The Pew Research Center has just released new survey data on the growth in video usage on the Internet, which is way up and climbing. What does this mean for recruiters?
Internet video is a younger phenomenon than still photography. It didn’t prosper in the early days because dial-up bandwidth wasn’t sufficient to send it in real time and hard drives weren’t large enough to store it. But both those problems have faded. High-speed access has been rising steadily and is now available to the majority of adult Americans. As a consequence, video has taken off. We were surprised at the numbers.
Even more remarkable is the parallel rise in usage. As the following chart shows, all age groups now watch Internet video, with the largest percentage gains occurring in the older demographics. Among the 18-24 demographic, viewing is nearly universal.
The import for recruiters is obvious. Advancing technology has pulled us inexorably from print to still pictures to moving pictures. Video is the new norm for persuasive presentation. If you aren’t using it to support your employment brand, you’re now being “out-presented” by companies that use it strategically.
For recruiters, the problem with video lies in the production, which is an order of magnitude more complicated than graphics or still photographs. Designers can create stunning graphics pretty much in isolation, sitting at their individual workstations. Video producers can’t. Even a stripped down crew shooting location footage requires a couple of people, and a typical agency shoot will have a team of a half dozen. A high-end corporate shoot can easily involve a dozen people on set, all of whom have to be transported, housed and fed. Video post-production is also complicated and expensive. Normally, a still photographer edits his own material on his own computer using his own copy of Photoshop. In video the director and his crew shoots it while a separate editor edits it at an expensive post-production facility that maintains its own technical, creative and management staff. Yes, Macs and iMovie have made this post-production process much more accessible to you and me, but 10 minutes of viewing will amply demonstrate the difference between YouTube amateurism and professional quality work.
Our research into candidate attitudes and behaviors has documented the sophistication of candidates when it comes to evaluating effective corporate messages. A lifetime of exposure to highly produced television and film has created an audience of surprising discrimination, so much so, in fact, that special effects teams in Hollywood have had to raise the bar continually to generate any kind of audience buzz about their amazing work.
But back to recruiting. The data tells us that watching web video has become mainstream. Pew found that far more people are doing it (62%) than are using social networking sites (46%) or downloading a podcast (19%). This is a clear opportunity for aggressive companies to harness its persuasive powers to promote the corporate employer brand.
Places to Start
Candidates have clear information preferences when investigating a new employer. This is where to begin making your video investments.
What current employees say on the company’s website. – Good news. These simple clips are among the easiest and least expensive to shoot and edit. Viewers are not looking for snazzy production values here; rather, they want honesty and authenticity, straight talk from people they can identify with. The sites that have most impressed us have a range of testimonials, from stock clerks and administrative assistants to top executives. Candid, unscripted clips almost always work better than clips that are scripted, choreographed and rehearsed. Don’t try to turn amateurs into professionals as only one in a thousand can read a teleprompter and sound natural. The trick here is to let the camera run and wait for the moment. Flubs and stumbles are perfectly acceptable if they make people sound natural and spontaneous.
Company mission, strategy and objectives. – Almost invariably these statements sound stuffy and presumptuous in print. But they can come alive when a committed employee states them in his own words. Candidates tell us they want to believe in their company and the work they do for it. Compensation, benefits, and personal development are important as well, but few talented people will accept these benefits from a company they don’t also respect and believe in.
If your company has no experience producing videos, it can be a hard sell. The main objection will be that they are an expensive and unnecessary frill; that the company can fill its website with fine graphics and photographs for a fraction of the cost. Your most persuasive counter argument will result from a bit of research. Find a competitor who is using video. Better still, find two. Or try a low cost experiment. Borrow a high-def consumer camera and a tripod to shoot a couple of employee testimonials, and put them up on the career site. Then track the web stats to see what traffic they generate, and how sticky they are.
Internet video is now mainstream and increasingly central to people’s lives. User-generated content on places like YouTube drove the early phase of viewing, but adults (35%), especially younger ones (61%), are now watching entire television shows and movies. In the current recession, with money tight, more than twice as many households have cut back their telephone or cable service (22%) as have cut back on Internet service (9%).
Twitter may be all the rage at the moment, but video is a recruiting tool with proven benefits. Include it in your toolkit.
RELATED ARTICLES
http://www.ere.net/2009/08/14/why-recruiting-has-to-go-video/
http://www.prlog.org/10298601-the-new-wave-of-corporate-video-on-the-web.html
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/companyresearch/qt/youtube.htm
http://moss07.shrm.org/multimedia/video/Pages/default.aspx
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