Mobile Video: The Next Stage in Recruitment Technology

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The bridge connecting employers and candidates on an emotional level has yet to be effectively built. However, the talent acquisition arena is heading in a new direction: According to a recent study, a welcome video from a hiring manager would make a candidate 46 percent more likely to consider applying for a job and 30 percent more likely to respond to a recruiter.

This discovery suggests that people are looking for more human ways to connect with employers. Mobile video, a new stage of recruitment technology, may be able to offer exactly this kind of connection.

Using Mobile Video in the Recruiting Process

A personal touch is always paramount. Mobile video is establishing itself as one of the most effective ways to engage talented candidates. There’s nothing more valuable to a company than happy people, so why not take the quickest, cheapest, and most effective route to attracting and converting qualified candidates who dream of working for you?

By portraying your team as real, transparent, and human, you give candidates a sense of excitement about your organization. When people are making choices about where they want to work, they look for roles and companies that evoke positive feelings in themselves. To play to this part of a candidate’s decision-making process, companies should consider leveraging mobile video as a quick way to showcase company culture and employee camaraderie. People want to see recruitment content that gives them a genuine experience of a role before accepting it. Traditional corporate recruitment videos fail to do this. At worst, they can even mask the real value your team has to offer.

What to Capture

The best tactic for engaging unique and talented candidates is to film informal but intelligent videos directly related to the position at hand. Avoid overly scripted videos, as these will not resemble the team’s natural work environment.

When targeting passive candidates, general videos under 30 seconds are most effective. Since these candidates are not actively looking for new roles, the goal is to trigger excitement and motivate them to view the next video in the series.

Clips of executives speaking to others inside the organization can be great ways to showcase your company’s leadership style. Videos of teams collaborating on tasks will show candidates how work gets done in your company. This, in turn, helps prospective hires envision themselves succeeding in the role.

Why It Works

This style of “in-the-moment” video closely matches the type of content that is most voluntarily viewed by the largest audience on the internet. Simply put, raw video sparks powerful emotions at scale, compared to formal corporate videos that create artificial perceptions. According to the study cited earlier, 55 percent of active job seekers find employee-generated video more credible than company-produced video.

In most cases, video content of the kind described here is not recognized as traditional job advertising by the general population. Rather, this content is seen as a valuable opportunity to experience what another job would be like. Mobile video is effective because it so closely resembles in-person experiences.

How to Bring Mobile Video to Your Recruitment Process

It’s important to communicate your main message up front and clearly, so start by filming clips of the hiring manager explaining the role and welcoming candidates. Capture employees naturally interacting in your company’s work environment to showcase teamwork and day-to-day activities.

Using mobile video to capture employee lifestyles and interactions is certainly a new trend, but the learning curve is not at all steep. Leveraging recent advances in technology to easily capture and distribute videos of employees and managers will be essential in remaining a competitive player in today’s employment market.

 Alex Desjardins is cofounder and director at BubbleHR.

By Alex Desjardins