simply start or join a meeting with the click of a button on any device.

8x8 Video Meetings finds its origins in the longstanding Jitsi.org open-source project, which 8x8 acquired from Atlassian in 2018. The underlying software benefits from almost ten years of iterative development and enhancement and a significant world-wide base of open-source applications, based on Jitsi’s robust, scalable and high-quality technology.

From an original active user base of over 1m users, including over 30% of secondary school teachers in Italy (as part of the WeSchool initiative) its reach now extends to over 7m users and rising, as evidenced by the 8x8 Meetings live map.

How Servoca uses Video Meetings to Drive Productivity

Leading recruitment provider Servoca is an avowed convert to the benefit of the 8x8 Video Meetings, delivering staffing solutions and outsourced services to criminal justice, healthcare, homecare and education segments.

“We see a great opportunity to use 8x8 Meetings for candidate interviews,” said Dean Gilbert, IT Manager at Servoca PLC, a leading provider of staffing solutions and outsourced services across the UK. “It’s simply a more efficient and productive way to run interviews and fits into our overall strategy of using 8x8 for meetings.”

You can read the full Servoca case study here.

Video Makes Remote Work Possible

The paradigm shift in working practices driven by the impact of Coronavirus has fundamentally impacted most businesses. As remote working becomes the ‘new normal’, companies like Servoca, that have already adopted video as a productivity tool, are well-positioned to transition all their candidate and client interactions to that solution.

At a time when demand for healthcare and teaching professionals is at an unprecedented high, the use of video as the primary interview methodology is as timely as it is vital for the continued welfare of our social and economic communities alike.