1.   Executive summary

Nowadays the world of work is continuously changing and evolving. Newest technologies have revolutionized many business sectors in a way that few years ago was unimaginable (machine learning, blockchain, data monetization, etc.). Today’s companies have to innovate themselves following this evolution to survive in the market. The only way to do this is by hiring the best employees: employees who understand the present and future needs of the company where they work and are able to generate strategies to satisfy them.

In this context is important to hire people with skills you can’t see only through the normal resume. The need to understand the soft skills of the candidates becomes even more important.

The idea of CVideo was born following these new trends.

CVideo is a platform that:

●       allows the candidates to describe themselves through an unconventional method, the video CV. Thanks to this tool they can explain what characteristics of their behaviour can distinguish them from the other candidates and why those characteristics can be important for a company;

●       allows the companies to do a deeper dive considering not only the hard skills of a candidate, but also the soft skills, before speaking with them in an onsite interview.

Thanks to the “challenge mode” a company can post a question related to a job postion on the platform and the can answer through a video. In this way the company can evaluate the technical skills of the candidates.

Thanks to the machine learning technology, the platform can help companies to find the right candidates in a quickly and successful way. Thanks to blockchain technology, candidates’ documentation is certified and the platform traces a history of uploaded data of candidates’ profiles (in order to avoid that a candidate modifies his profile in a different way for a different job offer).

Needs that CVideo can satisfy for companies:

1.    To have a general view of a candidate before contacting them (considering also soft skills, speaking ability, and a good fit between candidate behaviour and job position).

2.    To avoid wasting time because of useless interviews with candidates who could seem good for the work position just through the usual resume

3.    To evaluate their ability to explain something in a short time

4.    Certification of candidates’ experience and documentation through the blockchain.

Needs that CVideo can satisfy for candidates:

1.    To avoid cost and time used for an interview failed because the company is looking for a candidate with different soft skills;

2.    To can distinguish themselves by the other candidates succeeding in showing off their soft skills;

3.    To be selected in a fairer way.

1.1.  Short-term goals (current year)

The first goal of this year is to use the platform for the universities.

For companies, recent graduates are the hardest candidates to be evaluated through the hard skills (in fact their resumes are almost the same).

The goals we think we can reach are:

o   200 registered candidates;

o   Four companies that register on the platfotm and post at least one job offer;

o   Testing the challenge mode function.

1.2. Medium-term goals (next 2 years).

The goals for the next year are to involve candidates with experience. The challenge mode could be useful in order to recruit candidates in the technical sectors (Engineering and ICT).

The goals we think we can reach are:

o   2000 registered candidates;

o   500 candidates with experience;

o   Twenty companies that register and post at least four job offers each (at least one offer for candidates with experience.

1.3. Long termine (3 years):

In three years Cvideo will cover all the work sectors.

The goals we think we can reach are:

o   20000 registered candidates

o   50 companies that registered and post at least eight job offers each yearly.

2.   Mission

2.1. Needs analysis

The idea was born from a personal need. During our work we have done many interviews in order to find new colleagues and we have often worked with recruiters.

Often, the time and effort spent to perform an interview has not payback: It happens frequently that you interview candidates who seem to fit perfectly with the job offer requirements reading at their CV when, instead, their soft skills and behaviour that don’t fit at all.

You can easily understand these things during the first minute of the interview, but you have to go on for at least half an hour as a formality.

All this time could be saved by looking at the video cv of the candidate before the interview.

The needs analysis has been done through direct interviews to twelve recruiting sector experts:

●       Four head hunters

●       Four company recruiters

●       Four career service university recruiters

Then, we did surveys and direct interviews with many people (also thanks an association of about 60 students of Bocconi University) to understand if they would like this recruiting method

2.2. Analysis results

The opinions of the experts are on average similar: they say that video CVs are the new frontier of recruiting. Nowadays, video CVs’ constraints are their low diffusion. 

They suggested we can consider two potential early adopters:

●       Marketing and sales candidates. In fact, in these sectors, soft skills are very important.

●       Undergraduates. They have almost the same CVs as each other, so it could be very useful to have other information for their evaluation.

Another point is that arranging a personal interview with the candidate needs a great deal of time. This may include arranging a conference room for that purpose, coordinating with everybody involved in the process of hiring, and funding the candidate’s travel expenses. All these activities incur expenditure, which can be cut down by shortlisting the candidates through video CV uploaded on the CVideo platform.

The opinions of the people interviewed are that, thanks to this platform, they can show all their potential and could avoid doing interviews where the companies are looking for other kinds of candidates.

Surfing on the internet, you can read many articles in favour of video CVs.

For example, in [1] you can read that “One-minute video résumés are very effective in conveying the candidate’s communication skills, energy level, and potential benefit to the company. Respondents consider video résumés a time saving tool and would be more likely to open the traditional résumé and to contact a candidate for an interview if impressed by the video résumé”.

A study done by Leadership IQ [4] has shown that 46% of newly-hired employees will fail within 18 months, while only 19% will achieve unequivocal success. Contrary to popular belief, technical skills are not the primary reason why new hires fail. Instead, poor interpersonal skills dominate the list.

3.   Project

3.1. Service description

CVideo is a platform capable of identifying and showing the best match between candidates and job offers.

The main functionalities of the platform are:

1)    Uploading of video CVs

Each person can upload their own video CV and make it visible to recruiters.

2)    Screening through machine learning

A company can set the parameters of the job position and the software can automatically find them in the video CV uploaded.

After a few job searches done by the same company, the software learns what kinds of skills are important for that company and can refine its searches.

3)    Challenges

A company can post one or more questions on a particular theme related to the job search.

Each candidate can make a short video in order to answer to this question and post it on the platform.

The platform can screen the answers, suggest to recruiters the best ones, allow them to see a small number of video and select the best candidates.

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4.   Strategy

4.1. Market Strategy

In our market strategy we have considered several channels, in order to allow the demand and supply to grow together fairly.

First of all, we are contacting universities and offering a dedicated service. The aim of this action is to become partner of a big player and upload on the platform all their students, in order to increase the number of Video CVs uploaded and be known by the companies that are interested in the students of those universities.

After closing partnerships with the universities and having a better performing product we want to place our product on the market. At the beginning we will push the marketing on the sales, marketing, ICT and engineering professionals and the new graduates.

The channels we have identified for marketing are:

●       Website (information only)

●       Advertising (online)

●       Search engine marketing

●       Social media

●       Referrals

●       Flyers

●       Events and exhibitions

4.2. Key promotional activities

The key promotional activities are:

●       Direct contact with universities (first) and companies (in the second stage). We think we can find the right contacts on LinkedIn and invite them for a meeting.  This action can help us to keep in touch with the first customers and receive feedback to improve the service.

●       Making a LinkedIn group in order to give a LinkedIn identity to our start up.

●       Advertising on several social channels.

●       SEO optimization of the platform in order to improve CVideo’s visibility on search engines.

●       Offering to a customer a trial premium period if other registrations are done thanks to him.

4.3. Target customer (early users)

We can consider two kind of customers, candidates on one hand and companies on the other hand.

4.3.1.               The candidates

Our final target customers are all the people who are working or are looking for a job.

At the beginning we can consider as early users undergraduates (from 22 to 30 years old). We think this kinds of customers are the most predisposed to use this new kind of service.

We think we can start in Milan and Bologna, where we can find a high number of university students (183’000 in Milan [5] and 86’000 in Bologna[6])

4.3.2.               The companies

Our final target customers are all the companies that are looking for new candidates.

At the beginning we can consider as early users the companies that are connected to universities and that use their career services to recruit new candidates.

5.   Competitors

We have analysed the potential competitors of this idea and we have found that none of them offer the same service of CVideo.

At the same time there are many companies which offer similar services. In the following paragraphs you can find the most important examples of them.

5.1.   LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a platform in which everybody can upload their CV and each company can upload their job offers and look for the candidates who fit the best with their requirements.

Its strengths are:

●       It is the best player in the e-recruiting market;

●       It has a very big network of candidates and companies;

●       Signing up is very simple and immediate;

●       It can integrate easily with companies’ recruiting system.

Its weaknesses are:

●       It is focused on normal resumes;

●       It doesn’t use machine learning algorithms for CV searches;

●       It allows a company to scout candidates only on the basis of their normal CV without no information about soft skills.

5.2.   Easyrecrue

It allows candidates to record a video in which they can answer to pre-recorded questions.

Its strengths are:

●       It has a big network of candidates and companies;

●       It allows companies and candidates to avoid the first interview.

Its weaknesses are:

●       It doesn’t have a pre-established database of candidates;

●       It doesn’t use machine learning algorithms.

5.3.   Justknock

It is a platform that companies can use in order to do “job calls”: they can post a particular need and any candidate can post an idea to solve it. Then, companies can analyse the ideas and choose the best candidates.

Its strengths are:

●       It has a big network of candidates and companies;

●       It allows the candidates to be evaluated on the basis of their ideas and problem solving skills, not only on the basis of their CVs.

Its weaknesses are:

●       You can’t see the information on the profile of a candidate without launching a job call (the candidates don’t have their own profile).

6.   Business Model

The future channels for revenue are:

●       Companies will pay a fee in order to upload a job offer;

●       Companies will pay a fee in order to create a challenge for a particular job offer;

●       Companies could purchase a premium profile that allows them to use the following functionalities:

o   CVideo messages (messages can be sent to any other user, even without a direct connection with them);

o   Advanced search filters;

o   Unlimited visibility of your extended network;

o   Automatic candidate tracking and integrated hiring.

●       Candidates could purchase a premium profile who allows them to use the following functionalities:

o   CVideo messages (messages can be sent to any other user, even without a direct connection with them);

o   The opportunity to know additional details about the people who view their profiles;

o   Tools to help make their profiles stand out to recruiters;

o   Advanced search filters;

o   Unlimited searches in your extended network and additional company data.

●       Knowing the specialization and the work sector of the candidadates, we could use those data for advertising.

6.1. Cash Flow

6.2. Keys to Success

We think we can evaluate the following key factors in order to succeed:

●       Registration of new graduates on CVideo’s platform;

●       Registration of professionals on CVideo’s platform;

●       Uploading of job offers on CVideo’s platform by the companies;

●       Creation of challenges by companies;

●       Utilisation of CVideo’s platform for candidate scouting;

●       Adoption of CVideo’s platform as a university career service platform;

●       Increase of video CV utilisation.

Considering these factors, we can derive the evaluation metrics of our performance:

●       New graduate registrations per month;

●       Professional registrations per month;

●       Job offers uploaded per month;

●       Number of searches done by companies per month;

●       Number of challenges created per month;

●       Number of universities that use CVideo;

●       Number of companies that use CVideo;

●       Percentage of video CV utilisation in Italy, Europe and the World.

7.   Pilot Project

It’s important to provide a pilot project in order to test the solution in a real and limited field.

We think a good test could be using our system in partnership with a university’s career service.

It represents, in fact, a small scale model of the real business.

Considering for example a university career service, we can present our platform as the platform this university uses to present their new graduates to companies. The result could be positive for every party:

●       The university could use a simpler and more innovative system to present their candidates;

●       New graduates can make a single video CV each and simple applications;

●       Companies can look for new graduates more easily;

●       We can test our system with a smaller business.