RecruitHub’s Tech Spotlight blog series focuses on a selection of recruitment technology providers, each adding value to the recruitment process through a specialised offering.
Now, we look at Hinterview, a leading video engagement platform.
What is Hinterview?
Hinterview is a tool that allows recruiters to create and distribute video content quickly and easily through a cloud-based platform.
The concept began purely as a video interviewing platform – a way for agencies to bring candidate CVs to life and provide engaging video content to showcase applicants in a more rounded context than just words on a page.
Using Hinterview, agencies are able to help clients and candidates connect faster and more meaningfully, either by providing hiring managers with video intros to shortlisted applicants, or by embedding video screening into the interview process.
Email integration and applicant tracking functionality helps keep clients and agencies on the same page, creating an end-to-end platform that adds a valuable human dimension to the traditional recruitment process.
While video interviewing remains a core feature of the Hinterview platform, the solution quickly evolved to incorporate a broader range of uses for video content, with recruiters using the technology to introduce their own services to new prospective clients and candidates via personalised video pitches and intros delivered to their inboxes.
Who’s behind the tech?
From an initial founding team with origins in global recruitment agency Sthree, Hinterview has grown rapidly in the wake of recent investment.
Led by Andy Simpson and Richard McLaren , Hinterview recently closed a second round of funding, enabling the business to build out its customer experience and product teams, as well as taking important steps to establish new on-the-ground presence in key locales as Hinterview’s global customer base continues to grow.
To further boost their ascendancy, Hinterview were recently awarded “Most Innovative Technology” at the 2019 Recruiter Awards.
What’s the benefit to agencies?
As well as the potential to accelerate recruitment cycles and drive client-candidate engagement more effectively than with a traditional CV-only approach, Hinterview has also enabled many agencies to build a USP around their use of the technology.
By creating value-add workflows that deliver a better experience for their end clients, Hinterview customers have been able to win more exclusive or retained assignments, as well as securing spots on coveted PSLs.
A lot of this success derives from the modern shift towards video as a content format, which in turn leads to impressive engagement rates – the Hinterview team report an average 65% open rate on videos across the platform.
Recruiters are also expanding their use of Hinterview to include candidate messaging and direct headhunting. A new platform feature dubbed ‘Hintro’ allows recruiters to create a short, personalised video pitching a job from any location or device, and deliver this direct to candidates.
Representing a third option between cold emails and cold calls, Hinterview claim an average success rate of 1 CV for every 4 candidate Hintros sent.
Whatever the use case for Hinterview’s video technology, all videos also have playback analytics embedded, giving recruiters the ability to see which videos have been viewed (and how many times), creating metrics for follow-up and picking up the phone.
Who’s using Hinterview?
Hinterview has gained traction across a wide range of market sectors, with client feedback and platform use helping to further shape product development. It’s not only highly-skilled industry sectors with complex interview processes that see value in the tool – everything from high-street recruitment to industrial and manufacturing features in Hinterview’s customer base, wherever hiring managers are seeking an additional element of human contact in their recruitment process.
As well as larger customers such as Michael Page, Allegis, Pertemps, Spencer Ogden and Harvey Nash, Hinterview also serves a growing base of boutique and mid-market agencies.
The company’s typical agency profile can range anywhere from 5 to 100+ in terms of headcount, and usually includes businesses with carefully-monitored budgets looking for high ROI on technology and marketing investment.
Although early customer adoption was originally UK-focused, Hinterview is now used by agencies across Europe, the US and Australia, with mounting interest from the APAC market.
With 300 active agencies and climbing on the Hinterview platform, the company’s MRR has doubled since Q4 2018 – and with new funding to fuel expansion, that growth shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
