Stu Aaron, Chief Commercial Officer, Blue Jeans Network

Recruiting is a tough job – probably the toughest job at any organization. People are what make an organization great. The people who put in the hours, express the passion needed to win, collaborate and tend to details are what separate excellent companies from mediocre ones. But finding those people can be like searching for that proverbial needle in a haystack.

Even in a job market that’s tough for candidates, recruiters can have a hard time finding the right people for their openings. Often the perfect candidate is not right down the street, but rather in a different city or country altogether.

While nothing beats in-person interviewing, new scenarios come up every day in our increasingly global world that make a case for why we should consider video as a viable alternative. Video can help a recruiter prioritize finding the right person every time, no matter the geographic circumstance, enabling them to control costs while also widening the search – especially when hiring for niche roles.

Video conferencing technology has come a long way in recent years and has proven to be an excellent technological aid in the hiring process. Of course, as the creators of a video conferencing service, we are natural proponents of this. But we also experienced it firsthand last year while we were looking to hire a product marketing manager to work in our Mountain View, Calif., office.

During the search process, a candidate reached out to us from Nairobi, Kenya. It would’ve cost at least $5,000 for us to fly her out to interview just to “see” if she was even close to being the right candidate. Rather than passing on her entirely – she was among the strongest candidates we’d seen on paper at that point – we decided to follow our own beliefs in the power of video.

Our interview process is pretty intensive. We had our candidate meet with HR, a hiring manager, our CEO, COO, and head of business development – all without leaving her home in Kenya. After all the time spent with her via video, the decision became very easy because we had a good sense of who she was, her capabilities, and could see her personality through the video interactions.

Not only was this tremendous in helping us, but our long-distance candidate appreciated it as well. The technology we used to connect was easy enough, enabling her to connect via any free consumer grade platform like Skype or Google without having to download anything extra to accommodate our team on the other end. She also saved the 30-40 hours in travel time it would’ve taken to come in person.

In the end, we hired our candidate from Kenya – all without ever meeting “in person.” She has since moved to Northern California to join us at our office headquarters, and we couldn’t be happier with our choice.

This firsthand experience only solidified our belief that video is becoming more and more critical to the hiring process. It’s hard to even put a value on the end result of getting who we felt was the very best candidate for the position, while seeming to defy common hiring practices.

I predict that in the next two to three years, companies increasingly will recruit and hire candidates using video. With an increasing need for more specialized roles in organizations, we may even see video hiring replace traditional in-person methods.

Recruiters – especially those filling very specific or specialized roles for the companies they work for – should take a serious look at video as a tool for recruiting highly qualified candidates who reside outside their region. It could save time and money, and help surface amazing candidates who could be “the one.”

Stu Aaron is the Chief Commercial Officer of Blue Jeans Network, a cloud-based conferencing service that enables people to connect with each other any time, any place and from any device. Follow Blue Jeans Network on Twitter @bluejeansnet.