FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #63 The Human Behind the Resume: Revolutionizing Job Applications with Video
Dreams have a way of revealing our deepest insights, but few people turn those nocturnal visions into transformative business ventures. For Shaunee Lynch, a series of vivid dreams in 2016 planted the seed for what would become Vitae Visual—a groundbreaking video resume platform that's challenging the fundamental limitations of traditional hiring processes.
After 20 years in human resources and recruiting, Lynch knew the harsh reality: employers spend just seven seconds reviewing a resume before making a judgment call. Even worse, unconscious bias means some resumes get discarded based solely on a candidate's name, address, or education background. "I've seen resumes pushed aside just because of somebody's name, where they lived, or where they got their degree," Lynch shares with raw honesty. "Resumes are our ticket to our livelihood and quality of life, and they're only being seen for seven seconds."
Vitae Visual transforms this broken system by creating what Lynch calls "a little movie about a person." These aren't simply candidates talking to a camera—they're professionally produced micro-documentaries that showcase both technical qualifications and those crucial human elements that no paper resume could capture: personality, passion, communication style, and presence. For employers, the platform offers remarkable efficiency. They can review these comprehensive candidate profiles at their convenience, essentially experiencing the resume and interview simultaneously in just two and a half minutes. The result? Faster hiring decisions, reduced bias, and significant savings in time and resources.
Want to experience this hiring revolution? Job seekers can reach out to have their Vitae Visual created, while employers can register for a free subscription (normally valued at $1300/year) by contacting shaunee@vitaevisual.com. And don't miss the upcoming job fair on November 13th at the Jerry Highland Building in Alexandria, Virginia, featuring free career counseling and workforce development presentations.
Shaunee Lynch
Vitae Visual
Info@vitaevisual.com
This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I'm excited to introduce you to my guest. Today. We have Shaunee Lynch joining us and she is with Vitae Visual.
Speaker 3:, welcome to the podcast thank you so much for having me. This is uh.
Speaker 2:I'm excited about being here I am excited to learn all about your business and about you. So let's start there. Share with us a little bit about your business.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well Vitae Visual is what we call ourselves. It's made up of a team of videographers and career service professionals and what we do is we do video resumes. But our video resumes is not like somebody's just standing there and we're recording them. It's about a little movie about a person. It includes everything that you would see on a resume and all those wonderful attributes that cannot be captured on a resume, but it definitely can be captured on video.
Speaker 3:So we house our videos our Vitae visual, as we call them onto our database or our software system, and we provide subscriptions to employers, and employers will have access to be able to view these for their hiring needs. It is a wonderful combination because it gives employers a little bit more than what they would normally see on a resume and, as you know, it takes seven seconds for an employer or hiring manager to look at a resume. We want to make it entertaining and engaging enough so that they can learn more about the people. I would like to say that we're the human behind the resume, which goes in line with what our tagline is you are more than a resume, because we are. We're more than what we can see on a resume.
Speaker 2:You're more than a resume. I love that. I love that, and this is such a great concept and so needed right now. I know that there are a lot of people that use AI to help them write a resume. So, as an employer, I imagine all the resumes start to sound the same. So this gives a glimpse into a candidate's personality. So this is genius. I love it. It really is so much. Yeah, so tell us I want to learn about your background. How did you get into this? Tell us about your journey.
Speaker 3:Oh gosh. Well, it started with a series of dreams in 2016. Believe it or not, this is going to be a crazy story. So hold on for just a moment. All right, I'm ready. Everybody is qualified for an executive secretary position. So I received hundreds and hundreds of resumes and I had to go through them in a very short amount of time and I went home. I was very stressed out and I was anxious and I was, like you know, I was beside myself. So I finally went to sleep and I dreamt that the resumes were talking to me.
Speaker 2:I love that.
Speaker 3:And I was like okay, this is weird, you need some rest. And then the second time, which was the second night, I dreamt it again, but this time I could see the people and I could clearly see that they were talking about what I could can see on their resume.
Speaker 3:And I woke my husband up and he was like uh, go to bed. And I woke my husband up and he was, like go to bed, you're losing it. And then I didn't dream it again until like three or four nights later and this time I was behind the camera. Everything that happened in the first two dreams. But this time I was behind the camera and I'm going what is this? And I started writing it down and the more I wrote, the more building I was doing, figuring it out. And then I realized this is video resumes. But it's not just any video resume, it's resumes that tells the full story about a person, the very things that employers are looking for in the interview. But they're also getting in their resume, their video resume. So I did some research to figure out who was doing it. Nobody was doing it and I decided to get a trademark and get it patented, which I've done.
Speaker 3:But then I was still working in my own HR field. Right, I was, you know, working in HR doing consultancy for federal governments and private industries, because my background is compliance and human resources recruiting as well. So I've spent 20 years doing HR and it was very difficult for me to say, okay, I'm leaving my career the one thing that I've built so much you know, built my entire life around to leave that and start building Vitae Visual. But, lo and behold, 2020 happened. The COVID happened and I was at home and I was just started working on it from there, and it was a between a balance of continuing my career and then also starting Vitae Visual, so that 2020 gave me the biggest opportunity.
Speaker 3:Looking back now, I see it was an opportunity for me to get Vitae Visual to where it is now. So we literally have been in business technically since 2017 when we registered, but we really just started doing Vitae Visual, I guess about four or five months ago. So we're brand new and we are looking for job seekers to come and try us out, and we're looking for businesses to get free registrations subscriptions because right now we're giving out free subscriptions to business owners to make it more, a little bit more convenient for them to search and view resumes. So that's that's how we all got started. I know it's a weird story.
Speaker 3:But that's how it happened.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it and you are so smart. I mean, so many people have, you know, dreams or thoughts on starting a business and they just kind of think about it and they sit on it. But you took action. So congratulations on taking that action. You are so smart. Yeah, I'm, I'm so impressed by this.
Speaker 3:Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that it's. It has been a labor of love. I will tell you it's not easy. You know what it's. You know in my leadership positions that I've had in HR. It's totally different than being an entrepreneur and sometimes people can get that kind of mixed up. It's like no, they're two separate things, especially when you know the business is your business, because it's a totally different thing, and I've learned so much throughout this process and I'm thankful for the ups and the downs.
Speaker 2:I imagine yeah. So tell me, do you find that there are any myths or misconceptions about the business? Probably a lot.
Speaker 3:Because it's new, it's not been done before, which is interesting because we live in a digital world. You would think something like this would have already been here and available for job seekers, but of course, because they're like okay, so how does this work? Or the number one question that I always get is what if they don't accept my Vitae visual? What if I can't attach it to the application? And my answer to that is make a link out of it and then attach it to your resume.
Speaker 3:And we know, with something like this, it's so brand new, it's going to take some maneuvering and it's going to take some convincing that it actually does work. And it will make it so much easier for job seekers to take advantage of this opportunity. Because I will tell you, if people were to send a Vitae visual right now, especially because it's so new, they would definitely stand out from the pile. From the pile and that's just coming from the recruiter side of me, because I know that I would be more in tune with looking at a video than I would a piece of paper. That I've seen 100,000 of them, you know.
Speaker 2:So Absolutely, and we're also used to watching short form video all day. You know like TikTok is so popular. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's definitely going to get you noticed, so I love that For sure. Yeah, so tell me, if there is someone listening who has big dreams and has been thinking about starting a business, what advice would you give them?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm a faith, I'm very strong on my faith. So I would say be faithful and be kind to yourself. Just know that doing the work and let let the rest happened happen. I think that it's true destiny that we have. All you know, we're often coining the gifts that we have, but we don't really know what kinds of gifts and other gifts that we might have. And we may know, but we're scared to test them out. I would say just do it, just do it, start it. It doesn't matter how long it takes Heck, it's taken me seven, eight years to finally get it out there but what I do know is that it will work. I'm going to do the work and let him do the rest. And that's where I'm at and I say go for it. I love that.
Speaker 2:Just do it, and I love that you said be kind to yourself, Be kind to yourself.
Speaker 3:Yes, I have this thing where I did this research on all of these very big innovators like the Facebook, the Mark Zerbos. You know all of those people and what I've learned about them is that they all failed, and they failed horribly, miserably, many times before they got it right. And that's the part where you have to say I forgive myself, let me start over. And the time that you need to be kind to yourself and that's where that came from is because I've had many mistakes that I've made throughout this entire process, but I've forgiven myself because I know that if I don't, then it would never happen and all those good things that I know that Vitae Visual will be to other people nobody will get to see that.
Speaker 3:So, I have to continue on forgive myself and keep moving.
Speaker 2:Such a great lesson. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. So what is something that you wish the listeners? And so let's break it down. Let's say a job seeker, what is something that you wish the listeners, and so let's break it down. Let's say a job seeker. Let's say a job seeker is listening. What do you wish they knew about your business?
Speaker 3:I wish that they knew its purpose. Its purpose is to ensure that people aren't discriminated against. And I'll just be honest with you. I've seen all kinds of things that happen to resumes just because of somebody's name on their resume, just because of where they lived or where they got their degree, might not be prestigious enough, and I've seen exes and resumes be pushed aside. So its purpose is to show the human behind the resume.
Speaker 3:We are, we are people, that little piece of paper that you've only spent seven seconds on, that is our ticket, like our resumes are our ticket to our livelihood and to our quality of life.
Speaker 3:And this one ticket, this one resume, we're putting all our efforts into and we're and it's only being seen seven for seven seconds and that's disheartening when you think about that, um. And so sometimes your name and your address and your you know your, where you got your degree can even keep you from the seven seconds point um. So I like to know, I would like for people, job seekers, to know that your Vitae, Visual, video, resume, we're going to capture the best human part of you and that is what's going to be on display and that is what is going to engage the employers. They're not going to think about your name. They're not going to think about the fact that you've got gaps in your resume because you are a stay-at-home mom. None of that really matters. What matters is I'm a human and I have skills and I have assets that I can present to you, and we're going to show the best side of you.
Speaker 2:I love it. Such a gift to job seekers, this is truly Thank you. So let's flip it. And what is something that you wish an employer who's hiring knew about your business?
Speaker 3:I would like for them. Well, first, I'd like for them to know that our subscriptions are free right now. It's a thirteen hundred dollar value per year and we're giving them away for free. It is our introductory offer. It is convenient.
Speaker 3:Vitae Visual, the process is convenient. You would register, you would get your own dashboard, you're able to post jobs within our system and our clients are able to apply for those jobs using Vitae Visual and their profile information. Their profile information also includes an attachment to their resume, if they so choose to upload their resume. So you'll be able to do all of those great things. There's an administrative function in there so that you can keep up with the people that you've selected, the ones that you wanna bypass. It's a wonderful, wonderful software system and guess what? You can do it at your leisure. You can be on the beach somewhere and says, you know, I kind of need an administrative assistant. You log in, you type in administrative assistant in the search bar.
Speaker 3:It's going to bring you all those Vitae Visual up of people looking for that position and you can just look through them. It is not only convenient, but it's going to save you time and labor costs, because all the things that it takes and all the effort and money and time that it takes just to get the hiring done, that whole process, from the calling in to making the schedules and all of that. You are getting to see the resume, see the person, the characteristics, their passion, and you're able to get see that in a convenient time whenever you want to. It is literally like having the interview and seeing the resume all in one. So the convenience of it is just, it's hands down.
Speaker 3:I think it's the best thing ever and I'm only saying that from the recruiting part, not the businesses who who really want to, because I will just say, nine times out of 10, the only reason why companies call you in for interviews because they want to see those characteristics, they want to see the passion and the personality. But they get to see that all in one in a two and a half minute video. So you know it is. It is a wonderful, wonderful tool for any business, no matter if it's a small business or a large business. Free registration and you get to. You get to use this tool for your own benefit and it would be cost saving, labor saving and you can do it whenever you want to.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Well, thank you for that offer for our listener, business owners of the free registration. That's a really great deal I love it.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Well, so if the listeners, whether they're a business owner or a job seeker, if they want to connect with you, learn more from you, where can they find you?
Speaker 3:Well, it's easy. You can call. You can find me at Shaunee, at vitavisual. com, and that's S-H-A-U-N-E-E, at V-I-T-A-E-V-I-S-U-A-L. com, and send me an email. I'll be happy to send you the subscription code and then you'll get it for free.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast and being my guest today.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you. May I say one more thing? Of course we have partnered with Fairfax County Family Services, fairfax County Government, and we're having a job fair November 13th and it's going to be at the Jerry Highland Building in Alexandria, virginia, from 10 to 2. And it's not your ordinary job fair where you just come in and you just well, of course that part is going to be there, that's a big part of it. But we're also providing free career counseling from our career counseling providers, free career counseling from our career counseling providers. And then we're also doing presentation for some of the workforce development state guru people who will be talking on different topics from how to market yourself and where the trends are now. So do come out, all the job seekers, and we're also looking for a few more vendors. I think we can fit some more vendors in there, and we're also looking for a few more vendors. I think we can fit some more vendors in there. But yes, november 13th, jerry Highland Building, from 10 to 2.
Speaker 2:Amazing Sounds like a wonderful event, thank you. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to fxbgneighborspodcast. com.