Making a recruitment video? Here’s how to do it right

A recruitment video can be a great addition to your company’s webpage: They can help you increase the number of applicants you receive, present your company’s culture, and generate greater attention through social shares. 

So let’s find out what it takes to make a great recruitment video and look at some examples from which you can take inspiration. But first, we’ll go over what recruitment videos actually are.

What are recruitment videos?

A recruitment video is a scripted video sequence that presents what it is like to work in a specific company. Companies share these videos across multiple social media platforms to get more views and shares, thus increasing the number of applicants the company gets for an open role. 

Why are recruitment videos important?

Recruitment videos enable companies to control how they present themselves to the world. The following are the most important advantages of recruitment videos: 

• They attract talent. Recruitment videos attract skilled professionals, as the company can present the benefits of working there. People looking for a new employer can get a better idea of what it’s like to work there than from simply reading a job description. Is the atmosphere friendly, hard-working, or edgy? Candidates want to know the company culture and identity before they invest their time in the application process, and recruitment videos can provide that to the applicants.

• They are shared on social media. “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes…” Much of the world still remembers this legendary Apple video even though it’s more than 25 years old. People are more inclined to share videos than texts; videos get 1200% more shares than text and image content combined. A great recruitment video may be shared hundreds of thousands of times across multiple social media, garnering millions of views from potential applicants. 

• They increase the number of applicants. The more people see your recruitment video, the higher the number of applicants you will get. A great recruitment video can be the difference between not getting enough applicants for a role and having a quality talent pool of candidates for the next five years. 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some examples of great recruitment videos: 

Examples of effective recruitment videos

Here are three examples of good recruitment videos: 

• Heineken. Heineken’s 2013 video depicted a recruitment process that no candidate could prepare for. The video showed their unique way of testing candidates and what it feels like to work at the company.

• Fiverr. Fiverr’s 2016 ad is a parody of other recruitment videos that shows how the culture at Fiverr works and what kind of person they expect to join. It’s a fun video that will attract just the right person they want in their company. 

• Jaguar. Jaguar’s 2018 recruitment video focuses on attracting just the right kind of James Bond… I mean, software engineer. The entire video looks like an intelligence briefing at a top-secret government agency. 

3 essential elements of every good recruitment video

There are many great recruitment videos out there, and they all have at least one of these elements:

Put the candidate first

The objective of a recruitment video is to attract people to apply to your company. So when creating the video, you should be asking how you can inspire excitement among your target audience about joining your organization. Apple did so by addressing people who feel like rebels, misfits, or square pegs in round holes.

Find your target audience – the people you want working in your company – and then speak to them. Jaguar wanted people with class, so they communicated that; Fiverr wanted laid-back, easy-going people, so they conveyed a light-hearted and fun-loving identity. 

Show the world who you are

To attract people to your company, it’s not enough to just speak to your target audience. You need to show them why your business is the perfect fit for them. A recruitment process is a two-way street, where both the candidates and the company vet, assess, and analyze each other to see if they match. Use your recruitment video to show your candidates (and the world) what your company stands for.

Heineken showed that they think outside the box and they’re not afraid to do things differently. Jaguar showed that if you apply for them, you will feel like James Bond on a mission. And Fiverr showed that they don’t take themselves too seriously and that they enjoy having fun in the workplace. It’s about communicating who you are to potential applicants so that they can see if they’d fit.

Add a clear CTA

And last but not least is the clear call to action (CTA). You want to have a clear CTA at the end of your video, enticing viewers to take a certain action after watching the video.

The CTA could ask viewers to immediately apply for the role, share the video on social media, or send it to someone they think is the right candidate for the role. 

Do your recruitment video the right way

We’ve seen the importance of recruitment videos for attracting candidates and why you should have one. The examples shown above demonstrate the importance of considering your audience carefully, showing your culture, and having a clear CTA in your recruitment videos.

 However, recruitment videos are just one of various best practices when it comes to the hiring process. Read about other recruitment marketing tactics in our blog post, or sign up for your free TestGorilla plan today.

If you have any questions, or want to see how pre-employment testing works in action, sign up for your free 30-minute live demo with a member of the sales team.