How to Create Meaningful Culture and Recruitment Videos

We’ve all seen a video shared around on LinkedIn or other social media where a company lays out who they are and why they do what they do in such a concise or entertaining way that it’s hard not to say “Wow, I’d love to work there!” 

Or on the flip side, if you’re an employer with seats to fill at your own company, “Whoa, we need a video like this!”

A company’s core values are a fantastic means by which to tell your company’s story because it’s a way to frame who you are as an organization through the actions of your employees. Whether your goal is to recruit and retain top talent by sharing your internal culture, or just to demonstrate the work you do in a more engaging way, your values provide a roadmap for stellar video content.

Showcase your company culture through video 

Company culture has been an important consideration for job seekers for years now, and in a tight, competitive labor market, it’s more important than ever for companies to show off everything they have to offer potential new hires. But culture is a difficult, abstract concept to translate through a website or anecdotes in an interview. Even video can struggle to impart an authentic representation of your culture when not approached correctly - how many times can you hear, “We’re like a family” before the phrase loses all meaning?

So how do you share that intangible benefit successfully with job seekers considering your company?

That’s where your company’s mission and values come in. Whether they’re embodied by core values, a mission statement, or other means, the values your company represents are a great foundation for culture-focused videos. But more importantly, using these values as a narrative framework helps create a way for your employees to talk on camera about your company’s culture in an open, authentic way.

For example, you can highlight specific employees at your company that embody your values by describing their role and how they feel about their work. That’s what Canoe Brook Country Club decided to do to attract new talent and members to their organization. 

Alternatively, you could produce a video series where each video told a story of a time that your employees lived up to one of your values. Or you could create a video showcasing a project that best embodies your company’s mission. In either case, the key employee stakeholders would be featured talking about their role in the situation, how they navigated through the challenges of the task, and how everything turned out in the end.

Instead of a talking head, let your employees explain your mission and why they enjoy the work they do. Check out this example from Heroic Productions, an event technology service that helps put on live, hybrid, in-person events, to see what we mean.

Using the 'S.T.A.R.' Method

In fact, an easy way to imagine it is in the same way job seekers are preparing to share their own values with you - the STAR method! Laying out the Situation, Task, Approach, and Result is how job seekers are trained to show their work ethic and values to an interviewer, and it works just as well to show your company’s culture and values in action within a video.

Already the storytelling built into this approach elevates the content above the run-of-the-mill ‘About Us’ company video, but more than that, it’s provided a way for your employees to share pride in your company’s achievements, and a means to radiate your culture in a way that allows a prospective employee to truly see what life is like at your company.

Concord USA, a business and technology consultancy, wanted to show how their values impact the work they do and who they look for when they hire, and we helped them showcase this through video.

WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN APPROACHING COMPANY CULTURE VIDEOS

In order for a company to create a successful culture or values video to recruit or retain talent, it’s important to make sure that you’re starting off on the right foot. Some questions to consider might include:

1. Who is my audience?

This one seems like the answer is obvious - potential new talent - but there may be pressure or temptation to take what starts out as a recruitment-focused culture video and expand it into an all-encompassing ‘About Us’ video. While the styles of video are similar, a more generalized video might brush over the culture topics a job seeker might be interested in, or drag on too long to fit everything in. If recruitment is your main focus, your best bet is videos aimed squarely at job seekers.

2. How do our values uniquely shape our company?

Core values and mission statements are essential drivers of company culture, but that doesn’t make them entirely unique. Many companies might consider themselves a culture that ‘does the right thing’, for example, but what does that mean in the context of your company? How does that value manifest itself amongst your employees? Do certain employees embody some of your values especially well? In addition to being the sorts of questions job seekers are also asking, your answers to them can unlock great potential stories for videos, so it’s worth taking the time to dig deep and be honest!

3. Who should be featured in the videos?

If you’ve done some serious thinking on your values, this question almost answers itself. But with an eye on recruitment, it’s important to pick subjects that match the roles you’re attempting to fill. If you’re a larger company, this may mean different videos that focus on different departments and practice areas. If you’re a smaller company, this may look more like a video featuring employees from all levels of the company.

4. How long will I want to use this video?

This might seem like an odd question to ask yourself, but there’s always the temptation to follow the latest social media video trend as a way to get quick eyeballs on your recruitment notice. In these times, it’s worth remembering that most video content can be evergreen if you design it to be, and that a well made video that reflects who you are as a company will be much more useful to a job seeker down the line. And if your company’s values are about quality work, doing things correctly the first time, and longevity, jumping on a trend might actually send the opposite message to job seekers.

Videos that highlight your internal culture and values can be a great way to help job seekers imagine themselves as a part of your company. There’s no better way to show off who you are than a video that prompts someone to say “Wow, I wish I worked there!”