How do you explain to candidates what it's like to work at your company? Aside from your "corporate pitch," how else do you communicate the culture, values, people and workplace to them?
In today's digital world, it isn't enough to have your recruiters talk to candidates on the phone or send them to website pages about your organization. Candidates expect to see what it's like to really work at your company. And why wouldn't they? Videos and photos are naturally engaging content; a picture may be worth a thousand words, but according to Forrester Research, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words.
Companies now need to adopt a "show don't tell" approach to attracting and engaging talent if they want to compete for the best people. And if you're strapped for resources, don't fret — you don't need to hire an entire digital media marketing team to kickstart a supply of engaging visual content.
You already have an incredible resource for visual content: your employees. There is nothing more authentic than employee-generated content to show candidates what it's like to work at your company, and with today’s free digital tools, it’s easier than ever to create.
Here are three ways to work with your employees to create compelling digital content for recruiting:
1) Unleash the smartphones: Most of your employees likely have a phone with a good quality camera, so ask them to start taking photos and sharing them! Whether you collect photos from employees and post them yourself, or have employees post photos directly, you're guaranteed to have a diverse set of great visuals and snapshots of your company culture to share with your followers.
If you want to involve employees more, try starting a "Week in the Life" series: Every week, a new employee can act as the "host" of your company's social media pages, chronicling their adventures on and off the job. This is a great way to introduce candidates to their potential daily schedules, work environment and coworkers.
2) Try short and sweet videos: Video platforms like Vine (owned by Twitter) and Hyperlapse (owned by Instagram) are just two options out of a wide range of apps that offer employees creative opportunities to show candidates different aspects of working at your company. Vine — a six-second video — can be used to showcase a great project, highlight a fun team outing or feature a new perk, like Hubspot. Hyperlapse simply speeds up your video — perfect for giving video tours of your offices, like Vogue.
3) Live stream it: Until recently, live streaming an event was only possible with expensive equipment, but a relatively new app called Periscope (also owned by Twitter) allows you to live video stream with your smartphone directly to your Twitter feed. It's so simple to use and offers an excellent way to give candidates real-time insight into your company. You could use it for briefings with recruiters and hiring managers, or for weekly Q&A sessions incorporating Twitter.
If you decide to tap your employees for digital content creation, remember to be more encouraging than restrictive. For example, instead of giving your employees extensive rules of what they cannot do in content, provide ideas and guidelines of what candidates do want to know about a workplace. It will be much easier to convince people to participate if you start the brainstorm, and are willing to let their creative juices flow.
Photo: Creative Commons
