Talent Circles

Thursday, January 10, 2013

4 Ways Employers Leverage Video to Engage Candidates & Employees



Check out more recruiting video and employer branding tips by clicking here. 


With more than 86,000 hours of videos uploaded on YouTube, every day, video is an important and often overlooked part of marketing and engagement efforts.  For HR and recruiters who are looking to engage job seekers and employees, the market is wide open.  Companies can use video in a number of different ways to build relationships and help communicate with populations with a personal touch

As GenY enters the workplace companies are seeking out ways to capture the attention of this very engaged generation. No longer does pushing out job postings after job postings provide engagement or value, but this generation is looking to find jobs beyond the job board. In certain cases candidates will attempt to look for a void in your company and apply for a job that hasn’t been previously created.

Company Recruitment Video Tips 

I’ve come up with a list of helpful tricks to not only leverage video to engage potential job applicants, but to also increase the moral of current employees.

Use employee-generated videos. No one knows your company better than your employees. In order to capture the true feeling of your company’s culture have your employees participate in a recruitment video to engage potential employees. When you allow a few select employees to take part in your employment branding video it gives them a bigger sense of pride in the company. In turn their productivity and the productivity of their peers around them increases.  There is also something about employee-created videos that makes the viewer “believe” that the message is coming directly from employees.

Don’t Come Across as Being Fake. It’s the goal of every Public Relations department to paint the perfect picture of their company. Candidates and employees both know that when a company sounds too good to be true it usually is too good to be true. When creating a recruitment video you want to showcase every possible benefit to your company and none of the downfalls. Your video must show a well-thought out balance keeping in mind you want to come across as a real company, not the most perfect company ever.

Feature Company Events & Perks. As new startups arise in the technology sector, potential candidates are looking for not only the best company to work for, but they are looking for the company with the best-added perks. From startup companies like Netflix who created the unlimited vacation policy to technology giants who utilize onsite catering to cut costs with employees and create more productivity in the office. These perks should be featured in your video because it captures the attention of type of talent that companies are seeking.

Put Excitement Back Into Your Industry. Work for a boring industry? If it’s hard to attract talent because of the industry you work for, make it interesting with video recruiting. The biggest tip when taking something generally boring to interesting is to humanize the video. Put yourself in the video using pop culture references, industry standard clichés, or using clean sarcasm. Easy things that humanized your video and make the one boring industry, exciting, will go along way to recruit talent.

How to Promote Your Employer Branding Video

Once you have shot and created your video, it is time to leverage the power of video.  Here are some ways to get creative in the approach to sharing your employment and careers video:

  • Pin Your Video on Pinterest.  Encourage your employees and recruiting team to share your video on their professional networks and Pinterest boards.  
  • Integrate Video Into Your Job Posting and Social Profiles.  Talent networks like Talent Circles allow for landing pages within their talent network to show case your current position.  Adding video to your talent network is a great  way to personalize the process. 
  • Add Video to Position Specific Landing Pages.  For those specialty and evergreen positions you always are looking to fill, add a video to give prospective job seekers further insights into your organization. 
  • Leverage Video on Job Board Postings.  Job boards remain a viable candidate source. Consider adding your position specific or specialty careers video to individual job postings to improve candidate quality and keep job seekers on your posting versus the competition.  

Whether your increasing company morale by including employees in company recruitment videos or trying to attract new clients, leveraging video is perfect to obtain desired results. In the next decade recruiting with video will become one of the most optimal ways to source creative talent. If you haven’t started, you’re already behind the game. What is your company doing to leverage video recruiting to either increase employee moral or leverage potential candidates?

Check out more recruiting video and employer branding tips by clicking here. 


Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media.  She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs


Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Six Predictions in HR, Recruiting & Your Workplace in 2013




2013 HR and Recruiting Predictions 



Over the past few years Human Resources, particularly recruiting has slowly become socialized and professionals are reaching out to contacts in ways never even thought of 10-15 years ago. As I spend time working with vendors who develop provide the technologies for HR and recruiting while also working directly with practitioners every day, I see some exciting shifts emerge. These 6 trends in 2013 that operational managers and HR professionals must look out for in the coming year.

  • Telecommuting will continue to grow. The lucrative idea of working from home will become an even bigger reality for the workforce in 2013. Employers continue to look for ways to not only cut cost, but also improve employee health and retention. Allowing for flexible work schedules and telecommuting has shown to increase employee moral. This trend will be on the forefront in order to source the best talent. 

  • Video interviewing will increase. In order to find the perfect source of talent, HR professionals will begin recruiting and scouring the entire country looking for the perfect fit. In most cases it won’t be feasible both financially and realistically for a candidate half way across the country to come in for a formal interview, so most HR departments will be doing video interviewing. With this becoming a more popular trend, compliance issues are sure to rise. 

  • Recruiting talent will be more local.  Meaning that as the economy improves, companies will and should begin evaluating individual local employment markets to draft hiring strategies that are specific to the local economy of the city you are hiring for.  Post and pray recruiting is no more as companies focus more on long term recruitment strategies and building talent networks.  

  • HR will become more data centric. The trend in tracking, compiling, and analyzing data will be overrun in the Human Resources department in 2013. Metrics and measurement for HR will be more important than ever before.  In order to become a successful HR department you must learn to benchmark and hire the right candidate the first time around. It’ll be crucial for HR managers to sync employee data across multiple systems. This trend will be one of the bigger focuses on HR as companies get bigger and rely more on third-party systems for compliance, analytics, and hiring automation.

  • HR will become more social. This is almost a “Duh?” type statement. Human Resources will no longer put all their weight in a resume submitted to them, but will scour the Internet to find anything and everything about potential employees. Checking everything from your tweets to what shows up on your LinkedIn profile. As privacy changes are being eliminated from the most popular networks, no one is safe. With everyone online is it safe to say the resume is almost dead? We’ll let you answer that question.

  • Beginning of the Crowdsourced Review: As the workplace becomes more social it’s only natural that the employee review does as well. Managers spend one hour a year out of the 2,040 hours employees work to give them feedback that is suppose to last the entire year. As GenY enters the workforce in full swing that amount of time isn’t going to be enough. Crowdsourcing the employee review will create a more dynamic workplace that encourages open feedback and better employee engagement. 

Talent Retention and Sourcing Most Important 


As 2013 is already up in full swing there are trends and new technologies already coming out that HR and recruiting practitioners must stay on top of in order to create an environment that pleases great talent. In order to source the best talent you must be able to make sacrifices in areas that you would never have imagined. What are some trends you see in 2013? Do you agree with the above? Why or Why not?


Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media.  She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs