Attract Top Talent With Video on Your Website
Don’t take it from me, MarketingSherpa has released a case study about the value of videos on your website for attracting star talent. The company they looked at was Lifetime Fitness.
You can read the case study for free until August 30th: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30106.
The first key result is that they saw an increase in applications for managers, sales associates and personal trainers - the 3 groups targeted in the videos.
More importantly, the quality of applicants increased.
The number of manager applications that passed qualification pre-screening increased from 9% to 19%.
The number of sales associate applications that passed qualification pre-screening increased from 29% to 37%.
The number of personal trainer applications that passed qualification pre-screening increased from 30% to 38%.
Lifetime Fitness is now looking at the longer term value of the videos in terms of customer service and employee turnover. Kendall Harrell, Manager, Organizational Development is quoted in the case study, “The cost of turnover in sales, personal training and management can be immense. If the videos can reduce turnover even by single-digit percentages, it’s paid for itself.”
What’s most interesting isn’t specifically the use of video. It’s Lifetime’s recognition that they needed to develop and promote their employer brand.
The case study puts it perfectly:
Every marketer knows that a strong brand attracts customers, but what if your brand doesn’t have much pull with prospective employees?
Harrell goes on to say, “In most conversations I had related to recruiting, people said, ‘I like the company,’ but they were thinking as a consumer, not as an employee. People were fairly indifferent about Life Time Fitness as an employer, and that’s almost as bad as not liking us.”
I am wondering what type of promotion went along with the making of the video. It would not be prudent to spend time and money producing those videos and then just throw them on the site without driving traffic to the site. And may this have contributed to the increase in numbers? Since video is a superficial media, will it skew results to more superficial companies and candidates. I don’t know?
Marketing certainly has to play a role. I’m sure this company does quite a bit to market their website and hopefully their careers as well. But you should be doing that regardless.
I’m not sure what you mean by “superficial media” - I’ve found video to be very effective at getting certain messages across from a marketing and branding perspective. That includes in the case of recruiting.
Videos alone aren’t going to suddenly generate tons of traffic - unless they go viral (which you shouldn’t count on) but I interpret these results to say that the videos helped encourage the right people to apply once they visited the site.
Sorry, I was vague. Superficial from the aspect of playing to the strengths of people that have camera presence and production value skills, but not really conveying anymore information than what a job rec would contain. ie. working with a really cool team, fun bunch of guys, sr. python programmer, designs database schemas, web services. Is it possible that it would work against a company that the managers may not have abilities in a “hollywood” way. Video is a mass media medium, new media/advertising is less mass media and more personalization. Commercials aren’t that effective anymore. May this just be a company’s recruiting commercial?
I’m not sure you need ultra-high production values and Oscar-ready actors to portray a company well. My goal with a video is to make sure it’s authentic and true to the company’s culture. If that means it’s produced and slick, so be it. If that means it’s a guy carrying a camera around with a bag over his head and whispering…that’s fine too.
From what I’ve seen through helping with many of the videos is that the simple act of showing your office does wonders for a candidate. Now they say to themselves, “Could I picture myself working there?”
Obviously you don’t pick a job on how nice the office looks, but you do get an immediate feel for a company through a video, whether the production values are high or not.
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It looks like they missed the point with their slick videos, but don’t forget they are going with what they know . . . traditional marketing folks talking to each other in an echo chamber. Good production values are important and there are lots of young video makers on YouTube who have the talent, skill and equipment to make good videos. Turn it over to them to see what they can do. I’d be curious to see what Life Time Fitness employees would come up with if they directed their own recruitment video. That’s were the soul of Web 2.0 is. The great iPOD Touch commercial started life as video on the web from an 18 year old student in the UK. Apple might have polished it up a bit but the heart of the message was retained.
Dean - I think the style of video is dependent on the company/person producing it and the audience they’re targeting the video towards. Based on the results, these videos did quite well. Not necessarily my cup of tea in terms of how I’d do it for my startup, but that’s OK. As long as it does the job…