Before applying, skilled workers want to see who they will work with, what their day-to-day looks like and what they will earn. Employers win over the right people by showing exactly that: real photos and videos of everyday working life, featuring their own employees, appeal to suitable candidates and filter out unsuitable ones before they even apply.
A job advert mainly reflects the company’s point of view: What qualifications do we need, what tasks are involved, what do we offer? A skilled worker asks different questions: Will I fit into this team? Can I picture my professional future here? Is what they promise actually true? A job advert has no answer to these questions, but a picture or a film does.
As a marketing consultant and film producer at Pathfinder Studios, I have been supporting companies at exactly this point for many years. My advice is almost always the same: don’t invest in the next job advert, invest in recruitment videos. Text reflects facts. Images, and videos above all, convey emotion. And today’s skilled workers want more than just a job. They want purpose in their work and the feeling of achieving something together.
In this article, I use two recruitment videos to show what that can look like: one for the energy IT service provider FACTUR in Aachen and one for the fibre-optic provider GlasfaserPlus.
Table of contents
- Why do companies receive lots of applications but few suitable candidates?
- How honestly should everyday working life be shown to win over skilled workers?
- What sets mid-sized employers apart from corporations and brands in the competition for candidates?
- Frequently asked questions: attracting skilled workers
Why do companies receive lots of applications but few suitable candidates?
Because job adverts mainly describe requirements and show little of what the work and the team are really like. Photos, or better still recruitment videos, show the team, the atmosphere and everyday working life – and answer the questions skilled workers really ask themselves before applying.
According to the Xing Arbeitsmarktreport 2026, a German labour market report, half of all companies receive plenty of applications, but too few suitable ones. Salary and benefits can be compared on paper; the atmosphere in a company cannot. Yet that is exactly what decides whether someone really wants this job, can do it and understands it – or is just sending off an application at random. The result of recruitment marketing based purely on text job adverts: many people apply on the off chance to a job description – not to this specific job at this specific company. Worse still, many skilled workers and candidates who would fit perfectly into the team don’t feel addressed.
When I plan a recruitment video project with a company as a marketing and film agency, we therefore go through the questions a candidate asks herself before clicking ‘Apply now’:
- Who will I be working with every day?
- What does a normal working day look like?
- Where will I be working – and do I want to work in these premises and with this equipment?
- Can I identify with this atmosphere and these tasks?
Each of these questions is answered better with an image than with a sentence. A photo of the team laughing in the corridor between two meetings says more about the culture than ‘flat hierarchies’, and twenty seconds of film with a colleague explaining why she has stayed is more convincing than any list of benefits.
In practice: FACTUR ‘Coole Jobs’
FACTUR Billing Solutions is a process and IT service provider for the German energy market with around 270 employees in Aachen. Its employer brand was already strong: under the motto ‘Coole Jobs’ (cool jobs), FACTUR appears with a polar bear mascot and is visible through local sponsorship. The real hurdle was the location. FACTUR was mainly looking for IT specialists, and they first had to be convinced to move to Aachen.
The recruitment video therefore had to answer two questions: ‘What is the team like? And what is life like in this city?’
So we filmed the company’s own employees in team situations at work, but also in their free time: at the Tivoli stadium, in Aachen’s parks and at the sights of the city centre. For the moments of humour, the life-size polar bear mascot also appeared in front of the camera.
‘It was particularly important to us that our own employees appear in the film and that no actors were used. This creates an honest and authentic impression of our company.’ – Silke Görgens, Recruitment Marketing & Employer Branding, FACTUR Billing Solutions GmbH
The feedback is clear: many applicants wrote in their application email, or said in the interview, that ‘the great film on the careers page’ was what made them apply. And they arrive at the first interview differently: they recognise the building and individual colleagues, and bring a noticeably more positive attitude with them.
How honestly should everyday working life be shown to win over skilled workers?
Employers should show their day-to-day honestly in content but staged in form. The people and what they say about their work should be real. The image, on the other hand, is design: an employer doesn’t come across as authentic because it shows reality one-to-one, but because it triggers real emotions.
With recruitment videos, almost every company wants an ‘authentic’ film: the employees and the office just as they are. I always explain that an authentic building site is dirty and an authentic office is untidy, with coffee stains on the desk. Nobody wants to see that, because it doesn’t match our viewing habits and therefore comes across as negative.
Our viewing habits have been shaped by feature films and series, and they are all staged. Every layer of dirt, every scratch, every piece of dirty laundry is there because someone decided it should be. And yet it feels real, because it triggers real emotions.
For a recruitment video, that means we don’t have to – and are free not to! – reproduce reality one-to-one to create something real. We have to shape it. And that is exactly what we do as a strategic and creative film agency for recruitment videos across Europe.
In practice: taking the ‘career leap’ literally
The FACTUR film also shows how far staging can go without losing credibility. We framed the down-to-earth core of employees and their statements with an action story under the motto ‘Dare to take the career leap’: a professional actor jumps out of a plane with a parachute and speaks directly to the viewer: ‘Are you ready for your career leap? Then be brave and jump, like me.’ He lands in front of the company building and leads the way inside, then the real employees take over. At the end, the frame closes with the same question.
The jump is obviously staged, and that is exactly why it works: it grabs attention and adds a wink, while the employees tell you in their own words why they work at FACTUR.
Which channels reach skilled workers today?
You reach skilled workers where they already spend their time: on LinkedIn and Instagram, through recommendations from your own employees and, when they are actively looking, via Google, job portals and your careers page.
The problem: many good skilled workers aren’t actively looking. They stumble across a post, a video or a friend’s recommendation and then take a look at the company. That results in two tasks:
- Create attention where people scroll. Short vertical clips, photos of the team and posts that employees are happy to share.
- Reward curiosity on the careers page. Anyone who clicks wants to see more: the full-length film, faces, specific vacancies and an application process that takes just a few minutes.
That’s why I plan recruitment projects with every channel in mind from the start, with the careers page usually remaining the destination. FACTUR shows how effective even a single place can be: there, the film runs exclusively on the careers page, which all job adverts, posters and campaigns point to. Anyone who arrives there sees it. We often add short cut-downs for social media and photos for adverts and the website to the main film, all in one visual language.
How do you best show everyday working life with photos and videos?
With real people in real workplaces. The film conveys mood and voices, while the photos carry the careers page, adverts and social media. Both are planned together to create one visual language.
Three things make the difference between a credible result and a staged one:
- Involve employees early. Anyone who knows what it’s about and why they in particular are in front of the camera is more relaxed on the shoot day.
- Conversations on camera instead of memorised lines. Statements emerge in the interview, in the employees’ own words.
- Scenes from real workflows. We stage situations that genuinely happen, just with better lighting and better timing. At FACTUR, we created a scripted film like this without any actors at all.
Marketing consultant and director Tom Wolt describes how employees come across naturally on camera:
‘We never start with the interviews straight away. Anyone sitting for the first time with a spotlight at their back, a microphone hanging over their head like the sword of Damocles and strangers behind the camera first needs time to settle in. Instead, we chat and joke with people – and we explain the process and content in detail so that the uncertainty of the unknown disappears. And we work in takes, with feedback in between, rather than recording a long monologue without direction.’ – Tom Wolt, Marketing Consultant & Director
In practice: the GlasfaserPlus HR film
GlasfaserPlus aims to connect around four million households in rural areas to the fibre-optic network. ‘Our mission is to make Germany fit for the future again,’ says its mission statement – and the recruitment video. The film is aimed primarily at young people who want to drive a dynamic company forward, in a team of long-standing colleagues and career-minded people who keep joining.
Everything in the film is real: real employees, filmed in the company’s own loft-style office, indoors and outdoors, at work and on their break. The centrepiece is a table tennis tournament that the employees themselves talk about in the film. One special feature: alongside the team, the Head of HR also has her say. She explains what makes GlasfaserPlus special for her, then hands over to the employees with a wink: ‘But enough from HR.’
GlasfaserPlus still uses the film today and has been recognised as an employer on kununu, Germany’s leading employer review platform.
What sets mid-sized employers apart from corporations and brands in the competition for candidates?
Corporations and brands benefit from their brand awareness as employers and often win people over in job adverts with salary and benefits. Mid-sized employers, on the other hand, often score with closeness and personality: short decision paths, a direct contact in senior management, and work whose impact you can feel every day. That is exactly what recruitment videos and photos can show.
The most common mistake I see at mid-sized companies is trying to look like a corporation. High gloss, stock photos and interchangeable slogans don’t make a small business look bigger, they make it faceless. What is stronger is what only this company has: the boss who knows everyone by name, the team that has worked together for years, the customer who calls personally to say thank you.
The two projects in this article show that the principle applies to companies of any size. FACTUR is an established mid-sized company with around 270 employees, GlasfaserPlus a modern infrastructure company with a mission. Neither put its size at the centre, but rather its team and its atmosphere.
Frequently asked questions: attracting skilled workers
Let’s talk about your search for skilled workers
Looking for skilled workers and want to show why it’s worth joining you? In a free initial consultation, we’ll clarify goals, target groups and budget. No obligation, and as equal partners.
Or contact Yvonne Schwalowski directly: +49 2251 773 99 66, office@pathfinder-studios.de
