Recruitment videos: how to create a good video that attracts new talent

Finding good staff is not easy. Research shows that 72% of Dutch employers in 2019 had difficulty finding suitable people for vacancies, which is 4% more than in the previous year. As we mentioned in previous blogs about interactive videos, there is an increase in the number of views and uploaded videos on YouTube. The number of uploaded videos per minute increased by 40% (!) Between 2014 and 2019, according to research.

How do these trends come together now? With recruitment videos! We interviewed video recruitment expert Bram Tierie from Flipbase about using video as part of the recruitment process.

There are two ways to interpret ‘recruitment videos’: videos made by the applicants or by the company. In the first case, recruitment videos are used as ‘candidate screening’. In these videos, the applicants or candidates make videos in which they introduce themselves, as a kind of innovative form of a motivation letter. Today, we focus on the second form, which are videos from the company to brand your culture, as part of employer branding.

Think of it as a video in which a company introduces itself. The goal goes beyond a simple acquaintance or introduction as the company clearly shows where the candidate will work. A simple “this is who we are and what we do” will not be sufficient. For example, candidates want to see who they will work with, what the culture of the company looks like, and what values ​​the company holds dear. They want to know what working for the company entails beyond performing the tasks listed in the vacancy. This is called culture branding and is part of employer branding, which we just talked about.

In short: with a recruitment video, you give a look behind the scenes as a company with the purpose of letting the candidate know where he or she will work. This is why video recruitment is relevant for every industry; which applicant does not want to know where he or she will work before applying?

Recruitment videos provide benefits for both the applicant and the company. Three reasons why companies should use video as part of the recruitment process:

1. The company has more space for creativity. It doesn’t matter how good the copywriters are – a corporate culture is difficult to capture in a vacancy text. A collection of words does not say anything about whether the candidate fits the company. With a video, you can go that extra mile as a company and provide better insight into the company.
2. The candidates are better able to estimate the culture fit. A recruitment video gives the candidate the opportunity to view the company culture and determine whether there is a ‘culture fit’. It is a lot more relaxed and convenient for the candidate to do this (already) from the comfortable couch at home with the cat on your lap than (only) during the trial period.
3. Candidates stay after their trial month. The ultimate goal of such a creative video and culture fit is that the candidates will not be faced with surprises and on their first working day in an environment where they belong. As a result, candidates do not run away during their trial period and they successfully fill the vacancy. Happy candidates, happy company.

Video recruitment is still a fairly new concept, which means that the skills and knowledge are still lacking in many companies. We often see that marketing departments find it difficult to let go of the commercial approach. The novelty also makes people uncomfortable. We cannot help you with the skills, but we have listed some do’s and don’ts to help you to get started making recruitment videos.

The do’s of recruitment videos

1. Use your smartphone instead of a professional camera. Doing this immediately makes the video a lot more authentic and credible. An additional advantage is that it is immediately a lot more accessible and less scary for the people within the company. You will get a lot less nervous if you make a video with the device that you have already taken countless selfies, compared to a camera crew.
2. Show the real employees, not actors. Of course, your video will look a lot more professional if you hire people for it. They will seem a lot less nervous and say less “uhm”. But that’s not what video recruitment is all about. Candidates want to get a good idea of ​​the company where they will work and that does not work if you show people who do not really work there.
3. Let the employees create the video in their own way. Does Saskia from marketing prefer to be filmed by someone, while Jesse from sales prefers to film herself with the selfie camera? Let them do it their way. This variety makes it a lot more authentic and makes the employees feel more at ease. What also helps here is answering a specific question. This gives the employee more guidance and a clear direction, which also makes it more pleasant to look at.
4. Keep it short. On average, people watch a video that is embedded in a vacancy for 46 seconds. Nobody is going to watch a video of 7 minutes. As a guide, stick to 30 to 90 seconds. Does the employee really have more to say? Then just create multiple videos. You can divide the videos per person or per subject. For example, you can make a series about the company events or the sustainability aspect of the company.

The don’ts of recruitment video’s

1. Don’t make scripted videos. By now, you probably get that authenticity is the keyword of HR videos. Scripted videos do not contribute to this, while spontaneity does. Avoid making scripted videos. Instead, give the employees some topics or ideas and then leave the interpretation up to them.
2. Don’t make an intro or outro. A professional introduction or outro (at the end) with beautiful animations is great, but it doesn’t work with recruitment videos. It simply does not appeal to social media and it is not necessary for the vacancy text since the candidate is already on your website. It also has to do with that authenticity and sincerity that we talked about before.

Hopefully, this introduction to recruitment video has given you a general idea of this innovation and the above tips have helped you on your way. One way in which you can lower the boundary for applying is by an interactive video. With these dynamic videos, the viewer (= candidate) can determine what happens.

Curious to learn more about an interactive recruitment video?

Read more

For this article, we had the pleasure of Bram Tierie interviewing, Flipbase‘s CCO. Why was his opinion important to us on this topic? Because Flipbase offers video technology that makes it possible to integrate video communication directly into existing processes and systems. This makes it easy for the organization to use video in multiple stages of the recruitment process, for both the candidate and the company. They fully integrate with the tracking systems of (large) companies, through which the flow and inflow of candidates is followed. It is safe to say that they know a thing or two about video recruitment!