Following up on my entry from last week in which I noted that the marketing agency Ink Foundry seeks personality in its intern applicants and is thus asking them to submit videos instead of print/text resumes …

I suggested that a great way for candidates to show their personalities in their submission videos would be to tell stories.

Had a nice comment in response from Ink Foundry’s Carin Galletta about this hiring process and also started following the organization on Facebook so I can keep up with the search.

Gallatta not only agreed that storytelling would be a terrific approach for prospective interns, she also cited and endorsed my blog entry on Ink Foundry’s own blog. Here’s part of her comment on my entry:

We are using the video application process as an opportunity to really get to know the candidates better through their own voices and we love your insight about using storytelling in the video submission. Great, great advice.

In the past, It has been very challenging to make the perfect choice when the initial tool, the resume, simply isn’t up to the task. We’re hoping video will change that.

Building a successful happy marketing agency team is so much more than where an individual has worked and his/her education level. We’ve had some really smart, innovative word of mouth marketing team members who didn’t work out simply because they were not a good fit for the Ink Foundry culture. We want to try to avoid the mismatch by using a video platform.

Later on Ink Foundry’s blog, Galletta cited two videos as great examples of the kind of submission the company seeks (by the way, how great is it when an employer tells job-seekers exactly what it’s looking for?) While I found the videos imperfect, both of them offer stories in ways that text-based resumes can’t.

The first, called A Walk in my Shoes from “Melody” is good because it targets a specific employer; in fact, a specific hiring decision-maker. She also offers the employer a free trial of her work. Occasionally text appears on the screen that adds humor because it encapsulates Melody’s own inner thoughts about the video. She sings at the end of the video, and the song is the origin of the “A Walk in my Shoes” title. I like the camera angles and expressions. On the downside, there’s something a bit unnatural about Melody’s delivery. And at 3:14, the video is a tad on the long side. But above all, I like how Melody kicks off the video with the story of one of her accomplishments with her current employer.

The second, G’s Video Resume from Gautam Banerjee (embedded above), won vault.com’s monthly video resume contest for May 2007. He, too, kicks off his video with a story — about working in Japan when he didn’t know a word of Japanese. I like the brevity of Banerjee’s video — 2:25 — and the fact that he injects personality by talking about what he likes to do in his non-working hours. I would have liked to see him smile a little more and bob his head less.

I have long been skeptical of video resumes as a truly viable and enduring form of career-marketing communication for two reasons: They are time-consuming to view, and they may expose candidates to discrimination.

But video resumes can work well in certain situations — such as when the employer specifically requests them. And they can clearly work well as storytelling vehicles.