How to make a recruitment video for your company

Finding talented new employees for your company is critical to its growth, regardless of the size or type of organisation that you run. However the traditional recruitment process is often inefficient, with large amounts of time and money used on tracking down the right candidates.

Over the last few years, there has been a major shift in recruitment towards something that’s more of a fusion between recruitment and marketing, with an increasing number of companies turning to video in a bid to shorten the recruitment process and attract the best candidates possible.

Here’s an excellent example from Zendesk, a company that builds software for customer engagement. This laidback company uses video to show what it’s about and what potential employees can expect when they come to work every day.

With online job adverts including video achieving an average of 12% more views and 34% more applicants than those without, there’s much to be gained by incorporating video into your online recruitment strategy.

Using Video to Brand Your Company

The traditional recruitment process is all about the skills and attributes of the potential employee, but if you want to attract top talent you need to convince them that they want to work for you. Video is the perfect medium for this.

A standard careers page on a website can only tell you so much, but video has the power to relate, engage and tell a story about a company’s culture and environment. This means potential applicants can become better acquainted with the company before they apply, and companies can target a specific audience.

A good recruitment video demonstrates the personality of a company, and helps to build a profile of what it’s like to work there. It helps to demonstrate the human side of an organisation, and gives potential applicants a way to ‘interview’ the company before they apply.

Hopefully you will steer away from the cliched ping pong table, Playstation and Nintendo Wii.

The tech and startup world is always on the hunt for new talent, so it’s little surprise that they’re leading the way in terms of online video recruitment. This video from SnazzyRoom takes its cue from the success of another startup, Dollar Shave Clue, in its hunt for a new developer.

Although much less formal than many recruitment videos, this style of video fits with a tech startup. SnazzyRoom demonstrates its unique sense of humour and doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it definitely gets its message across.

Apple has taken a totally different approach. It’s stayed true to its brand in this genuine, sincere recruitment video. In keeping with the vision of Steve Jobs in ensuring that everything Apple delivers is beyond expectations, this video is for you if you’re detail-oriented, have a strong work ethic and want to change the world.

Types of Recruitment Videos

Depending on the size of your company, it’s unlikely that you’ll want to create a new recruitment video for each vacancy you advertise (although if you do, kudos to you!). It’s also largely unnecessary.

As long as you cover some basics in a handful of videos – namely what your company’s about, what it’s like to work there, and include some stories and experiences from current employees – potential applicants will have something to refer to each time a new vacancy is advertised.

Here are some excellent examples of different types of recruitment videos.

Inside HubSpot is all about the branding, showing the company as one with a ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality. The video demonstrates the numerous perks enjoyed by employees, and is both professional and fun to watch. It achieves an excellent mix between employee perks and serious company information.

Rackspace has made a ‘day in the life of’ style video, with a twist. Filmed through the eyes of an employee over the course of a single day, this video doesn’t need to use words to demonstrate the unique working environment. It’s so good that viewers gain an understanding of the company ethos simply from the visuals.

Starbucks has a great reputation as a company in which to learn and grow, and this video is aimed at students and graduates looking to start a career. This personal and targeted approach gives an insight into working at the company from an employee’s perspective.

Now to a spoof video that ended up being a huge success and going viral. Back in 2012, Twitter ran a Hack Week competition to make the best and worst recruitment videos. Twitter employees, Ian Padgham and Jeremy Briggs, made the following spoof in the style of a corny old-school training video, which subsequently went viral in its first weekend. In poking fun at traditional recruitment videos, they’ve branded Twitter as a great place to work with a good sense of humour.

Finally, Step Change Marketing in Sydney has used humour in a video that demonstrates the sort of people they don’t want to work for them. They’re all too aware of the stereotypes working in the marketing industry so they’ve targeted people who love the job but hate the politics in this amusing recruitment video.

Running a Focused Recruitment Campaign

The beauty of video is that you can run a focused, targeted campaign that’s accessible to a huge online audience.

Use of social media is growing by the day, and utilising these platforms is crucial to attracting the sort of computer-savvy millennials companies are searching for. Many companies have a presence on YouTube, where videos can be organised according to content and purpose, such as employee recruitment, making it easy for applicants to find and view your videos.

LinkedIn is one of the most popular channels for employee recruitment, making it an excellent tool for reaching out to recruits through video. Many large organisations have a careers page within their LinkedIn profile, and adding your videos here is a quick and easy way to extend your reach.

Facebook is another tool employers should be utilising. Creative employers can target ads to specific users, and should ensure they maintain a Facebook presence so recruits can ask questions before or during the application procedure. Google TrueView video ads are another great tool for employers targeting a specific audience.

Finally, with all the attention on social media, it’s easy to forget about your own website. Making your recruitment videos visible and accessible via a link from your homepage, or devoting an entire section of your website to recruitment will help to show your company ethics and attract the right sort of candidate.

Ultimately, there’s no single rule to making a successful recruitment video, with tone, humour and style varying depending on the company and the sort of candidates you want to attract.

The essential element to any online video is staying true to your brand so that, regardless of the type of video you make, you will attract the right sort of employee for your company. And with video working out cheaper on average than many recruiter fees, incorporating video into your recruitment strategy is a win-win situation for employers and candidates.

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