Stand out from the crowd by using employee video to tell your company story

September 16, 2021

 

iCIMS Staff

7 min read

Here’s the question: How is an employer supposed to stand out digitally in a crowded hiring market? Drive down any highway, and you’ll see “We’re hiring” and “Help wanted” flags frantically waving at passersby as businesses look for new team members.  

But most job seekers are searching for a job the same way they buy dog food or a new pair of sneakers: on the web. The challenge for employers is to find the digital equivalent of that flag staked along the highway. Something that is going to engage candidates and encourage them to begin the application process.  

Between Instagram video, YouTube, and TikTok, there’s a lot of content vying for candidates’ attention, but one thing is clear – video is king of the content pile. But just like their personal online video diet, beyond slickly produced film or professional graphics, job seekers are craving authenticity above all else. 

Talent professionals who think they can still capture candidates’ attention and encourage them to complete the application process using static content could find themselves the proverbial flip phones of the talent industry. 

The virtual (talent) shopping cart 

“We have a lot of work to do for improving candidate experience,” says Shane McCarthy, senior solutions marketing manager at iCIMS, who noted that only 24% of candidates report being satisfied when engaging with a company. “As employers, we’re not doing a good enough job exciting job seekers about opportunities or telling them what our companies are all about or what our culture is like.” 

He sees a few developments that factor into candidates’ shifting expectations: 

• Increasing focus on consumer-level experiences that candidates and employees have come to expect when they engage with a company, whether that’s choosing a healthcare provider or adding a college course to their shopping cart.  
• A shift to a more distributed workforce as many workers choose to stay remote or adopt a more hybrid work schedule. 
• Candidate trust has shifted from employers to employees. They want the real story and not a company-produced soundbite. 

To validate all this with candidates is to find ways to showcase the organization in an authentic and genuine way. But HR and talent teams are being asked to solve these growing problems – and growing expectations – with shrinking budgets. “How do we meet the challenges of this new Tik-Tok era head-on and ensure we’re building a winning team with less?” asks McCarthy. 

Video is king of the content pile 

While video makes up about 84% of internet content and keeps viewers interested 2.5 times longer than text, strategies for attracting and engaging candidates are mostly still text-based. A job description that’s a long wall of words is no way to get a job seeker excited about a position.  

“The key to generating interest is through authentic storytelling and providing engaging, relevant, and meaningful content throughout the candidate experience,” says McCarthy.

Transform the candidate experience with employee video  

Taking advantage of video technology can help you transform the candidate experience and meet these new expectations head-on. How? By empowering your employees (who are your true brand ambassadors) to share their unique experiences with top talent across the entire candidate lifecycle.  

iCIMS Video Studio empowers teams to produce videos at scale, within budgets, and also on their own timeline, which can give you the scale and flexibility to be agile and proactive. Video Studio’s intuitive yet robust design and social sharing platform can empower talent teams to produce professional video results without needing to hire a full production team.

Attract job candidates and humanize your brand 

Video content also lets you engage with candidates throughout the hiring lifecycle. 

Plug video content right onto your career site and create a gallery featuring employees answering prompts, which helps humanize your brand. Embedding video modules directly to your site keeps job seekers on the page and enhances the candidate’s experience. 

All video content is tagged, allowing candidates to search for what interests them and close-captioned for language translation. “Think of it as curated content that’s specific to wherever a job candidate is in their job search,” said McCarthy.  

According to McCarthy, companies who use video content are seeing a significant increase in conversion rates, time on site, and social engagement. They also see a huge increase in overall site traffic since pages with video outrank static pages in SEO. He said, “By transforming traditionally static pages, like the job descriptions, to a more engaging page with relevant video, our customers are driving 74 to 75% more interested candidates to their career site just based on the SEO alone.” 

Keep candidates engaged with video 

Video content can also be embedded on your job description page, which lets you introduce rich media into the highest traffic page on the site. It allows you to personalize that media, highlight employees and hiring managers, and give a day-in-the-life snapshot of the open position.  

Memorial Sloane Kettering leverages employee video in a variety of ways, including through job descriptions, apply pages, social media, the organization’s career page, and internally to promote career mobility. They also use video to promote diversity, highlighting team members on their DEI pages who discuss initiatives and networks MSK fosters for employees. 

Accounting powerhouse PwC uses video content to support their outreach to historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) and features videos of employees who attended those schools.

Up your social media game with video 

There’s a reason why employee-generated video content performs so well. It breaks the mold because it’s different and attention-grabbing. You’re fighting for attention and engagement on social media as well. Who do you think the algorithm will favor: your job posting or another hilarious video of cats behaving poorly? 

Video Studio’s editing suite lets you aggregate videos and stitches them together to create company stories and help make posts feel more personal.

Make onboarding personal 

Using video during the offer process  provides a personal touch to an otherwise straightforward event. It’s a way to continue the excitement and welcome new hires. It’s also a final sales pitch, a last nudge in the right direction – and it may make all the difference when it comes to highly sought-after candidates. 

Video plays a similar role during the employee onboarding process. Starting a new role can be overwhelming. Incorporating employee testimonial video in onboarding can help get new hires up to speed quicker and put a face to the names of the people they’ll be working with. 

How Valvoline uses video to connect candidates and team members 

For Valvoline,  a leading provider of automotive services and supplier of premium DIY motor oil, iCIMS Video Studio has become a powerful tool for connecting with current and future employees.  

According to Brandie Dawson, director of Global Talent Acquisition and Candidate Experience at Valvoline, the majority of their workforce has been home for over a year. The pandemic forced them to redesign the way they had to source, recruit, and onboard talent.

Using employee video testimonials throughout the talent lifecycle 

From career sites to onboarding job descriptions to internal comms and everywhere in between, video content helps deliver the meaningful experiences needed to attract, engage, hire, and advance talent wherever they are in the hiring funnel. 

“Video technology has really taken a front seat for us,” Dawson said. “It’s now the primary way we’re communicating with both job seekers and candidates as well as internal workforce.” 

Want to learn more about leveraging employee video to tell your company story? Download your copy of Attracting talent through employee video.