I was talking to a client the other day about this. Let’s call this client Debbie, since that’s her real name. Debbie told me about her last position at a company that is to remain nameless. Debbie constantly struggled get the tools she needed to do her job effectively. As a middle manager in HR, she pushed forth an incentive to widen the recruitment pool by remotely interviewing candidates via video conferencing. She got buy-in from C-Level and was directed to the IT Department to get the video conferencing set up. The company already had an account with a well-known web, audio and video conferencing provider. So the IT Department added a few users, directed her to a quick start training video and called it a day. As she started to implement the video interviews, she noticed that the interviewers were running into a lot of problems with the conferencing software. Many candidates had a hard time accessing the virtual meeting room. The interviewers complained that the controls were too complex. The video stream was pixilated and often froze. This robust virtual meeting solution worked great for project management, but didn’t work well for simple, basic interviews. Take it from Debbie: "All we wanted to do is see them and talk to them. Everything else just got in the way. But IT wouldn’t hear it. ‘We have a system in place,’ they would say. ‘It does everything you need.’ They didn’t understand that the product was getting in our way. I was starting to worry that candidates might be moved on to the next level, or skipped over, because of the video conferencing experience. An interviewer would say, ‘I have a great one for you. She really stood out.’ If I watched the recording with a critical eye I could see that that she wasn’t any better then any other candidate, but the conferencing software worked really well that day – so it felt like a really good interview! The interviewers started using Skype but that came with a whole host of other problems. It’s crazy. I would always get really great candidates in for the hiring managers when we did in-person screening interviews. But we rarely got the right fit when we would fly in someone to meet with management after a video interview. It really seemed like a waste of time and money. Management killed the project and I held on to that failure. Eventually I was laid off. I’m pretty sure the video conferencing fiasco made their decision easy. This experience made me think that video could never be effective for interviews. I started working with you guys and my mind has been changed. It’s so much easier and effective now. I can’t believe it." Debbie and her team went through our proven process for successful meetings. It all started with a Free Conference Evaluation. Here we look at your needs and objectives to select a meeting solution (web, audio and/or video conferencing) that will work for your department, unlike normal IT or Purchasing Departments. You trust the IT department to make software-purchasing decisions that will help you and your team to be more effective at your job. In truth, it’s impossible for them to select the perfect software for your department. They ARE technology experts. They ARE NOT experts when it comes to your job or your department. How can they truly help you be better at your job when they know next to nothing about your day-to-day work? This is especially true when it comes to web, audio, and video conferencing solutions. Meetings are important. Effective meetings can propel your company and your career. Unproductive meetings waste precious company resources and highlight your failures. Face-to-face meetings are hard enough to get right. According to Salary.com, close to half of all meetings are considered to be a waste of time. Remote meetings are even more difficult. The best way to have productive remote meetings is to plan them with your specific objective in mind. Your department’s common meeting objectives are quite different from that of the HR department’s common objectives. They train new employees and interview candidates, while you, say, collaborate with a remote team. The skills it takes to manage these different types of meetings are different. The meeting preparation for each type of meeting is different. And the technological needs for each type of meeting is different. Yet, to most IT departments, that does not matter. And neither does your success…or failure. IT departments look at a few basic criteria when selecting web/audio/video conferencing. All are important, but the most important ingredient is missing from the IT decision-making equation. Your Needs! What do you need to bring success to your unique meetings? Why are you meeting? Who are you meeting? What are your desired results? All of these important questions are left unanswered and you end up stuck with a company-wide solution that works great for Department X, but frustrates everyone else! One web conferencing solution will not work best for all type of meetings. Some are great for collaboration and brainstorming. Some are great for training. Others work best for presentations. Then there are others that are best for relationship building. The right conferencing platform can help you have successful, productive, lucrative remote meetings. (With the right planning and facilitation of course. It’s not magic!) The wrong conferencing platform can frustrate your team, your clients, your investors, your partners and other stakeholders. It can hinder you – keep you from hitting your goals. And yes, if allowed to persist, get you fired. So don’t let your IT Manager get you fired. Take control of your career by taking control of your online meetings. Start with a free Conferencing Consultation from TEAMINGS. We’ll help identify your common objectives, current setbacks and find a solution that will facilitate your success. And, yes, we’ll even find a way to appease your IT Department. Because their concerns are valid…but so are yours!
With all due respect to the hardworking Information Technology Departments in America, their decisions can be detrimental to their co-workers’ careers – maybe even yours!
