Over the past few weeks, the interest in video interview platforms across HR and recruiting teams has increased drastically as businesses move to adapt to a new normal during a global pandemic.
We first saw the trend with emails from various teams asking for advice on vendors to look at, as well as how to get these systems up and running fast.
In response to emails like this, we wrote up some best practices on buying and implementing video interview software in an effort to help teams get up and running when time is of the essence and they have little background on how to buy and implement this type of software.
The Data: Businesses are Quickly Adopting Video Interview Software
Beyond the emails we were getting from HR teams, we started to see some interesting data come across. We’re lucky in that our site ranks for many keywords on Google related to video interviewing and so our Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools gives us insights not only into the traffic coming to our site, but the internet’s general interest in video interviewing tools.
Earlier this week I was a bit shocked when I looked at our Google Webmaster Tools and saw a massive increase in the number of clicks to our site to the best video interview platforms page.
As you can see, the number of clicks as been fairly steady throughout the last three months, and then spiked dramatically this week.
When I look more closely at this data, the spike in traffic is a whopping 524% higher than the same period the week prior! This was very interesting as the new normal of working from home and social distancing is just that - new. It was great to see business changing so quickly!
When I look at clicks to the site on a weekly basis, the trend was clear: the number of people going to the video interview software page has been increasing at an average of 73% per week for the past three weeks.
Interest in Video Interviewing Growing Across the Board
Of course, the clicks to the site could be influenced by many different factors, including a page ranking for more words, or ranking higher for a given keyword. Luckily, Google Webmaster Tools also shows the overall interest in a given keyword across the entire internet.
When I look at this data, it’s clear that there are many businesses out there that are looking to quickly adapt so that they can keep hiring. This is great news for individual companies, employees, and the economy overall.
It’s interesting to look at what people are specifically searching for. Here are five of the key terms that have increased the most in the past week alone, along with their increase in just the last week:
- Virtual interview platforms (540% increase)
- Free online interview platforms (291% increase)
- Best online interview software (236% increase)
- Virtual interview software (217% increase)
- Open source video interview software (160% increase)
Geographic Distribution
Just as COVID-19 is impacting geographies differently, businesses have been reacting very differently based on their country of origin. As we can see, there is a strong correlation between countries where video interview interest has been growing, and those that are the most impacted thus far by the Coronavirus.
Here are the five major countries who’ve seen the largest increase in search intent for video interview technology, along with the increase in interest in just the past seven days:
- United Kingdom (89% increase)
- Australia (87% increase)
- Canada (69% increase)
- Germany (68% increase)
- United States (57% increase)
Conversely, countries that have very few cases are showing no or negative increase in their interest in video interview platforms. For example, Russia has a -6% weekly change in searches for video interview platforms.
To me, this data is a ray of hope that businesses will continue to grow despite the challenges inherent with this unprecedented pandemic. It’s my belief that this interest in video interviewing is proof that our global economy will come back strong once we develop the apparatus to contain the virus!
