Lights, Camera, Action: How to Attract Talent Through a Video Job Description
Nov 20th, 2020
Not getting the candidates you want for your open positions? Turn your job description into a video!
With social media, and now social distancing, the phrase ‘seeing is believing’ is more important than ever. A video job description is a creative way to market the job opening, attract talent, and capture their attention. Organizations such as Comcast, Intel, and American Express have implemented this method to showcase their roles and connect with their candidates.
Most likely you’ve already posted a video or two on social media and your company’s website to highlight your culture or have your CEO talk about the company’s vision. So, let’s take it a step further. Have the supervisor talk about the team and let employees provide testimonials. Even a virtual tour of the workplace will help the candidate visualize themselves in this potential next role.
You don’t have to hire a professional to create your video. While you may receive a clean, well-directed video from a professional, shooting the video internally on a cell phone by an amateur can feel more authentic. It’s also a great idea to reach out to your marketing team before you start shooing to ensure your recruiting videos are in line with the overall marketing strategy for the organization. Once you have the ‘green light’ from marketing, get creative with your recruiting theme!
Before you pick up your iPhone and start to shoot, spend some time in pre-production. Make sure you pick the right people at your location. The individuals who participate in the video should provide a great representation of the role and the company culture. Not everyone wants to be in front of the camera, so have conversations with the team so they can ask questions about the process.
Once you’ve found your ‘actors’, inform each individual what questions they will be asked before you say ‘Action!’. Knowing what’s coming will help them mentally prepare their answers so they are not caught off guard while filming.
Still not sure if you’re ready to take a dive into the video job description pool? Start off by creating a video that can be useful for multiple job openings. Review key metrics such as time-on-page (the longer they were on your webpage they greater the chance they wanted to learn more about your company after watching the video), apply rate (the number of candidates who viewed the video and then applied) and even the hire rate (those who watched the video, applied and were hired). Once you have some data to prove the effectiveness of the video job description, your Talent Acquisition Team can add more content and expand your online video catalog.
A video job description can be just the thing candidates need to become applicants and potentially your next hire. Hop into the director’s chair, grab your clipboard, and let the cameras roll!