Whether the job market is tight as a tie or as loose as the elastic waistband one finds themselves in after yet another week spent uploading their resume, your company will always compete to attract and retain employee talent. Finding the tiniest advantage in this bout, gaining even the most microscopic edge, can be what separates your company’s success from its failure.
That advantage is, of course, video. Elevating your employer branding with video can help attract the top talent to your company. With video, your company can highlight its authentic self to catch the attention of the people who are most likely to excel when hired.
What Is an Employer Branding Video?
Your reputation as an employer is based on the experiences of your recruits, current employees, and those that have moved on to other opportunities. Your employer brand is your voice in that discussion, and, ideally, it shouldn’t be too far off from your reputation as an employer or even how you brand yourself to customers.
At its simplest, an employer branding video is any video your company uses to attract employee talent. However, that simple definition can be deceptive, as many videos are produced with that intention but work better at driving away candidates who can make a positive impact within the organization.
A proper definition may be something more like: a branding video offers potential employees an authentic look at a company’s culture, its workplace, and its employees. Authenticity here is critical. If the video isn’t transparent about how a workplace operates, even those who are happy when first hired may leave with a disappointing experience. Then, instead of elevating your brand, you may find your inauthentic video diminishes it.
How Do Employer Branding Videos Help Your Recruiting Efforts?
An effective employer branding video should help potential candidates self-sort themselves into one of two groups: those that are likely to excel at the company and those that aren’t. The latter group isn’t one that should be defined as a group lacking in anything. There will be any number of otherwise skilled candidates who aren’t a fit at your company for any number of reasons.
Maybe they want to work at a younger company or an older company or they want a company whose mission they can be 100% aligned with. Maybe they worked with a guy named Todd at their last job and he was such a creep that it ruined all Todds so the number of managers named Todd in the video is unsettling. Maybe they don’t like open floor workspaces.
Video also gives you the ability to target a variety of different employee personas. Your marketing team can craft a video that speaks to the unique mindset needed to succeed on that team. Then your product team can add to, remove from, or remold that video to produce a video targeted at those who will excel on their team. So, not only can video be effective at managing your brand, it also works at scale.
What Does Your Employer Branding Video Need to Succeed?
For your employer branding video to best help your recruiting efforts, it should answer four questions:
- What is your company’s culture?
- What is your company’s mission?
- Where does your company work?
- Who works at your company? (Subquestion: What are your employees like?)
The culture of your organization should be infused in almost every aspect of your video. If your group is proud of its sense of humor, the video should have a matching whimsicality. A parody or animated video can reinforce that while your teammates take their work seriously, they don’t take themselves seriously.
At the same time, if your team is serious or singularly focused on its mission, the video should convey that through its tone and style. Talking head-style interviews may help cut to the chase and spend
Another way to help potential applicants self-sort into those who may help your company and those who may not is to discuss your organization’s mission. Everyone wants a team that’s pulling in the same direction. So, telling applicants the direction in which you’re pulling can help them determine if that’s where they want to head, too.
Where your company works is yet another factor applicants consider. Not only the physical location, but what the workplace looks like and how people work in the space. If a candidate needs quiet solitude to give their best effort, they should know whether the company to which they’re applying does all their work at actively played on ping pong tables.
The final way that employer brandings videos help your recruiting efforts is by showing off who works at your company. Do people dress formally or casually or in the awkward half-step of business casual? Do the managers seem passionate and personal or stoic and managerial? Providing a transparent look at potential teammates’ vibe lets a recruit know whether they think they’ll fit in.
Why Should You Boost Your Employer Branding with Video?
Giving job candidates an authentic view of how your company works allows you to attract the type of talent that fits best within your organization. As your organization grows or fill in gaps on the team, elevating your employer branding with video will give you an advantage over the competition.
If you’re looking for a partner to elevate your employer brand using video, we’re ready to lift with our legs and raise you as high as we can. Contact us today so we can start getting loose.