AKA: How to use employment videos for social recruiting

Social recruiting is discussed often, but one of the lesser mentioned facets is video. While many companies know it’s something they should pursue, they don’t know how to be successful. Below you’ll find some ideas to pursue in the area of employer videos. Just a quick word of warning, I’m going to be technical at times, because the subject warrants it. However, I’m happy to help if your organization is looking to make a move into the video arena.

First off, you want your videos to be found when people search Google, right? That’s where search engine optimization comes in. It’s a methodology for getting your videos indexed in a way that makes them easy to find by searchers.

Five tips for Video SEO (search engine optimization)

1. Make the video something people want to share (more detail on this below).
2. Don’t dilute your videos by posting on multiple sites (YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, etc.).
3. Titles, tags, and descriptions are useful when uploading and posting videos online, but backlinks to the videos (with relevant keywords in the anchor text) are more important for search engine rankings.
4. YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world and the #1 for videos. Use that to your advantage.
5. If you’re using WordPress as your content distribution platform, create a video sitemap and submit it via Google Webmaster Tools. Every little bit helps!

Now, let’s elaborate on #1 above. That’s usually the first question people have: what do the videos need to be about? Well, there are several ways to go with that, but I like to think of two kinds of people when considering these types of video: customers and potential job candidates. Think about what they would like to know about your company and give it to them!

Five ideas for your employment video content

1. Interview employees and ask what they do and what they like about the job, dept, or company
2. Get staff members to discuss the culture and how that affects what they do.
3. Ask employees to talk about their favorite benefit/perk that you offer.
4. Film the fun, unique events that make your organization special.
5. Create content that is outward facing and valuable to your industry. Hint: if you’re providing thought leadership and value at a level that entices competitors to link to you, then you’re on the right track.

This list certainly isn’t all-inclusive, but it’s a great start to generating ideas that would specifically benefit your company.

Thinking about creating some employer branding videos for your company and looking for some help? Feel free to contact me if you’re looking for assistance. 

I have read The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up, and I think it’s a fantastic book for people to read in order to understand the impact that humor and levity can have in the workplace. Scott Christopher, the author of the book and speaker at the session, had so many fantastic quips and quotes that it might as well have been a comedy session with some learning thrown in. It was phenomenal and I can’t say enough how much I enjoyed hearing him speak.

One of our core values is to have a safe and enjoyable workplace. That’s why we have photos of office staff in men’s helicopter flight suits and videos of bagpipers playing in our lobby. We take the enjoyable part very seriously. Well, not so seriously. Anyway, you get the point.

Five quick points:

1. Figure out what’s fun and share that (healing patients vs. serving food, building relationships vs. recruiting candidates, etc.)
2. Herb Kelleher-Southwest Airlines-order of recruiting importance from least to greatest: education, experience, humor
3. “Hard” interview question? What’s the most fun you’ve ever had at work? Ask things to find out what people like? Ask how people would respond to wacky situations that might be common at work.
4. Google’s gives their engineers 20% of their time for fun/non-work related stuff
5. You don’t have to be funny to enjoy humor.

Think  this social recruiting thing is a fad? 80% of employers are using it in some form or fashion to find talent, so that theory doesn’t fly. Check out the video below for more observations from the new Jobvite report on the state of social recruiting.

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• My post on last year’s survey-70% of employers perform social search on candidates
• The 2011 survey results (PDF)

Today I’m going to make the case for leadership development at all levels, not just at the top of the organization. Think about it, do you want those employees positioned closest to your customers to have that training? I would. Yes, it’s a question of cost for many companies, but if your customer-facing people aren’t doing the right thing, then cost won’t matter when you lose the customers!

That was just a taste of what you’ll find in the video below. Subscribers may need to click through to view.

(Fair warning, the video sometimes is skippy and doesn’t seem to align with the audio track, but the info’s still thought-provoking!)

I know I can’t be the only one who has seen a performance review process go horribly wrong. Sometimes it’s laughable, yet other times it is frustrating to be caught in the midst of a broken system. Check out the video below to hear about the time I had a “secret” review as a wrestling referee.

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Video Notes

A few years ago I spent my winter months as a part time referee for high school wrestling. One day I got an email from our district manager, so I pulled it up expecting to see a schedule. Instead I found a performance review that one of the officials had done without my knowledge! “Secret” reviews are a bad plan for several reasons.

• No accountability of reviewer
• No opportunity for reviewed to comment/clarify
• No opportunity to grow from critical feedback

All in all, it’s a bad plan! Do you have any stories of a performance review process gone wrong? I’d love to hear about it!

At Sonar6, we love performance reviews (obviously) and we love any sort of discussion on the topic. So we’re proud to help bring you this series of posts from upstartHR. They’re very nearly as cool as our award winning color paper series.

Check out the video below for some really neat insights into the culture where I work and how we value hiring team players over “A” players. The highlights:

• No showoffs
• Delayed gratification
• Everyone gets a chance to shine

Subscribers need to click through to see the video below.