5 Reasons to Use Video in Your Job Adverts

First impressions last a lifetime. With unemployment at an all-time low, skilled candidates have more choice than ever—you need to make that first impression count!

So it’s important to present your job postings and your job descriptions in the most attractive, dynamic way possible. 

One under-utilized medium that gives you plenty of scope to communicate is video. Using videos can help you reach more candidates, present your employer brand in a relatable way, increase your application rate and enhance the candidate experience.

Take a look at this light-hearted and insightful recruitment video created by the team at Dynatrace.

According to Talent Board's latest research,  60% of North American employers are considering video job descriptions for 2019. So why are video job descriptions and video job ads so effective? Let's see; authenticity; ease of consumption and let's not forget that video as a communication medium provides loads more information and nuance than a text alone!

So here's VideoMyJob's top 5 reasons to add video to your recruitment advertising:

 1. Stories connect people

And stories sell. You’ll be able to boost your apply rates if you can get candidates to connect with your stories. A story is an opportunity to create an emotional connection, enticing job seekers who align with your company’s values and to seek out opportunities with you.

Video is a great medium for reaching and engaging with candidates. It’s tangible, it helps them imagine themselves in the job, it can definitely influence whether or not they choose to apply.

2. Bring your company values to life

Our favourite adage at VideoMyJob is ‘Show, don’t tell.’

It’s easy to tell someone what’s great about working at Company X. But it’s far more effective to show them. Like Dynatrace have demonstrated in the video job ad above, video can help you communicate the less tangible aspects of your workplace. Farha talks about the importance of collaboration to her team's purpose, transforming a one-dimensional value 'team & people' into a tangible reality. Only with video can you demonstrate your company values in action.

When Deloitte ask workers what was important to them, the No. 1 answer was not money but the value of the work to them.

With authentic employee-generated video, it’s so much easier for candidates to buy into your mission. They can see what makes your business unique, and they can get a better understanding of your purpose. This up-front awareness increases retention rates as candidates know what they’re signing up for.

 3. Show off your culture

82% of respondents in Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends survey believe that ‘culture’ is a competitive advantage. Company culture is increasingly a point of difference between companies, especially those that offer cookie cutter perks like free food and bean bags!

Candidates want more than just a job. They want to work at a place that has purpose; somewhere that has shared goals; somewhere that’s enjoyable.

Employee-generated video content provides a credible window into a business and its culture, revealing the sort of working life that candidates can expect (like the home-baked 🧁 cupcakes in Farha's team at Dynatrace!) Everything that you can add to make a candidate’s decision easier and more informed helps, and makes it more likely that you’ll get applicants who are attracted to your culture, not just your salary and benefits.

4. Showcase your employees

Show candidates what their potential co-workers think of and experience in your business.

Make sure your employees are honest and transparent. Candidates don’t want heavily scripted interviews with employees reciting brand values and making non-evidence based statements like ‘I love working at Company X’.

Candidates want to know about the ‘why’. Use your employees' own stories to build an accurate picture of what it’s truly like to work at your company. In the video above, Betsie and Farha talk about the rapid growth of the product team at Dynatrace, from 10 to 50 people in less than 12 months. A written job description might fall back on the well-used cliche of 'we are a rapidly growing business' but the example cited by Farha provides context and a tangible example of how 'rapid growth' affects employees in this particular team. 

Don’t be afraid to show the bruises, effective recruitment is as much about deflecting poor fit employees as it is about attracting.

5. Reach more candidates

Video is shared 20X more often than any other type of content on LinkedIn.

Video content will increase the likelihood of employees sharing your job advert on social channels. It’s an authentic snapshot of your workplace and its culture, and it can build awareness of your employer brand beyond those actively looking for work.

Why does that matter? Considering that 82% of employers rate employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best return on investment (Career Builder), it seems like a no-brainer to make your job ads as shareable as possible! I know for a fact that Farha (and her team of 50) have been super-excited and proud to share this great video—you do the math!

In addition to increasing the likelihood of referrals, candidates themselves are more likely to link to and share a video job ad. In other words, if you add a video to your job postings, more people will share your job postings. As a result, your job postings will be able to reach a significantly greater number of people.  

Despite the fact that video job descriptions are the number 1 recruiting technology investment for employers in 2018-19, video content to promote individual job opportunities is still very much a novelty (aka an opportunity for those agile enough to implement video today!)

With video job ads, you’re marking yourself out from the competition, you're making your job ads memorable and there is the potential to improve the entire hiring process once you've mastered the art of authentic employee-generated video!

Video can help you reach more candidates, attract their attention, present your employer brand in a compelling way, increase your application rate, test and interview candidates,  communicate with applicants throughout the hiring process and ultimately enhance candidate experience. So what are you waiting for?!