China (Great Wall) October 2009

October was truly a busy month!  It started off with a trip to China, which was fascinating.    I highly recommend a visit there, but you must be up for a long plane ride (15 hours!).   Upon returning home, I helped my husband launch his new business and continue my own work on a research project and querying book agents.  It’s good to be home equipped with new memories and lessons learned through new people and places.   So, getting back to staffing …

Depending on your perspective, technology is either pushing us forward with amazing innovation, pulling us along by the shirt collar or leaving us somewhere in between. However, those that are keeping track of what’s new and available to make their company more efficient and exciting gain the required edge to succeed in business today.   This counts big time especially in the staffing industry, where competition gets hotter every day and it’s getting harder to stand out from the crowd.   Also, client companies are reinventing themselves, shifting demands and changing requirements.   How does an agency keep up with them or even get one step ahead?

Here’s something I think worth paying attention to. It’s called Vipe. In a nutshell, Vipe enables their clients to create, manage and email short, effective video clips that market and support their services.   At present, Vipe has three primary industries using their product: Hospitality, IT and Staffing.   These videos can serve as introductions to potential clients, act as promotional and communication tools to update or maintain contact with clients or facilitate recruiting.   This is powerful!

When you consider what this will do for faceless telephone cold calls and emotionless emails that go out every day by agency reps to reach prospects, it’s a whole new world.   Video is a much more dynamic and much less intrusive way to get an agency’s message out there.   It’s fresh, professional and compelling.

I was impressed by what this means coming from the client perspective.   Every business day, I’m pitched by agencies ranging from cold calls, emails, faxes, flyers, brochures, invitations to events and assorted giveaways just to gain a few second’s worth of attention or consideration of doing business.   One of the things that’s noticeably missing with these approaches is emotion. There’s no life, no pizzazz, no “wow factor” in them.

To learn more, I spoke with Adam Peterson, CEO of Vipe Inc.   I asked him to explain what we “must know” about Vipe.    He said “The answer is twofold: For one thing, we make sales happen.   The other is that we’re putting personalized communication back into your business process.   As a result, every single one of our customers feels they’re differentiating themselves in a way that positively affects their bottom line. This really is a powerful differentiator.”

Being web-based, Vipe requires no software to download. Each client goes through phases of goal setting, planning and implementation, along with training.   They’ll learn how to use the product and be able to create their own effective sales videos.   The staff at Vipe will even teach clients tricks about being filmed such as how not to blink excessively or which angles never to be shot from, things the average person might not know.

Here’s an illustration about how dramatic video can be for business applications. Imagine following up on an initial contact with a prospective client by attaching your video link next to your signature “so they can put a face to your name”.   This helps make an even deeper connection and impression. See for yourself by clicking this link . . .

Adam Peterson (Meet me video!).

No lengthy emails to be read.  No interrupting phone calls. The agency rep is virtually front and center, and able to deliver their message in a more meaningful way.   All the non-verbal elements that account for 93% of communication are included in a video.   As someone who is a prospect for receiving a video, I feel it offers much more in exchange for my time and it puts me more in a buying mood vs. being sold.

Beyond the numerous marketing applications of Vipe, it can also be used in recruiting.   Agencies would still present qualified resumes to employers as they do now.   Once an employer shows interest in a particular candidate’s resume and wants to go a next step in the recruiting process, a video of the candidate can be presented by the agency to the employer.

What’s quite interesting about this process is what research has revealed. Dr. Bernieri, an Associate Professor, Department of Psychology at Oregon State University has found that  “ . . . twenty-minute interviews in which the interviewers were asked to rate each candidate on attributes such as ambition, intelligence, and competence. Then a group of observers was asked to watch video footage of just the first fifteen seconds of each interview. The results showed that the observers’ first impressions in fifteen seconds almost paralleled the impressions of the interviewers.”   Alan and Barbara Pease also cite this in their book “The Definitive Book of Body Language”.

Getting a candidate “in front” of an employer through Vipe can happen faster than the traditional means of checking schedules and confirming first rounds of interviews.   Of course, the usage of candidate videos doesn’t aim to take the place of live interviews, but they do efficiently facilitate the early recruiting stages when candidates are being reviewed and considered.   Peterson calls Vipe a “productivity tool for clients, like overworked hiring managers or human resource professionals who’s departments have been downsized, but still have a full plate”.

Overall, as a client, if I’m getting cold called, emailed or sent a video clip by a staffing agency, to consider their services and learn more about them, which method of communication am I going to spend a few moments with? Which method will grab my interest and be remembered?   When it comes to a job candidate that I want to pursue or recommend further along into the process, am I going to prefer the speed and effectiveness of viewing a video vs. waiting days for the candidate to come in? Roll ‘em!

For more information on Vipe, you can contact Byron Jacobs at byron@vipepower.com or visit their website is www.vipepower.com.

Catherine Pistole, is the Director of Human Resources at a private equity firm in New York City and author of “The Temp Factor”® book series. To receive important updates, tips and articles, please send your email address to thetempfactor@aol.com.
www.catherinepistole.com

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