FOR THE COMPANY'S open sales associate job at Newark-based Orbit Baby, president and co-founder Joseph Hei is asking applicants for something no one else on Craigslist is requesting: a video resume.

There is a reason behind the unusual application requirement. His company, which designs and manufactures highly engineered baby and toddler products such as car seats and strollers, wants to hire someone who is confident, outgoing and, perhaps most importantly, technology-savvy. The potential sales person has to be comfortable leading demonstrations in groups and using video communication programs such as Skype to talk with clients.

"There are two broader objectives here," says Hei, a Stanford

grad. "First, are you comfortable enough with media and technology to be able to meet these requirements and, two, can you upload a five-minute video? Implicated, even baked into these requirements, are that we want to see if people are relatively comfortable with the way things work these days."

The way things work in business, and even college applications, these days is not the way they worked 10, even five years ago. Though Orbit Baby was the only company specifically requesting video resumes on Craigs list, employers report they are seeing them more from job candidates. In addition, more colleges are accepting video resumes with applications. Part of the reason for this is that video-recording cameras are cheap, some costing less

than $100, and editing software comes standard on most modern computers, says University of San Francisco professor Ryan Wright, who teaches technology management and strategy classes. He says the new demand is just the beginning of what he believes will be a trend in hiring in the coming years.

"Video editing can be done by practically everyone now. A lot of people don't know how easy it is to create a professional video and professional-looking website," he says. "I believe, in the Bay Area, it will absolutely become a requirement. Video resumes give (employers) a greater degree of understanding of the person beyond a traditional paper resume. You can see how they speak, how they tell a story, and in a traditional resume, you don't see that."

In fact, Wright required his Internet Business Applications class students to create their own resumes for an assignment. Christian Hernandez, a senior at USF, used the assignment to highlight his resume, travel experience and sports prowess.

"It's a pretty neat experience because we were basically doing it to see how easy it is to upload a video and embed it into our websites," Hernandez says.

While Hernandez was making a resume on his own for practice — most

video resumes today are made by the subject of the video — some people are choosing to have others make the videos for them. San Jose resident Edwina DiSilvestre recently had a video resume made for her at the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce to attract customers to her personal assistant business, 28 in 24.

Assisted by Silicon Valley micro-biz SanJoseStock.com, DiSilvestre was coached during the process by the company founder Kymberli Brady. DiSilvestre made a commercial-like video in front of a photography backdrop highlighting her organizational and helper skills, even her ability to write personal notes for busy businesspeople.

"A video gives another view or picture of my business, which is really a presentation of my personality," she says. "It will give potential employers a sense of who I am."

Videomaker Brady says she jumped into the video resume business after losing her job shooting for the San Jose Chamber of Commerce. No one else in the Bay Area that she knows of is helping people make video resumes, and she says she believes a good one can help a candidate land a job, even if they didn't do the video themselves.

"If you do a bad one, it can knock you off the potential list for a job, and if you do a good one, it can put you at the top of that list," Brady says. Her company is offering video resume services for $100, a fee that can be paid after a jobseeker lands a position.

Potential employers are not the only audiences for a video resume, made personally or professionally. More colleges are asking their students to include one with their applications.

One of those schools is Pitzer College, a private Los Angeles-area liberal arts school. The college this year started accepting video applications, which admission director Angel Perez says are "fascinating to watch."

"One of the reasons we think this is a good idea for us is (because) we are a bit of a niche school. We want to make sure we are admitting the right students, and fit is really important to us," Perez says. "One of the things the videos have done is allow us to put a face to the name and a personality to the application. We will actually pull up the video in front of the admission committee and let it play."

Earlier this year, as reported in the New York Times, Tufts University received about 1,000 videos via YouTube, a controversial move, as the videos could be accessed by anyone on the website by searching the colleges' name — sometimes to that applicant's ridicule. There are organizations out there, such as MyCollegeI.com that offer videos to colleges on private servers so only the college admission experts can see them.

Still, there are several video resumes online to learn from and, if the mood strikes you, have a giggle at. Some people use goofy graphics or make hyperbolic claims about their skills.

San Francisco resident Dina Boyer, a video professional, does none of that. In her simple, self-made one-minute video on YouTube, she shares her skill set, hoping that it will help her land a job.

"My video resume has gotten me work. Nothing permanent, just a few music video and photography gigs," Boyer says. "I don't think video resumes are appropriate for all careers, but I believe it was very necessary for me. I am a broadcaster, videographer, and photographer, and showing the work on video is proof of my accomplishments and automatically gives me more credibility.