It feels like people have been talking about video as “the next big thing” in recruitment for ages. Everyday there seems to be a new zoomy ad about how many hours of YouTube video we're creating and video-based social media channels are being picked up by recruiters like, well, booze at a conference.
We’re all getting the message; Video is important. But it can be kind of hard to know exactly how (and where) to start. We’ve broken down some of the best ways we’ve seen video incorporated into a recruitment process in the past couple of years.
For the purposes of keeping to a word count, we’ve restricted these examples to “traditional video formats” – where you record a thing, put it on YouTube or Vimeo or your own site and share it with a group of people. We’ll do a follow-up post about new video formats (snapchat, periscope, VR) later on.
In short, people are looking for more efficient ways to check each other out. You want to get a deeper understanding of your candidate, faster. And the people applying for your jobs want to understand what working for your company feels like before they invest too heavily in a long recruitment process.
Video is also awesome as a way to get more of your team involved. Videos can be shared and reviewed when everyone is available – that means you’re not herding cats, trying to get everyone into a room at once, or asking people to come in over and over to meet with different members of the team.
And it can be used as a way to get the hiring manager (and their people) excited and involved in finding this new teammate.
In short, ladies and gentlemen, video; If you’re not using it already, you should.
On-Demand Interviews: There are a couple of reasons this works well. The most obvious is your own time saving. Let’s face it, we’re never going to find more than 24hours in a day – no matter how hard we look. You’re busy and being able to cut down time-to-hire and pre-screening time using video interviews is a godsend. It’s also great for the wider recruiting team though – letting them get to know candidates better during the early screening stage. And if you’ve ever applied for a job yourself, you’ll remember how hard it is finding time to fit interviews into your day. Being able to just record your interview yourself in your own time is pretty rad.
Showing off your culture/employer brand: This is a way you can use video before you’ve even got a specific role you’re trying to fill. Deloitte did this most famously with their “Deloitte Film Festival” way back in 2008. Rather than the glossy, over-produced hype videos you often see from these big corporations, Deloitte asked employees to make videos showing people what it’s REALLY like to work for the brand.
More recently, our mates at Lever made a similar “get a real look inside our culture” style video by recording one second every day for a whole quarter. For a person considering a role in company, it’s an awesome way to get a glimpse of what life could look like if they join the team.
Introducing the role or campaign: This is a brilliant way to elaborate on (and bring some life to) that job description you just wrote for the listing on your careers page. This is a especially effective if your role is unusual, or if your company is just a really awesome place to work and you want people to get a sense of what makes this opportunity special.
Derek Handley’s “Shoulder Tap” campaign used video really effectively in this way. The role was unusual – people were going to be asked to not only determine their own remuneration package, but also help define their own job description – and Derek himself is a really inspiring character. Using a custom skin, we hosted a handful of videos (produced by the clever guys at Augusto) on a campaign landing page. Then, before candidates completed the Weirdly screening assessment, they watched a video from Derek, inviting them to come on a journey toward making the world a better place.
DEREK HANDLEY - 'I'M HIRING' from #theshouldertap on Vimeo.
Letting applicants shine: But what about the candidates, you ask? Video gives them an awesome opportunity to flip it around and show you what makes them tick. Alongside Derek’s The Shoulder Tap campaign, Fletcher Building has used video in exactly this way.
In Fletcher’s case, their top 50 graduate programme candidates created and uploaded a video answering the question. By doing this through Weirdly, videos sent in by candidates were automatically added to that person’s assessment response.
For Derek’s Shoulder Tap campaign, we asked the top 100 to send us videos with their solution to a major social issue they feel passionate about.
The results were, predictably, awesome.
Comfort Zone from #theshouldertap on Vimeo.
Our new video integration will make this all automatic. People apply for the role through a simple Weirdly screening quiz, on completion they’re automatically sent an email asking them to record a video and copy their link into a dedicated field. This video is then automatically added to that candidate’s assessment results – so you can see everything related to that person in one place.
If you reckon that’s pretty cool and want to try out our video integration in your own recruitment process, give us a yell here.
A truly great recruitment process should be efficient, and should also give candidates a feel for your culture and let them really showcase the things that could make them a rockstar in your team. Video is an awesome way to achieve all those objectives – like, if you were into killing birds, you’d be doing it with one stone.
If you're keen to give Weirdly a go (with, or without our snazzy new video integration), jump in for a free trial here
