Is your company still relying on text-based recruitment marketing in a visual world? The thing is, candidates want to know what it's really like to work at your company, and a bullet list of skills and a blanket sell statement about the company in a job description just doesn't cut it anymore. There is just no better talent attraction platform than video to create that emotional attraction to a company and job opportunity -- and I'll tell you why!

Here are five reasons why you need to focus your employer branding efforts on video now and in the future.

1. A Video Strategy Is A Mobile Strategy

Mobile is becoming the most used platform for digital media consumption and for people to complete a wide range of everyday activities, from booking a flight and Uber ride to paying credit card bills, and even finding potential romantic suitors through dating apps like Tinder.

According to comScore, smartphone usage is up by 394%, and tablet usage has increased by a whopping 1,721%! These two platforms alone account for at least 60% of all digital media time spent today. In fact, over 20% of millennials are no longer using desktop computers to access the web and consume content.

Since people are reading on a smaller screen, your employer brand content needs to be much more succinct and digestible in order to engage the average mobile user.

Videos are short, snackable content that is easily viewable on any device when people are on the go or are pressed for time. This explains why the average web visitor spends 88% more time on sites with video content.

It’s no wonder why mobile video traffic today accounts for over half of all mobile data traffic. Cisco has even predicted that video will make up 75% of the world’s mobile data traffic by 2020. Similarly, Syndacast projects that 74% of all web traffic in 2017 will be streaming video.

2. Video Is Great For SEO

Want your employer brand content to show up on the first page when people do a Google search? Add a video. Simply by adding a video to your website can increase your chance of ranking on the front page of Google search results by up to 53 times! This is because Google’s search prioritizes video results.

And since people on average spend more time on webpages with videos, video content makes your website more “sticky.” For Google, the longer a visitor spends on a website, the more likely the content is useful and relevant to people’s search queries, which improves your search ranking.

3. Powerful Storytelling

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth so much more than that. 1.8 million words to be exact, according to a Forrester study.

There’s a reason why people prefer and will remember visual content better than plain text. The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. An average reader can remember images six times easier than text.

And according to AdWeek, people remember 80% of what they see, versus only 20% of what they read. These stats explain why 90% of the information transmitted to our brain is visual.

What’s more, videos are usually presented as stories, and stories are 22 times more memorable than facts alone. That’s why video is a must for companies who want to leave a lasting impression on top candidates they’re wanting to attract and recruit.

4. Brand Awareness And Social Engagement

If you’re looking to drive more awareness and engagement with your employer brand content, you need to add video to your talent attraction arsenal. Why?

Because research has shown that videos can improve brand lift – meaning a positive shift in your brand perception – and can increase brand awareness and recall by 32% and 47% respectively, among people who have viewed a video content for three seconds or less.

Not surprisingly then, if people stuck around and watched a video for longer than 3 seconds, brand awareness and recall significantly increases to 65% and 74%, respectively.

In addition to driving brand awareness, video also improves social media engagement. People are 10 times more likely to share, embed or comment on video content than text-only blogs or social media posts.

5. Brand Humanization

Does your company come off as too corporate, cold or impersonal? Wish you could build a stronger emotional connection with your candidates? If you answered “yes” to one of these two questions, it’s time to use video to humanize your brand.

Video is a powerful talent attraction platform and tool for effective storytelling to connect, engage and even build trust with people. By showing the real humans working behind-the-scenes at your company and sharing stories about your culture and people through videos, you’re giving candidates a peek behind the curtain and insider perspective into your company, which adds transparency and authenticity and humanizes your brand.

According to the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer study, people trust an employee or a person like themselves much more than a company’s CEO or corporate channels. Using videos that feature your employees not only humanizes your brand then, but also builds trust with your candidates – who could also be your current or future customers. Ultimately, video as a talent attraction platform can improve your recruiting efforts and your company’s bottom line.

5 Ways To Use Video For Talent Attraction

Now that we have you all pumped up about why video is a great talent attraction platform and content marketing tool for recruiting, let's talk about some ways you can use it. Here are 5 video ideas to bring your company culture and employer brand story to life:

1. Showcase Your Employees

Candidates want to know the people they’ll be working with if they were to join your company. They also want to know the type of work they’ll be doing in the roles they’re applying for.

So interview your employees and ask questions that will allow them to provide their own personal story and experience of working at your company, and the impact they get to make day to day.

2. Share Your Culture

According to LinkedIn’s 2016 Global Talent Trends report, the biggest roadblock candidates face when changing jobs is not knowing what it’s really like to work at your company. 66% of candidates want to learn more about your company culture and values and 54% about your perks and benefits.

So use videos to show candidates what it’s really like to work at your company from the perspective of their future leaders, managers and co-workers.

Use video testimonials and get employees to share insights into your company culture, including your company’s management and leadership style, career growth and learning opportunities and the general work atmosphere, just to name a few.

For example, when your company holds employee events, such as holiday parties, happy hours or CSR activities, these are perfect opportunities to create videos to showcase your company culture.

3. Show Your Workplace

If candidates are going to be spending a huge chunk of their time every day at your office, they’ll want to know if they’d like the environment in which they’ll work in.

Office videos can give candidates an insider look at your office so they get a real sense of what it’s like working there, from office desks to meeting rooms, kitchens and lounge areas where they can hang out with their co-workers. If you have any unique spaces such as gyms or cafes, those would be great places to highlight as well.

4. Share Your Mission

Half of all candidates say they want to know what your company’s mission and vision is. They want to know why people work at your company and why they are excited to go to work every day. What challenge or problem do employees get to solve for your company and the world? Why is this important?

In your videos, ask employees questions that tie the work they do each day to the overall mission of the company. This is a great opportunity and medium to showcase the impact employees get to make, whether on your customers, each other or the world, through their work.

5. Promote Job Openings

Job postings don’t have to be boring. You can create short 45-60 second videos to help candidates learn exactly what you’re looking for and why they will want to apply.

Video job descriptions of the hiring manager and potential co-workers explaining not just what they are looking for in a new employee but what the team culture is like, the challenge of the work, and how the work they do relates to the broader company gives candidates the opportunity to meet the team before even applying.

To measure the ROI of your video content, you can provide a trackable link to the job in the video description and track how many applications you are getting from each video. 

How does your company use video to build and promote your employer brand? Please share your tips in the comments section below!

Do you need help with building your video strategy for employer branding and recruiting? Don’t have the internal resources or agency budget to hire an external video production company for your video needs? Let’s chat about how we can help you with our employer branding and video production services.