Recruiting with Video
But, lets forget consumer and entertainment sites for the moment and focus purely on employer sites where the positive impact of corporate video is undeniable. Take the CareerBuilder analysis as an example which shows that ‘job postings with video icons are viewed 12 percent more than posting without video’, and also their users ‘receive a34 percent great application rate when they add video to their job postings’.
Corporate recruiting videos are moving from a ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’, so if you have not yet made corporate recruiting videos part of your company’s DNA, then it is time to start doing so. Alternately, if you are currently using corporate video, are you sure you are making best use of the medium and maximizing your return on investment? Either way, I have set out some key pointers to help you make the most of the medium of corporate video as it takes up its rightful place in the mainstream of corporate recruiting methodology.
Types of Video for Business
There are generally nine types of promotional video that are typically used by employers today. I have listed these below and hopefully these might give you ideas for new or additional video content.
1. Overview of your firm’s products and services
2. The classic ‘Day in the Life’ of a colleague.
3. Profile of individual staff members
4. ‘Why I like working here’ which focuses on key recruitment factors
5. Office and facilities tours – giving insight into the working environment
6. Light hearted, humourous videos showing that the company is a fun place to work
7. Presentation showing company benefits and perks
8. Company events, such as team-building, conferences etc…
9. Videos that show firm’s excellent production, management or technical expertise
Following these tried and tested formats and ensuring the video is of good quality will help to maintain your employer brand.
Making a good video which supports your employer brand
An excellent way to create a corporate promotional video is to follow the approach of Deloittte and Hyatt who held an internal competition amongst employees to create a range of videos. Deloitte even branded the competition, calling it the Deloitte Film Festival. Employees were asked to create a 3 minute amateur video that answered the question, “What’s your Deloitte?”. These videos could be voted for on the intranet. These films are now used at industry events and online recruitment sites. Using a competition like this and judging it using ‘crowdsourcing’ techniques such as this is a great way to ensure your video reflects your business and brand while at the same time being engaging.
Whatever approach you adopt, you should be aware that posting a poor quality video can have negative consequences for your employer brand, so ensure you prepare your videos with the same level of attention to audience and appropriateness as you would when publishing a professional article about the business. It should be high quality, authentic and generally positive.
Sharing Your Video
Having made your video, it is now time to get your slice of that 178 million person american pie that is viewing video content each month in the US. There are several ways to do this.
The simplest way is to ask your marketing team to do it.
Alternately, (and this is still very easy), you can open up a Youtube account and register your Youtube channel, which means you can upload your videos to youtube so they can be viewed by the audience. Next, you will need to let the world know that your video is there by promoting and sharing the video. So each time you upload a video be sure to fully complete, the title, description and tags with content and keywords that accurately describe your video. This will mean that your site will appear in relevant search results. You may want to ask your marketing team to optimize the content for search and it will appear higher up the listings, making it more likely to be clicked.
Youtube will also allow you to share your video with your followers on Facebook, Twitter etc… so ensure to do this for maximum audience penetration. Don’t be afraid to cycle the videos multiple times through your social channels, including your Facebook page, LinkedIn company profile, and Twitter feed.