Recruitment Video – Finding Employees Who Really Fit Your Company
Why do companies need a recruitment video at all – isn’t there another way? In this article we explain and show what a good recruitment video looks like and how it achieves your goal. With examples!
Employees are the backbone of every company. Whatever the size of the company, employees are a key lever for its success or failure. The recruitment video is a recruiting strategy designed to build a strong employer brand. To attract not just more applicants but, above all, good, ambitious people who really support your company and make it successful, it has to be done right. In this blog article, you will find out what a good recruitment video needs in order to appeal to exactly the right employees for your company.
A recruitment video is part of an HR marketing strategy and is produced for employer branding purposes to appeal to applicants and potential employees.
The film positions your company as an attractive employer and shows your company culture, your colleagues, the workplace and the tasks of the advertised position.
This makes it a highly effective video marketing tool for every form of HR marketing, recruiting and employer branding. Recruitment videos are a sub-genre of corporate films, but are aimed specifically at applicants and potential employees.
Recruitment videos in brief: a decision guide for companies
Your employer brand doesn’t just determine how many applications you receive. Much more importantly, it influences who applies to you. Are they applicants who have no idea where else to apply, or ambitious applicants who chose your company for a specific reason? The latter are the ones you want as a company, because they will give 100% and more for your company’s success.
Your employer branding makes the difference. The more your company reflects the wishes and expectations of applicants, the more ambitious and committed your new employees will be. In the end, successful recruiting is not about having more applicants but about getting the right applicants for your company and your success. And the really good employees are, after all, in high demand.
HR marketing: what are the benefits of a recruitment video?
There are many tools and strategies for HR marketing. So when is a recruitment video a better choice than a classic job advertisement? First of all, newspaper job ads have long since stopped being successful. Since young people in particular no longer read newspapers, the ads disappear without really being seen. They also rarely stand out from other ads and can show neither the company culture nor the working atmosphere.
Film, on the other hand, addresses people directly and in a contemporary way and conveys the company culture in an appealing form. A recruitment video reaches your target group through various channels and can be used over a long period. Besides your own website and job portals, potential applicants can be reached above all on social media – even in their free time. That makes recruitment videos particularly effective.
A recruitment video directly influences how your applicants present themselves
It’s true. Recruitment video A can lead to your applicants only turning up in suit and tie, while recruitment video B has them come to the interview in T-shirt and trainers.
A recruitment video has an enormous effect on applicants’ expectations and ideas about your company. This is your chance to present your company the way you want to come across to your employees and applicants – for example as a highly professional company, or rather as a down-to-earth, creative business. That way you reach the right employees and applicants – those who are really useful to your company and move it forward.
That’s why a really good recruitment video speaks the applicants’ language. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mean that a recruitment video should use youth slang to appeal to school leavers, for example. That would definitely be a bad idea. By the applicants’ language I mean that the film must address their wishes, ideas and goals, make your company tangible for this particular group and present itself in a modern, contemporary way – without distorting your own company culture.
Over 60 pages of essential knowledge in a compact eBook. Instant download. 100% free.
Who do you actually want to hire?
This question is crucial when producing a recruitment video, so that the right target group is addressed. Three target groups are commonly distinguished:
Skilled workers
Apprentices
Students
Finding skilled workers
Every company wants satisfied, motivated employees – ideally ones who work well in a team, have their own ideas and drive innovation, and who think creatively and look beyond their own field.
Filling apprenticeship places is becoming ever harder, especially for small and mid-sized companies. Only a few applicants respond to the many open positions. Where can you find the right apprentices today?
Your company doesn’t have any working students or student assistants yet? Then you should start looking now! Students are very popular employees: they are motivated, bring fresh expertise from university into the team and can be tied to your company at an early stage.
Why your recruitment video shouldn’t be left to apprentices
Your entire public image and the company’s reputation in the hands of apprentices? Put like that, no company in the world would ask its own apprentices to make a recruitment video.
And yet you see far too often that recruitment videos are made by apprentices. The reason is simple and understandable: it saves hard cash, and apprentices know their way around media as well as the wishes and expectations of new applicants. The basic idea is by no means wrong.
But have apprentices already fully internalised your company culture? Do they understand what your company stands for? And above all: can they express that in a video at all? Hardly. After all, it isn’t that easy.
Your apprentices can, however, provide important input for the recruitment video and even take part as extras. But to make sure the film doesn’t damage your image, professional production is essential.
16 pages of essential knowledge in a compact eBook. Instant download. 100% free.
What can your recruitment video look like?
Advertise a specific position, or present the whole company as an attractive employer? Recruitment videos can take different approaches to help you find the right employees.
Job advertisements
If you are advertising a specific position in your company, a recruitment video that focuses on this area of work is a good fit. It presents the tasks and at the same time shows your company culture.
This way you can also advertise several positions at once, with individual videos for each position, giving you a whole video series for your recruiting. The individual videos all share the same style and represent your company culture equally, each focusing on a specific position.
Employer branding video
The employer branding video doesn’t focus on individual positions but entirely on your employer brand and company culture. This form of recruitment video makes particular sense if, in the long term, you want to be independent of individual job ads and position your company universally as an attractive employer.
Your company image is more in the foreground and more tangible for the viewer.
Over 20 pages of essential knowledge in a presentation-ready PDF. Instant download. 100% free.
Getting found: using recruitment videos effectively
With the right placement, your recruitment video reaches a wide audience, so that as many potential applicants as possible get to see it. Here is an overview of the different platforms:
Website
Job sites and portals
Social media
Trade fairs and events
The best place for a recruitment video is your own website. That is usually where potential applicants look when they want to find out about your company. A positive side effect: a video on your website also boosts your SEO ranking on Google.
If you have a jobs page or even your own job portal, your recruitment video definitely belongs there. If several positions are advertised, the individual recruitment videos can be placed on the respective job ad pages.
Of course, a recruitment video can also be embedded on classic social media profiles. This way, people who browse social media in their free time can also become aware of you.
Job fairs, applicant days and career events are also a good platform, where you can sometimes talk to people directly.
Recruitment video examples
The goal for the Malteser in the Rhein-Sieg district was to inspire already trained paramedics, emergency doctors and emergency medical technicians.
Above all, they want team players, because humanity and team spirit are particularly important at the Malteser. You have to be able to rely on each other when the going gets tough, and you also spend a lot of time together between call-outs.
That is why the recruitment video for the Malteser puts a strong focus on a likeable but highly professional team. The film is a mix of likeable team scenes and the use of advanced equipment, with a serious, trustworthy voice-over that fills the images with information.
The recruitment video for the Malteser was a full-service commission: from concept and shoot with direction and employee coaching to the edit with final colour grading. A special extra: aerial footage of the building.
An overview of options, costs and best-practice examples
Landhotel Kallbach is looking for ambitious skilled workers in hotel services, restaurant services and the kitchen for its 4-star hotel.
What’s special here: there is no voice-over at all. The film conveys the employees’ enthusiasm for their different jobs purely through strong images and entertaining editing.
Emotions are conveyed both by the employees and by actors playing the guests in the film. Everything is supported by sparing text overlays that aren’t too intrusive, so that the viewer isn’t distracted and the focus stays on the emotions.
This project was also a full-service commission. Its particular features were the use of two actors and food design shots with a special lens.
Recruitment video costs
The costs vary just as much as the goals and examples of recruitment videos do. Like every company film, a recruitment video is made in 3 phases: pre-production, shoot and editing, plus the fourth cost item, “external costs” (e.g. music, voice-over artists, actors/models and stock footage). Depending on scope, each of these phases varies between an average of 1,500 and 10,000 euros, giving total costs of an average of 5,000 to 30,000 euros for your recruitment video.
To get an exact price for your individual recruitment video, it’s best to send a no-obligation enquiry to a film production company you trust. Book a no-obligation conversation here.
The free eBook on recruitment videos (in German)
If you would like to read more case studies, recruiting strategies and concepts of successful recruitment videos, our free eBook on recruitment videos (in German) is the place to go. It gives more detailed insights into individual projects, including price estimates for your budget planning. Get your free recruitment video handbook as an eBook here.
Conclusion: finding employees with a recruitment video
So, to find employees who really fit you, a recruitment video can be worthwhile. Especially in the digital world we now live in, a recruitment video is one of the most effective ways to position your company as an attractive employer. Marketed via your website, your job portal or social media, it lets you reach exactly your target group and win them over for your company. Whether job ad or employer branding video: professionally produced, a recruitment video can be exactly the tool your HR marketing needs right now.
