RECRUITMENT VIDEO - Recruiting Videos Allow Potential Candidates to Feel the Passion

ERE's Dr. John Sullivan has posted an extremely strong article on using recruitment videos to help attract candidates and convey the atmosphere of your company effectively.

Different types of branding and recruitment videos are listed and it might help when trying to figure out where to start. There is also a very well composed list of content to include in your video like mentioning your company’s technology, using employee generated videos and displaying the unique aspects of your work place.

They make an important point of including slight flaws of the company to help keep the image of the company grounded without inflating expectations. No company is perfect and by acknowledging this, it helps with the human connection between your company and your candidates. Let them know if something about the job might not be so pleasant, like long hours, but reinforce how employees are properly rewarded for their hard work and dedication.

I somewhat disagree with one of the last points about searching for negative videos and requesting that they be taken down. If an employee is posting a negative video on their blog or Youtube, yes you would be within right to ask them to revise or request it be taken it down but by doing so, it could work against you by appearing to be a company that heavily censors their employees. By at least matching the negative videos with your own, you are able to present many aspects of your company to potential candidates and with the information provided they are able to make their own judgments towards your company. One general company video versus an independent employee’s video may look like a valid statement and something to consider. Ten detailed employment videos over a broad spectrum of your company versus and independent employee’s video might cast the shade of a simply disgruntled employee. The information is out there and they are able to see the facts from both sides and they make their own informed decision.

Review the article and let us know your thoughts.

http://www.ere.net/2008/08/11/recruiting-videos-allow-potential-candidates-to-feel-the-passion/

MEDIA - Ad spending forecast to shift more to direct marketing

USA Today posted an interesting article on research projecting the movement of media and how spending will fluctuate until 2012. They have a nice chart displaying the growth and recession of different media outlets including Radio, Mobile, Cable & Broadcast TV, and Newspapers. Private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson pulished the study in their latest Communications Industry Forcast.

Take special note of the bullet about newspapers and their main problem of losing classified placements.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2008-08-04-media-forecast_N.htm

NON-TRADITIONAL - A Warning for Cinema Recruitment Advertising

I saw Batman: The Dark Knight opening night and as the pre-movie ads were rolling, a beautiful spot for an offshore oil company came up. I’m going to give a run down of the spot.

The shots were absolutely beautiful and they did a great job displaying the diversity of the work force. It was catchy and up beat and very much like a music video. They developed a very strong feeling of what it was like to work for the company and it was obvious that quite a bit of money was spent on the production of this spot. They had wonderful shots from the water looking up at the rig and shots taken from all around the platform. Rich navy and sky blue colors really enriched the shots and the sharp camera work was perfect. As the quick moving shots continue and the music builds in the background, it comes to a final peak and they display the company logo, contact information and website… for about a half a second before the next commercial started.

My eyes had enough time to read “Experience a career wi-“. No where, throughout the entire initial video and music collage, was the company name ever displayed and because of improper timing that was a commercial budget wasted.

Cinema recruitment commercials offer a chance to show passive and active candidates a great video and photo montage of your working environment and to get candidates energized and pumped about wanting to work for your company. You have them held at attention, just make sure you message reaches them.

Suggestions?

• Don't make candidates wait to find out who you are. Display the website along the bottom of the video for the majority or entirety of the commercial. Give candidates’ eyes something to shift between that directly connects to your company. Awesome footage, wigetjobs.com, awesome footage, wigetjobs.com. Suspense is great but if they only see you name for a few seconds, the chances that they will remember you after a 2 hour movie are slim.
  

• Account for human and technological error. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The very beginning of your video and your tail end of the video are at risk for being chopped to meet time requirements. Your final splash page may have all the information you could possibly need but if that gets cut short and you make no mention of the information elsewhere, your entire spot has become worthless.

Cinema recruitment advertising gives you a chance to display interesting and energized work environment details to an active and passive audience. Even if they aren’t looking for a job you have a chance to brand your company.

INTERNET - Blog Post: 10 Tips for Improving your Recruitment Blog

Here is a great article about improving your recruitment blog or at least tips to keep in mind when starting to develop your own.

Some of the key points he mentions include honesty about the job positions and work environment, keeping the entries as informal conversations between you and your candidates, responding to those that comment and staying consistent with your postings while keeping them relative to the time they are posted.

The post also makes an important point about revealing a little of yourself on the blog to help make a much more human connection between yourself and the potential talent reading through your blog.

http://albuquerque.jobing.com/blog_post.asp?post=10224

PRINT- Let your print ads interact with their surroundings

Contemplate creating memorable ads that will stand out in your candidate's mind by utilizing and ad's environment in innovative ways. Here is an example from the UK Army that uses the fold in the middle of a two page spread. It is certainly different enough to cause candidates to pause and receive the message and stands out enough they might mention it to someone, hopefully bolstering word of mouth and general top-of-mind awareness.

NON-TRADITIONAL - Using your recruitment ads as candidate screening tools

Not only do ads that call out your applicants from the crowd help to differentiate yourself from traditional recruitment placements but they can also act as a screening tool by weeding out the candidates that are unable to successfully decipher your message.

Creating placements like this may be a little harder to develop but they stand a chance at cutting down your hunt and effectively eliminating those that do not have the skills you need to perform the job.

MONSTER- More Wrong Job Campaign Pieces

Here are more placements that run on Monster's global "Wrong Job" campaign.

This was a great campaign that is easily adaptable to all markets and many of the pieces are very memorable. This should wrap up the last of the Monster campaign postings for a while.