VCV is an IT company, we develop video tools for various business tasks, including chat bots, audio bots and a pre-screening platform that allow a candidate to communicate with a potential em-ployer. Our business grew threefold over the last year. To maintain this growth and step up special-ist recruiting, we decided to look for and hire employees across Russia and beyond. While in early 2018, VCV had only 3 remote employees, we now have as many as 28 – even more than the num-ber of office staff in Moscow.
And then a problem arose: how to present remote employees to the team for them to be remem-bered? So that it was clear straight away where they worked, who they were subordinate to and what tasks they were assigned to handle. Things used to be pretty simple then: just before his/her first appearance at work, we added a new employee to the work chat, and then, in the office, we introduced him/her to colleagues. The solution came all by itself: we would, first of all, test and use whatever VCV offers its customers. And if every day we watch a huge number of videos shot using our service, why shouldn't we use it to tell about ourselves? Thus we took the first step to-wards our own video onboarding by launching the project “Welcome to the VCV team” last year. Each company employee made a video about him(her)self, answering a few simple questions: what he does, what department he works at, what he is keen on and would like to share with co-workers. We made a common list of questions to systematise information.
“One of my cool traits is that I can pick up cool people for the team, and you actually confirm this. Thanks for joining us!
...I’ve been working at the company since 2013, and I am responsible for everything that happens at VCV, and for our future, ” Arik Akhverdyan, VCV CEO, says in his video greeting to new employ-ees.
All new comers make such videos 3 months after they start working at the company, as soon as the probationary period is over. By this point, an employee has already shaped an understanding of the company as a whole and their role: what they deal with and how they could help co-workers. As we had more and more new employees coming in, we launched another project – “Hello World!”. In this series of videos, newcomers talk about their experiences and impressions and share plans, and their co-workers can send in more questions beforehand for the guy on a video to answer in an interview. This helps everyone reveal an unexpected and highly positive side to their character.
Practice has shown that a video interview is a very convenient and almost universal tool for a vari-ety of tasks that range from interviewing a job-seeker to adapting a new employee to the VCV team, and their introduction to co-workers and management. When a new employee comes to the office, they have only time enough to talk personally to just a few co-workers during the first days. As to video interviews, they allow you to present yourself to the whole company at once. Now all employees, whether developers, secretaries or directors, can record video interviews using our service. It is very convenient that all videos are stored in a single interface, in which you can also see your co-workers’ contacts.
“I haven’t even gone to work at the office yet, but I already feel I am welcome and being waited for, and that’s really cool,” says Anastasia, a new employee.
It is important that we catch the moment of maximum employee loyalty: they are preparing for a new job, new exciting tasks and opportunities, they are intrigued, feel emotional uplift and even seem to be waiting for magic. A few days before a new employee’s first day at work, we provide them with access to the materials of the project “Welcome to the VCV team”, so they can get ac-quainted with their co-workers in advance and record greeting words for them. As a result, a ra-ther stressful situation of joining a new company and team becomes much easier and more com-fortable: newcomers can immediately concentrate on working issues and tasks without worrying about how their co-workers will accept them. Another opportunity we take advantage of in the adaptation process is an individual welcome to a new employee from the CEO, immediate manag-er or a group of co-workers. These congratulations and wishes of successful work are also very im-portant for newcomers as they immediately create the common context of communication and simplify the process of incorporation into the team and new tasks. New employees have the im-pression that they are already acquainted with everyone from the first workdays.
Video onboarding helped us unite the team, although our employees live and work in different cit-ies and countries, and enabled our co-workers to open up from different sides as extraordinary personalities and spirited professionals. Gradually, the video address format has spread to other events: important dates, quitting the company and position change. Another strength of video in-terviews is that they are very fast to make. It took us only a few days to prepare projects: we made a list of questions, sent them to our co-workers and asked them to record interviews through our video service.
In my opinion, the video onboarding idea really works. This is an effective tool that also falls within the “long-lived” category: it is nice to review videos and convenient to use them to tell job-seekers about the company or to prepare other video materials. The key is to use it consistently and sys-tematically, encompassing all employees. This may prove difficult when it comes to large compa-nies and distributed teams, but the result is well worth the effort.
“Video content is no longer a one-way road when you simply broadcast your message to the audience. With the help of interactive tools embedded in the video, you can have a fascinating conversation with an employee, ask him questions, offer to perform an action, etc. HR interviewers help HR professionals increase hiring speed, giving more time to better candidates, ” - commented Zulfiya Yupashevskaya, Deputy Director of Human Resources, BDO Unicon Outsourcing.
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