How to Make a Recruitment Video?

Long gone are the days when Craigslist and LinkedIn job postings can attract a swathe of talented and committed candidates to any company. Finding relevant talent is harder than ever - From establishing dedicated HR departments to hiring third-party recruiters, businesses have come up with a variety of strategies and schemes to improve their recruitment pool and increase their workforce.

There's an effective strategy that's often overlooked, however: Creating recruitment videos to showcase job postings and attract candidates. It is an effective, affordable, and flexible strategy that can be used equally by startups and multinational companies across various industries.

This article will be your complete guide to professional recruitment videos: Why they are important, what are their core components, and how can companies adopt them in their recruitment strategy. Learn how to craft a great recruitment video by reading on!

Why Create a Recruitment Video? 

• Reach a Wider Pool of Potential Candidates

The number of people who browse job forms is limited, yet even a smaller number will pay attention to the specific recruitment ad put out by your company. This can prevent you from finding talent, delay your expansion plans, and even cause delays in introducing new products and services.

Videos are a quick and simple way to make sure a large number of eyes see your recruitment ad. Potential candidates no longer have to sift through hundreds of ads on obscure forms or spend tens of minutes reading through the fine print: They can simply watch the video, learn which job openings are available at your company, and immediately apply!

• Recruit Candidates Passively

Popular job forums see hundreds to thousands of listings each day, and unless regularly updated, your job postings will quickly become a needle in a haystack with ever fewer interested candidates stumbling on it.

This isn't the case with videos, which are prominently displayed and evergreen - this is a major advantage as it allows you to passively recruit candidates without needing to update your listings each month or week.

Even if the recruitment video mentions specific job positions, and those get filled up, the video remains valuable. It acts as a way to get talent interested in your company and encourages them to check out the latest job openings.

• Shorten Onboarding Process

Unlike text-based job listings, videos give you substantial freedom to represent your company, your work culture, and your expectations at length. This will help potential candidates get an idea of what working at your company is like before even starting the job applications.

This minimizes misunderstandings, reduces onboarding times, and helps you attract candidates who are already interested in your company, its products/services, and its approach to work!

4 Cornerstones of Successful Recruitment Video Design

#1 Include All Key Information in the Recruitment Video

The recruitment video must act as a complete guide to potential candidates. What's the point of producing a video if viewers need to read supplementary documents, download complicated guides, and go through multiple hoops just to start submitting an application to your company? This goes against the spirit of a recruitment video.

When writing the script, designing the animations, and creating transitions, one question should always be on your mind, "Does the video act as a self-contained guide for applicants?" If the answer is no, you need to course correct.

#2 The Script Needs to be Clear and Evocative

The script is the heart of the video - It is where you decide what to present, how to get across, and how to appeal to potential candidates. You need to get it right.

There are some key principles to follow when writing the script:

• Informational: The video needs to strike an informational tone, as regardless of bells and whistles, it is ultimately still a video meant to help your company recruit candidates.
• Concise: The text needs to be concise and to the point. You want viewers to come away with a clear sense of what your company wants and how they can apply. Meandering recruitment videos can confuse and dissuade candidates.
• Representative of company culture: The script needs to accurately represent your company. A company might want to create a funny recruitment video to come across as a relaxed workplace and attract more eyes, and this isn't wrong. But if your company has a serious work culture, this might give a wrong impression to potential recruits. Adjust the script until you feel confident it represents the spirit of your company.

#3 Decide Approach to the Video

Before you start preparing the recruitment video, you need to agree on the video format. There are multiple approaches worth considering, which will impact the aesthetics, budget, and reach of your recruitment videos:

• Recorded Recruitment Videos

A recorded recruiting video is created from live footage and usually features a presenter responsible for reading the script, footage of the workplace, and employee testimonials. It is the traditional approach to creating a recruitment video.

This format is less budget-friendly as it requires professional footage, employee time, and sometimes even a professional actor, but it is a true-and-tried approach that many large companies still regularly use in their recruitment drives.

• Animated Recruitment Videos

Animated recruitment videos rely on creative symbols, voiceover, and smooth transitions to communicate the details of your recruitment drive to viewers. They give you more control over the minute details of the video and offer more creative freedom.

Though animated recruitment videos aren't as common as traditional recorded ones, they are by no means ineffective. For service, music, non-governmental, and many other industries, animated recruitment videos showcase your creativity, your mission statement, and your dedication in an effective manner.

• Mixed Recorded/Animated Recruitment Videos

You can experience the best of both worlds by creating recruitment videos that are a mix of animated elements and real recorded footage. This allows you to add a creative touch to the video while keeping it grounded by featuring your employees and your workplace.

Though this is an experimental approach that takes expertise and experience to get right, it is becoming increasingly popular, and you can see recruiting videos from startups to Fortune 500 companies featuring a mixed format.

At Pigeon Studio, we have extensive experience helping companies design animated and mixed recruitment videos. We rely on evocative, creative designs and smooth transitions to help you create the effective recruitment video you need to drive talent to your company!

#4 Include the Benefits of Working at Your Company

The best way to attract high-quality talent is to clearly and plainly demonstrate all the benefits your employees get from working at your company. From insurance to paid leave and company initiatives and bonuses, what makes working at your company attractive? Make sure you mention them in the video.

An excellent recruitment video makes candidates think you are the best company to work for, and going over work benefits is necessary to get there!

Tips to Create More Effective Recruitment Videos

Creating a good recruitment video isn't easy - it requires research, an appealing script, proper footage and editing, and more. Many smaller companies fail to approach it correctly -- In this section, we'll give you several important tips that will help you understand key elements of the best recruitment videos:

• Put Company Culture on Display

 While it is not a company culture video, the recruiting video still needs to explain to job candidates what your company is, what it represents, and how it approaches business. This will help you attract candidates that fit your company's culture.

• Include a Call to Action

Including a call to action (CTA) has become standard in both text and video formats in virtually every kind of campaign, from marketing to recruitment. Many viewers consume the content of the video passively, and they need active and vocal encouragement to spring them into action. This is where one or multiple CTAs during various points in the video are critical!

• Highlight What Makes Your Company Different

High production alone isn't enough to attract high-quality talent to your company - you need to give them a reason to join your company. This can be by going over what distinguishes your company from the competitors, what you are willing to offer your new employees, or detailing benefits. There are many approaches that are effective!

• Study Successful Recruitment Video Templates

Do you have any favorite recruitment videos? Have any recruitment drives impressed you? Do you know how your competitors have approached creating a recruitment video?

There's no need to reinvent the wheel. There are many examples of successful recruitment videos. You should use those as a template and build on it!

Company Recruitment Videos FAQ

What Should a Recruitment Video Include?

The job of a recruitment video is to attract talent to your company, and this objective should guide the content of the video. At a minimum, the video should include the details of the job, the expectations of your company, the benefits for the candidates, and how viewers can get in touch with your company and fill out job applications!

Can a Recruitment Video Be Funny?

It is very important to get the tone of the recruitment video right. Though there are no fast and hard rules on how to approach the video, the general rule of thumb is that "the tone of the video should reflect the company culture."

If you have a relaxed company culture, going for a funny, humorous recruitment video can be the right idea as it will attract similar-minded people to your company. If your company is formal and structural, a humorous video is probably not the best fit.

How Do You Write a Recruitment Video Script?

Writing a video script isn't simple, especially if it is a professional video that's expected to communicate key information to a wide audience. The script should be straightforward, it should contain all key information viewers need, and it should sound natural - professional but not overtly corporate. You can take inspiration from interview questions, templates, and competitors' recruitment videos when writing the script.