4 Video Strategies That Will Help You Recruit the Best Talent Technology has made it easier than ever to build effective, video-based recruiting strategies that allow companies large and small to expand their talent pools.
By Andre Lavoie Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If you're not at least considering using video as part of your recruiting strategy, you're missing out. According to forecasts from Cisco's February 2015 Visual Networking Index, video will make up 80 percent of all Internet traffic by 2019, and 67 percent of that Internet traffic will be accessed via mobile devices.
What does that mean for recruiting? It means reaching top talent using traditional methods is going to be a lot harder. The good news is technology has made it easier than ever to build effective, video-based recruiting strategies that allow companies large and small to expand their talent pools beyond their own backyards and source candidates from all over the country.
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Here are four video recruiting strategies organizations need to start employing to attract and hire today's top talent:
1. Company culture videos
One of the easiest ways for organizations to integrate video into their recruiting strategies is to show candidates why the organization is great instead of telling them. According to Aberdeen's October 2014 talent acquisition research, best-in-class companies are 75 percent more likely to use video tools for employee branding, enabling them to attract top talent.
That's great, but how?
Organizations need to produce videos that emphasize company culture. Whether it's showing what the office looks like, relating the organization's mission and values or highlighting its community service programs, using video helps candidates see what really matters to the organization.
Once the video is ready, focus on distributing it across different paid and free channels. For maximum exposure, host video front and center on the "Careers" and "About Us" landing pages, share it on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, and use paid advertising options to ensure active and passive candidates everywhere engage with the content.
2. Employee-focused videos
Get current employees involved in the video-recruiting strategy. Think about it: Organizations count on employees to engage with and refer strong talent. Why not let other candidates see how much those employees enjoy their jobs, too?
Instead of relying on text to get the job requirements and expectations across, use video descriptions to show candidates what a day in the life as an employee in that role is like, and attach it to the job listing.
For a truly unique perspective, interview employees about their roles in the organization and what they do on a daily basis to make an impact. Focus on things such as why they love their jobs, the challenges they face, the satisfaction they get from finishing projects and interesting facts about the employee, team or department.
Share these video "biographies" with candidates so they learn more about the people they could be working with and what drives them to succeed.
Related: 3 Reasons Why Your Hiring Process Is Killing Your Company
3. Video applications
Video helps with more than just recruiting top candidates, it helps with the screening process, as well. Instead of having to sift through countless resumes -- or worrying that an applicant tracking system is missing qualified candidates -- some organizations are using video applications as a first step in the screening process.
In fact, in a June survey, Futurestep found that 25 percent of the 700 executives surveyed work for organizations that use video applications as a part of their recruiting process. Not only do video applications help speed up the screening process, but also they allow hiring managers to evaluate soft skills such as communication style, poise and organization before they ever sit down with a candidate.
4. Video interviewing
Once an organization finishes the screening process and moves on to the interview stage, video becomes even more useful. Whereas video applications allow candidates to highlight their strengths and weaknesses, video interviews allow organizations to dive deeper into the things that matter to them -- a key reason video interviewing has become so important to organizations.
Futurestep's executive survey found 71 percent of respondents use real-time video to interview candidates and 50 percent use recorded video interviews to narrow the candidate pool. In other words, integrating both live and pre-loaded video interviews into the recruiting process has become commonplace for successful organizations.
Video-interviewing software helps organizations extend their reach by getting rid of the costs involved with interviewing candidates who aren't locally based. Using recorded, on-demand interviews, organizations can eliminate both the costs and the time investment necessary to interview multiple candidates at different times.
By reducing these costs, organizations are able to efficiently and effectively break down geographical and financial barriers to top talent, thus creating a deeper potential candidate pool.
Implementing these four strategies will get organizations on the right track, but organizations need to continuously adapt and find creative -- and cost-effective -- ways integrate video into the recruiting process to successfully attract and capture today's best talent.
Related: 3 Ways to Be Constantly Recruiting Star Talent Through Social Media
