I’m actually not listening to a word you say. Your skills and professional background are of no interest to me. Instead I’m fixated on a different background - that 70’s paneling in your bedroom where you shot your video resume. Welcome to the world of DIY resume video creation and one of the more important choices in your production, what’s behind you. I’m continuing my quest to help IT people everywhere create their own video resume by documenting the process of doing one for myself.
In this installment, I find out that the background of your video resume can either add to, or detract from your presentation to prospective employers. Where you are matters as much as what you are talking about. You’ll see more in my first exploration: The Whiteboard Background.
While I might not end up sitting in front of a whiteboard for my video resume, it got me to thinking about some other potential options.
5 Good Video Resume Backgrounds Around the House
Unless you are looking to get really adventuresome, odds are that you will shoot your video resume at home. Here’s a list of a few ideas to stage an interesting background at home:
- Home office: Sit at your clean, uncluttered desk with your laptop. Show your tools.
- Kitchen: If you have granite counter tops show them off. They make you seem more valuable.
- Study/Den: Make sure there are a few books in the background. They make you seem smarter.
- On the couch: Think Diane Sawyer TV interview. It makes you more seem more relaxed.
- Wall with framed art and greenery: Neutral and professional
5 Bad Video Resume Backgrounds Around the House
For every great video resume setting at home there is an equally bad idea. Here’s five that come to mind.
- The bedroom: Don’t even think about it, unless you are looking to make it in a certain industry.
- The bathroom: The fact I get inspired in my shower caused me to consider it briefly. Don’t.
- The backyard: Really. Unless you work outside, which most IT people do not, outdoor shooting offers all sorts of distracting sights and sounds that add no credibility to your video resume.
- The garage: No one wants to see your bike, beer fridge, or woodworking hobby
- The car: Action movies seem like they’d be fun, just not for communicating your potential IT prowess
All of this poking around the house got my wheels spinning about ways to make it seem like I’m not at home shooting the video resume at all. My first thought was obliterating the background altogether. I see an awful lot of this at conferences and on the celebrity red carpet interviews. Throw up a sheet behind someone especially with a bunch of sponsor logos on it, and voila.
I intentionally used a blue sheet in my previous attempt because the nerd in me REALLY wanted to know how to do bluescreen/greenscreen chroma-key. You know the technique where you can make it look like you are on the Death Star battling Vadar. Well, it turns out, the technique is pretty challenging. If I choose to go this route, I will need to refine my lighting and background material so that I look a lot better than in this example.
So, what do you think are the best ideas for a video resume background? Do you think it makes a big difference? Feel free to submit examples of what you think does or does not work.
Tags: background, bluescreen, how-to, video resume
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Kris Rzepkowski
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A video resume leaves too much chance for discrimination. If I don’t like the way you are wearing your suit I might decide to pass on you. Since a company cannot legally require you to send in a video resume, why would you introduce an extra artificial hurdle?
I picked up a consultant at the airport before an interview who was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He always dresses that way as I found out the next morning when I picked him up to take him to the interview. I had doubts about the success of this interview, but he turned out to be one of the most brilliant guys the company had ever interviewed from a third party agency.
Had I seen his video resume, there is a chance that $20k fee would not be in my account right now.
Comment by Gene — March 10, 2009 @ 9:14 am
Hi Gene,
I’ll ask some of our recruiters if they share your view. So far I could imagine that the way a person talks on the video resume may scare recruiters away from presenting them even more than clothing. In your scenario, I can only imagine that person to be pretty articulate on their video resume which should overcome any objections you would have had to their clothing.
A question I’d like to get more into here is whether you would recommend candidates to dress the way they would during their typical (or ideal) workday, or just to dress in a “standard interview getup”, shirt, tie, etc. Being true to themselves might help everyone involved identify the right cultural fit for the candidate. However this could affect their marketability significantly. The best recuiters of course coach their candidates into the right clothing for the company’s work environment prior to interviewing anyways.
I see where you are going with the “artificial hurdle”. The video resume could be a piece of evidence used against the candidate during the interview process either by the recruiter, or the potential hiring manager. Nonetheless, the video resume is only a first impression, or elevator pitch on the person. I suppose not everyone will be able to succinctly get to the core of what they offer on video which could hurt their chances. I do think that the talking, moving video resume has the potential to open an awful lot of doors, and only shut a few.
Comment by Kris Rzepkowski — March 10, 2009 @ 11:16 pm
Kris, I am curious…if LinkedIn and Facebook are so popular and peope are posting photos, how different is the video resume? Do we want the employer to see us in action? My belief is that it is just another way for people to begin to feel they know you.
Companies may not formally adopt video resumes due to the discrimination thing, but do you think it’s going to catch on?
What about professional vs. amateur video? There are some pretty scary videos on youtube right now.
Comment by Hannah Morgan — March 11, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
Hannah, I agree that photo sharing has become a big part of our lives whether it is on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Flickr. For this reason I’m already finding it a bit disconcerting when I get a call from someone out of the blue, and I can’t Google to find what they look like. I begin to ask the unfair question, why haven’t they made any photos of themselves available in a public forum? The reality is many people still maintain some thread of personal privacy and would prefer that they not be photo-stalked. Increasingly this is melting away for better (in my case) and for worse (for those that cling to their privacy).
So, then we come to video and video resumes. Video gives you even MORE of a flavor of a person. How do they present themselves? How do they inflect their voice. Could you sit in a meeting all day with them. That’s about all I can get from a video resume unless we start doing video reality shows. Then I suppose you could see what I’m like ‘in action’. You are right that it does make you feel like you know a person before you ever really meet them.
Despite the continued objections from people about discrimination, I do think video resumes will catch on, if for no other reason than the technology becoming ubiquitous. Also, you cannot hide behind a video resume in the same way that you can lie on paper. I really think video can capture the essence of someone’s personality, and recruiters and employers will use it increasingly as another evaluation tool. Keep in mind though that the video resume, when done well is not a resume. It is an intro; your elevator pitch. The real details should be left to paper and the in-person interview.
Finally on the professional vs. amateur front, I’m going to talk to some experts about that one. My hypothesis is that too much polish will come off really boring and lack authenticity. However, awful production values do tend to cloud the content. So just like any DIY project, if you don’t take the time to become a student of technique a little bit, you may make some big mistakes that could have been mediated by professional advice. I plan on exploring more on this topic.
Comment by Kris Rzepkowski — March 12, 2009 @ 2:35 pm