5 Tips For A Successful Recruitment Video Strategy

Hiring employees in the aftermath of COVID and the wake of the Great Resignation can be a nightmare, right? Well I'm here to help. In this article, we're sharing our top 5 tips for a Successful Recruitment Video strategy so you can begin finding the right candidates.

The Great Resignation:
​5 Recruitment Video Strategies

In this article, we’re going to talk to you about using video to recruit and hopefully hire new employees. Now, at the time of this blog posting we're amidst what is being referred to as "The Great Resignation." It is the end of 2021, and a new report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics announced that more than 4 million Americans quit their jobs in August 2021. Life has been super stressful with the impact of COVID and it seems like everyone has said, “take my job and shove it.”

As a result, everyone is hiring. Have you noticed that Now Hiring signs are literally everywhere? It is really hard to stand out in this crowd and draw the right candidates to your organization because we are currently drowning in job opening alerts. If you want to get noticed, you have to get creative, you have to utilize emotion and use a medium that we all interact with regularly – and to do that, you need a great recruitment video strategy. You see, by using video you're able to communicate a lot of information into a short amount of time. Plus, videos make otherwise mundane topics or descriptions exciting again!

So, if you need to fill vacancies at your organization, we’ll help you to get creative. Here are our 5 Tips for a Successful Recruitment Video Strategy.

​#5 Promote all of your Perks and Benefits

What are the perks or benefits of working for your company? Shout them from the rooftop, or well more realistically, make sure that you are loud and proud about these perks in your recruitment video. Some of the more standard examples are: hiring bonuses, paid holidays, health insurance, or PTO. Make sure that these are included in your video and in any ad or posting about the job opening.

Also remember, that many people are looking for perks or benefits that are not so standard. Does your company offer room for advancement? Remote work? Flexible scheduling? Get creative and really think about all your company has to offer.

#4 Keep it short and sweet

Attention spans are short. Keep your recruitment video somewhere in the 30 second to a couple of minutes timeframe. This makes it easy to repurpose your video across different mediums. See, we're leading by example and keeping #4 short and sweet as well. 

#3 Consider Your Recruitment Video as a Company Culture Video

As we’ve already mentioned, everyone is hiring. So, how do you stand out? You will not stand out with just another Indeed job posting. You will not stand out with just another Now Hiring sign. You’re going to have to play the part of a salesperson and sell your agency culture.

You want people to get a sense of what it is like to work for your company so that they can imagine themselves working there. Once you have them day-dreaming about working for you, they’re more likely to apply. To do this, you can’t bore them to death with stuff like, “This is Sam, he enters data from 9 to 5 every day,” no, you’ve got to get creative.

We recommend that you include employee testimonials. Interview staff, from new employees to senior staff, to get honest feedback and authentic sound bites about what it is really like to work at your organization.

Use humor and entertainment where appropriate. Pull on heart strings where appropriate. For many organizations, it is likely that what makes it special about where you work, are the people who are working there – highlight that with testimonial sound bites. People want to see real people (not just the CEO telling you what to expect)

Even better, once you have a great recruitment video that highlights your company culture, you can repurpose this across platforms and for any new role that opens up in need of a hire.

#2 Sell your organizational values

You want to entice people to apply who match with your organizational values. Sell those values through an effective recruitment video.  A lot of people have shifted to a more Mission focused job search recently, especially if you’re recruiting for Millennial hires – allow the recruitment video to highlight the heart of your mission.

For example, we created a recruitment video for a small-town law enforcement agency. That agency recruitment video sold the values of comradery, getting to know the people in your community and giving back/really making an impact.  What happened was that law enforcement agency was able to attract talented candidates from larger cities. They attracted candidates who were looking for that slower pace, greater impact small-town feel. Without that video, those candidates from NYC and other metropolitan areas would have never known that this law enforcement agency existed let alone that they were recruiting – but the video sold the sought after values and the agency was successful in hiring really experienced candidates who most importantly aligned with their organizational values.

Do you value diversity? Do you save puppies or give back to the community or the list goes on - find your value and sell it. 

And that brings us to our #1 tip for using a successful recruitment video,

#1 Market Your Video to Reach More Candidates

That’s right, you can’t just make a great video and put it on your website and hope that someone finds it. You need a plan to get your great video out there. Running video ad campaigns on social media platforms are a great way to reach an audience you otherwise wouldn't have been able to reach. Coupling a creative ad funnel with a strategic recruitment video is a winning recipe for attracting the right candidates. Aside from video ads, posting your videos alongside job postings is a win.

According to Glassdoor, job postings with video icons receive a 34% greater application rate than those without video. Don’t be afraid to use creativity to find those employees who otherwise would not know your company or have any idea that you are hiring. You can include recruitment videos on your website, incorporate them into your job postings, share them on social media, recruiting emails – there are truly a ton of options out there. And people are more likely to share and engage with job postings that include video.

You need a plan to get the video out to the public in as many ways as possible. We recommend that you optimize your job search on Google because somewhere near 75% of all job searches begin on Google. Make sure that you target job title keywords so those folks can find you in the search engines.

Don’t just talk about your job opening, show your organization, share your heart and passion for what you do, find the ideal candidate and stick out from the crowd with an effective Recruitment Video strategy.

Remember, video is power. Should you need assistance producing a compelling recruitment video or properly targeting potentials with video ads, feel free to contact us.