It is very hard to find an organization today that is not trying to stay lean during these challenging economic times. There is no reason that you should expect anything less from your recruiting video.
Your focus needs to reach beyond your main message to maximize your return on investment. An essential step to achieve this will be to strategize your central theme and refine it for your audience with secondary themes that end up in the final product. In order to achieve this you need to engage in planning and discussions that should involve these questions.
- Did you really layer your message effectively? This is one of the basics, yet it is rarely done well. It is imperative to layer messages to make the most of the very brief yet expensive frame of time you have for getting your message across. Most recruiting videos communicate a main theme and one secondary theme such as a diverse workforce but fall short in effectively getting across multiple messages. A strategic recruiting video will revolve around a central theme, and while it is delivered, put forth appreciable examples of secondary themes. Your organization may be a leader in wellness or internal career development or another area that you want to include to distinguish your secondary messages from the competition. Remember you want to give your target audience a significant reason to watch the video.
- What websites is your recruiting video appropriate for? In order to engage your audience, you must understand where they frequent when looking for information on organizations. Are they more likely to see your video on your career site, at a job fair, third-party career site, a Facebook page, or on a Second Life Island?
- Does your recruiting video come across scripted? Recruiting videos are typically centered around a storyboard to keep the message on point. Just because there is a script is no reason for the video to sound scripted. Leave a little leeway for spontaneity and creativity where possible to give the video genuine presence.
- Did you market your video in your organization? Some organizations focus so hard on marketing to an external audience that they forget the obvious. Your internal audience may be some of your best evangelists spreading the word to others.
- Did you “Tweet” about your video? Use Twitter to publicize your video and the websites where your video can be found. It takes very little effort to Tweet and drive traffic to the sites where the video is found.
Below is a Federal Reserve of Cleveland recruiting video I worked on last year with thunder::tech, as well as a Cisco recruiting video.