Hiring people that are the right fit for your company has been an essential part of ensuring the growth and stability of a company ever since the Industrial Revolution. The only thing that has changed since then is an increased amount of competition for top talent and the evolution of methods used by companies to acquire talent.
Notable mentions of new methods that have made an impact on the recruitment industry include sites like Glassdoor and LinkedIn that feature the best places to work. When it comes to showcasing company culture and communicating to potential recruits, however, few methods even come close to the effectiveness of recruiting videos.
The digital landscape has slowly been engulfed by video in the last several years, with a CISCO report predicting 80% of internet traffic will be video by 2021. Even the HR community has not been immune to it – companies like Amazon, Dropbox and Facebook have heavily employed video at various stages of the recruitment process.
Four reasons to employ recruitment videos
1. Stay ahead of competitors
With the kind of dominance, video is seeing over other forms of media, it’s only a matter of time before every niche is dominated by one form of video or another in the recruitment process. If your company isn’t utilizing video in its strategy, you might find yourself falling behind competitors who are picking up on the trend.
CareerBuilder did an internal study on the same topic and found that job postings with at least one video received 12% more total views than those that didn’t. The same study also found that on average, there was also a 34% higher application rate in video content job posting. While this doesn’t directly say anything about the quality of the applicants, the initial attraction is an important phase of the recruitment process. The larger the pool of applicants a recruiter has to choose from, the higher the chances they will get a quality hire.
2. Reach larger audiences
Going hand in hand with the previous point, organizations need to reach as large a pool of candidates and attract as diverse a team as possible. The internet has made getting new recruits – be they remote workers or local – a lot easier. The increasing availability of the remote employee has especially made companies a lot more picky and more reliant on the internet.
Digital Information World reports that 59% of executives prefer to watch a video than reading text when presented with both options. This stat is backed by SmallBizTrends, who report a 41% jump in web traffic after incorporating a video in their landing page. Considering the most important aspect of a recruitment video is the candidates be competent and interested in working for the company, the 65% completion rate as reported by Syndacast is very exciting for some.
3. Tell better stories
Being able to keep people engaged and interested is an essential part of being part of any company. When it comes to telling good stories, nothing can capture the imagination and attention, as well as video does.
Videos enable you to promote your brand in both subtle and non-subtle ways that users will connect with as compared to struggling with paragraphs of text. Focus on smiling faces, let employees talk about what it’s like to be part of your company and highlight what values are appreciated the most within your organization.
4. Appeal to younger generations
The need for top talent will only continue to grow as companies continue to grow and are in need of skilled employees. With time, older generations are slowly phased out and the newer, better-equipped generations start to take over. That’s where the power of video comes in.
You’ve probably heard it all by now – video has taken over the internet, and younger generations are more plastered to their screens than ever. For instance, the UK has over six billion videos watched by people under 24 every month. Combine this with the fact that the average person spends hours a day watching video on social media, reaching upcoming talent is a lot easier.
Areas to focus on in your videos
If you’ve been paying attention to the media or spent a significant amount of time checking out the different kinds of recruiting videos the likes of Apple and Amazon are putting out, you might notice something. There’s a pattern in the kinds of perks these companies concentrate on.
It would be unrealistic to expect a small business to be able to possess swimming pools, yoga classes and foosball machines within their premises. However, it all goes beyond the company’s physical worth.
Employees, Culture, and Diversity
With regards to diversity, companies with people from different backgrounds help people feel at home and a lot more welcome. Of course, this is more relevant if you’re trying to fish for top talent from all over the country, maybe even internationally. Diversity has its perks – one of the most important of which is cohesion between workers.
Culture regards what your company values above all else – it may be ethics, making a difference in the world, personal growth or just getting the job done.
For instance, seeing people playing foosball in a Google or Apple video is a normal occurrence. They value personal peace of mind just as much as they do people doing their job. It shows your business is different from the myriad of other companies out there.
Making a Difference
The best kind of employee to get for your business is someone that’s passionate about what they are doing. There are few people you are going to meet that are more passionate than someone that believes they are making a difference in the world, no matter how small. Show them they don’t have to be a Bill Gates of the world to make a difference.
For a barista, for instance, seeing the smile on someone’s face might be all the difference a person needs to make in the world. Try and show the kinds of positive impacts your enterprise has on the world at large.
Work/Life Balance
Nobody wants to be worked to death, no matter how much they love their job. There are few things in the world really worth dying for, after all. Overexposure to something you genuinely love will make doing it a chore after a while. Everyone needs a break.
Making employees feel like they are right at home, even while they are working is a crucial issue to focus on. At the end of the day, no matter the kinds of perks your business offers, home will be home. That’s one of the reasons for several shots of people having fun in startup videos, for instance. Nothing is quite as welcoming as a smiling face.
Authenticity
The magic glue that brings all these things together is authenticity. The reason that so many videos out there look so dull and dry is because of poorly-written scripts and forced emotions. While the need for scripts exists, overproduction of a video will work terribly against you. People can subconsciously pick out certain visual cues almost effortlessly. Don’t copy someone else – originality and trustworthiness are key.
