5 Ways to Use Video in Your Recruiting & Hiring Process

Looking for ways to spice up your company’s recruiting brand? Check out this quick list of five ways to use videos in your recruiting and interviewing processes. Then, start converting more of your career site visitors into actual applicants, and eventually, new and engaged employees.

1 – Highlight Videos on Your Company’s Careers Portal

This may be the most obvious and already widely used idea; however, it just might be one of the most effective for engaging your site visitors to stay on your pages longer. A wide variety of subject areas can be covered on the branded careers portal available through your applicant tracking system (ATS). Videos might focus on the following topics:

• Testimonials given by current employees about why they enjoy working at the company
• Highlights from various company events and charitable projects to demonstrate the company culture to potential applicants
• Informational videos about the city or region in which your business resides – this is particularly helpful if you do a great deal of nationwide searches for candidates and relocate new employees to your area

2 – Make Your Confirmation Emails Memorable & Informational

These days it can be very difficult for even medium-sized businesses to personally respond to each individual that submits an employment application. As a result, its quite common for organizations to use their ATS to set up auto-generated email responses whenever a new application is received. These are critical as they confirm to the applicant that his/her submission was successful, and they can greatly reduce the number of phone calls received by applicants who want to check on the status of their application. However, even though personalization strings can be used in these email templates, how exciting is email text for the applicant who is anxious to learn more?

In your email message, why not embed or link to a video that your company has created to explain the steps involved in the hiring process:

• In the intro, thank the applicant for his/her interest in your company.
• Explain how long it might take to process all applications for the position and when responses are generally sent to inform applicants of next steps.
• Describe the different interview phases that are usually involved in the hiring process – including time intervals between each phase as well as who is generally involved from the company.

Not only will applicants be impressed that you have created a video for this step, but they will come away from the experience with more information about what to expect — without additional effort from your recruiting staff.

3 – Embed Video in Job Descriptions in Your Applicant Tracking System

When adding a new job listing to your ATS, embed code from your video hosting website to feature relevant videos from right within your job description. In this scenario, videos focusing on your office or field environment, and/or interviews with other employees in the same position or department would be well received. ExactHire applicant tracking system even has a designated field allowing video embed code to be pasted in when adding a new job description.

R+L Truckload & Global Logistics in Fort Myers, Florida, is a big believer in incorporating video into the organization’s job listings. Many different employees have roles in the videos it has produced. Here’s how one of its videos appears within the ATS on a recent job description:

And, check out their video:

4 – Insert Safety Videos Into Employment Application & Survey Applicants

If certain positions available in your organization require heeding important safety procedures or following certain protocols, then consider the benefits associated with embedding a video for applicants to watch during their employment application submission. This can be a powerful way of better qualifying your applicants for a position that normally attracts a high volume of application submissions – especially if many of the submissions have traditionally been from people who aren’t qualified or truly engaged in the role.

A short video might discuss certain steps that are followed as a regular part of the job. In the application, ask applicants to watch the video and then answer a series of short questions about the video. Serious applicants who want to work for your organization will watch the video and then answer the questions correctly. Candidates who are just applying for anything and everything will hit the video speed bump and think twice about taking the time to finish. For those candidates who do answer the questions, utilize scoring and/or disqualification filters in your ATS to rank applicants based on the number of questions they answered correctly.

5 – Video Resources for Long Distance Interviewing

There are times when it isn’t practical or cost-effective to interview candidates in person. Luckily, a number of affordable (and in some cases free) tools are available to enable organizations to video conference with applicants. Companies that conduct nationwide searches for specific positions can especially benefit from the modern convenience of interviewing applicants on-screen. Applications such as Skype, Google Hangouts, FaceTime, and GoToMeeting are just a few that can meet this need.

Take it a step further and record the video interview to make it available to other managers who are unable to participate in the interviewing process. Or, reference the recorded session to remind yourself of interviewee answers when you are comparing final candidates and near making an offer.

Image Credit: Indianapolis at Night by Rob Annis