How to Boost Diversity, Equity & Inclusion With a Video Strategy

As part of our Talent Blazers series, we spoke with Quila Cervelli, Global Employer Branding Manager at RMIT, to learn how video can be used to boost diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. She also shares tips to address some common video challenges in recruitment marketing. 

RMIT is a global university with major campuses in Melbourne, Vietnam and Spain, satellite campuses all over the world, and almost 100,000 students. We spoke with RMIT’s Global Employer Branding Manager, Quila Cervelli, to discover how her team is using video to help build diversity, equity and inclusion across the university as a whole – and, in particular, in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) roles.

Representation in video boosts diversity, equity and inclusion

“What’s really unique at RMIT,” says Quila, “is that diversity and inclusion, as well as reconciliation, are truly at the heart of everything we do. It’s a really strong and compelling mission, and it comes through in our videos.” 

Quila is especially passionate about gender equality in the workplace. A major report from McKinsey has revealed that improvements in gender parity have stagnated, partly due to the negative impacts of COVID-19 in 2020. 

Video has a part to play in addressing this challenge. “There’s a ton of data to show that when a company has a 50/50 gender split, or when there’s more representation of women in their branding, women are more likely to apply for advertised roles,” says Quila. “They can see themselves in the role and they’re hearing from somebody like them.”

For Quila, ensuring women are represented in video job ads is a key way to achieve this – and, importantly, it’s an approach that drives results. “When we’ve had women in our videos, we get more views, more impressions, more minutes watched and more applications,” she says. 

“For example, our most successful video job ad to date features a woman, and it had 21,000 views and 4000 minutes watched. We’ve built case studies off the success of that video and embedded them in hiring manager briefs to help convince people of the importance of video in the employer journey and [to show] how video representation boosts diversity and inclusion.”

How to attract more women to STEMM roles with video

RMIT is a proud participant in Athena SWAN, a charter that is committed to advancing gender equality in academia, and in STEMM in particular. 

“As of last year, we were accredited with the Bronze Award, and we’re looking to get to Silver in the next year or two,” says Quila. “We’ve been lucky that our hiring managers working in STEMM understand the importance of bringing more women into these typically under-represented roles. 

“We use video to showcase the campus, the labs, our research facilities, the employee experience. It’s been really compelling”.

RMIT recently launched an Expression of Interest advertisement for women in STEMM, and received more than 600 responses from women interested in participating in the program in just a few months. 

Tips for two common video challenges in recruitment marketing

There are two consistent challenges that are faced by almost every organization using video in their recruitment marketing: overcoming nerves in front of the camera, and getting hiring managers on board with video.

Overcoming video nerves at work

“I often joke that people feel confident until the moment they sit down in front of the camera; then they clam up and get really nervous,” says Quila. It doesn’t matter if you’re an extrovert or introvert – Quila finds “it’s the same for most people”.

Quila’s solution is to treat video job ads like a high-production video, giving people who are making ads in their own homes the same level of support that high-budget videos receive. This involves:

• Helping hiring managers to script videos.
• Giving them plenty of time to get comfortable with the technology and to practise the script.
• Making sure there’s a subject matter expert available to answer questions.

“It’s a hand-holding strategy that makes sure they feel as comfortable as possible throughout the process.” 

Getting hiring managers on board with video

Many people believed working from home would mean they had more time on their hands, but that hasn’t always been the case. Quila has found that it’s necessary to work extra hard to convince busy hiring managers that it’s worth spending time on video creation for recruitment marketing. 

“We’ve created a reporting process to show the success of each video at the point of shortlisting,” she explains. “This report shows hiring managers just what the video has helped them achieve up to that point, which is a really compelling way to prove the value of using video.”

RMIT’s success with video puts it in good stead to convince hiring managers of the impact video – which, in turn, will allow it to continue its work in boosting diversity, equity and inclusion among its employees.