4 Ways to Use Video to Hire Faster & Better

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Here’s a true scientific fact: everyone’s first resume is extremely bad. Admit it, yours was too with the Papyrus font and the much too long list of “proficiencies” and the fact that it ran over two pages long when you’ve only worked at Starbucks for a summer.

Luckily, modern hiring tactics have evolved beyond the PDF to leverage better technology. In fact, the process of recruiting, interviewing, and hiring qualified candidates have incorporated video to great success on either side of the screen.

For applicants, TikTok resumes are becoming a hot trend for younger candidates, helping them to stand out from their competition. But the real wins are on the employer side. According to Aberdeen, “companies with video interviewing tools in place are 2.7 times more likely to reduce their cost per hire compared to companies that don’t use these tools.”

What’s more, utilizing video has been shown to help cast a wider net for finding talent. A CareerBuilder survey found that employers received “a 34 percent greater application rate when they add[ed] video to their job postings.”

In today’s competitive hiring environment where every employer is trying desperately to address their company’s skills gap, your business should embrace video for the advantages it brings to your hiring process. Let’s dive into four ways you can leverage video to hire better talent with better cost-per-hire.

1. Sell Your Culture with a Recruitment Video

According to Monster, 80% of Americans agreed that a video of a recruiter talking about the role in a job posting would help them better understand the opportunity. Not only can adding videos showcase your company to job candidates, but also work as an effective screening method to help narrow down potential hires to the best fit.

Recruitment videos today go beyond a recruiter speaking to camera. Many companies opt to produce a video showcasing aspects of company life, like this one by Digital Remedy that interviews various employees on what they enjoy about working at the company. Note that they take care to highlight the work-life balance, which is something that’s important to young professionals like Gen Z.

And if the viewer doesn’t like the culture she sees and decides not to apply, then that saves you time and cost by not having to deal with a mismatch from the get go. A well-produced recruitment video can explain and sell your company in a few short minutes; a worthwhile investment if recruiting is a top priority for your business.

2. Explain Specific Roles and Necessary Skills with Video

Let’s head downstream and talk about videos that are created for specific open positions in your business. These don’t have to be high-production value like the one above. In fact, it might just be a screenshare interview with the department head that’s hiring for the position, or a testimonial from an employee in a similar role talking about what his day is like.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co produces many “day in the life” videos of their different roles that give insight into what specific employees do (and why they like working there, of course). Here’s one they created about a Site Reliability Engineer.

Yes, your job listing will have all of this written down. But the reason why YouTube is the second most popular search engine is because humans evolved to take in information visually. And that’s also why research shows that social videos generate 1200% more shares than text and image content combined. In this way, your short video explaining the open position can also travel far beyond the job board, opening up your recruiting to many more people who may be qualified and interested.

3. Screen Candidates More Efficiently with Video

Everyone already does video interviews these days, that’s nothing new. Already, the savings in time and cost are vast on both sides, being able to conduct interviews without traveling or booking an office. But for employers who see a high volume of applicants, there are other uses of video to streamline your hiring process to save even more time and money.

One method more companies are utilizing is asking candidates to upload a video of themselves talking about their work experience. Since initial interviews are to gauge personality anyway, being able to watch pre-recorded videos can help managers conduct their eye-test in bulk, saving hours on initial interviews. While that may sound cynical, that’s just how we operate: 33% of bosses know within the first 90 seconds of an interview whether they will hire someone.

PathMatch has seen great results on both sides when asking college students to upload profile videos as part of their digital resume. They have helped the hiring process go much faster, and helped many undergrads get placed into their dream internships.

If you want even more depth in these uploaded videos from candidates, you can ask a series of questions for them to answer on camera. It all depends how much time your team wants to spend watching these prerecorded videos. But regardless of the number of questions, this video method can help you skip right to a 2nd round interview, saving days or weeks of time during the hiring process.

4. Create a Stellar Onboarding Experience with Video

Just because they’ve e-signed the starting paperwork doesn’t mean the hiring journey is over for that position. Not when a third of workers leave a new job within the first six months. Having new hire churn during the onboarding process can be incredibly expensive for your business, even if it happens only once. Mitigate that risk by improving your overall onboarding process with a series of quality video content.

Think of these videos as an extension of your hiring process. In other words, you’re still selling your company to your new hire. Google has a great example of an onboarding video for their interns: a look at the interns’ first week on their campus. Videos like this help acclimate employees, especially Gen Z workers who cite company culture as a key aspect to liking their job.

Follow these with other videos that go more into their positions, and create a library of informative onboarding videos that they can access at any time if they have questions during their first weeks on the job. Research shows that strong onboarding processes improve retention by 82% as well as productivity by 70%. Keep those wins in mind when investing in these important onboarding videos that ultimately help you make your hiring effective and efficient.

Is your company struggling to hire quality early-career candidates? PathMatch can help match young internship and job seekers to your company, filling your talent pipeline. Learn more with a free demo today.

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