Have you included company culture videos in your recruitment marketing strategy? These videos are an important option to add to your content plan, helping you effectively attract and nurture candidates. And with videos performing higher than other mediums (especially on social media), it can be worthwhile to produce this valuable content.
Why create company culture videos?
Here are a few compelling reasons to consider crafting a video content strategy for your employer brand:
It builds trust with candidates. Videos allow employees to share their stories in their own voices, providing a variety of perspectives to support your overall company culture story. This also creates deeper, more meaningful authentic answers. Even if the videos are highly produced, hearing employees speak in their own words and see their body language and expressions can help build trust faster.
It gives candidates a “peek behind the curtain.” Most candidates aren’t going to accept a job without getting the details first. By showcasing your workspaces, teams, initiatives, community, products, and people, candidates can easily envision the space they’d work in, the people they’d work with, and the projects they’d impact.
It builds awareness beyond the day-to-day job. These videos are a great opportunity to highlight the key differentiators that go beyond the typical job description. For example, you can create videos to talk about unique training programs, career path stories, affinity groups, special benefits, and more.
What are the different video formats?
There are a handful of video format options, such as:
Produced. This usually leverages your in-house videographer or an outside production company to create. These high production value videos tend to be more strategically planned and can include storyboarding prior to shooting. You’ll also want to consider the goal of the video, the story you want to tell, the people you want involved, and the locations for interviews and b-roll. These videos are typically very polished and can include graphics, special transitions, and music or other sound effects. Therefore, it can take a bit of planning, likely won’t have a quick turnaround, and will require some budget (from our experience working with vendors, videos we’ve produced averaged around $3k - $10k depending on several factors).
User generated. This is a great alternative for quick updates or when you need a shorter turnaround time. With more people watching video through things like Instagram Stories, Snapchat, TikTok, and Facebook Live, viewers are becoming more comfortable with this low-budget, scrappy format. And since many of our newer cell phones have quality cameras, videos produced this way can still look sharp. You can share the video as is or have it spruced up by using an in-house videographer or hiring an outside vendor to edit the video. Or, if your budget is tight, you can edit them yourself with a tool like Camtasia.
Live. As mentioned before, video is becoming a more common way to engage with followers on social media. These platforms are constantly coming out with new ways for people to produce engaging videos, such as Instagram's latest Reels release in the summer of 2020. This option is great for on-the-fly behind-the-scenes videos that don’t require too much pre-planning beforehand, nor does it require a ton of editing time.
Note: the pandemic has made shooting videos a little tricky, but not impossible. If you want advice on safe ways to film company culture videos, check out this guide from Stories.
What should your videos focus on?
It depends on your goal, your overall employer brand voice/personality/identity, and how you plan to use the video. Here are some options to consider:
Behind-the-scenes. Think of MTV Cribs. Use this to tour your offices, live-stream events, or get a deep perspective for employee day-in-the life videos.
Spotlights. A great option to highlight teams, individuals, or roles and enhance your job postings. For example, hiring managers can film a quick video to talk about their open roles, offer insights into the projects this person would work on, provide interviewing tips, and help people see who they’d be working for (this sure beats the boring bullet point job descriptions).
Important Initiatives. This can show candidates what’s important to your company, and its missions and goals. For example, if your company is committed to green initiatives, is creating a more inclusive culture, or is trying to make a social impact, this is a way to convey that. These things matter to candidates, especially the younger generations coming into the workforce.
Recaps. Were there any important events you attended or launched? Did you want to showcase a year in review to highlight company growth, new offices, a look into the company’s history, and changes? For growing companies, this could be an amazing chance to illustrate how much your company has accelerated.
News. What exciting things are happening? You can use these videos to announce things like new office openings, a new product launch and the team that made it happen, going public, and so on.
Creative (think commercials). If you have the money to spend and are looking for that fun, glossy, or inspirational video, consider this choice. Whether you’re doing it to stand out from the noise, engage the viewer, or pull on some heartstrings, there are a lot of great examples to get ideas from.
Culture-focused. These videos can also be creative, showcasing your company culture in an interesting way that also brings your company’s personality to life (following the advice of “show, don’t tell”). You can even include bloopers to add an element of down-to-earth fun in an otherwise professional video.
All of these are great options depending on your bandwidth, budget, and needs. However, whether you’re shooting a video quickly on your phone or hiring a production company, it’s important to get clear on your goals first.
Consider your overall talent acquisition plans for the year and a few years beyond. If you’re considering high production videos or user generated, you want to craft ones that will work with your long-term initiatives to give them more mileage, making the effort and costs worth it.
Need help planning a video shoot? Harlow offers content creation and activation services. Contact us here to learn more.
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