Why video is critical for your early careers programmes?
Retaining and recruiting talent has never been more difficult and nowhere has this been more pronounced than in early career programmes. Find out how to use recruitment videos to engage young talent, making sure your organization attracts and retains the best and the brightest.
According to the latest 2022 ManPower Group Employment Outlook Survey, Global Net Employment Outlook, a measure used by the Group to evaluate hiring intentions, is more than 37%. There are lots of hiring planned. Sectors considered more traditionally appealing to graduates and early careers candidates such as IT, Technology, Telecoms, Communications and Media, reported the strongest outlook: as high as 50%.
“This recovery is unlike any we have seen before with hiring intent picking up much faster than after the previous economic downturn.” Jonas Prising | ManpowerGroup Chairman & CEO
As any HR or recruitment professional will tell you, historically after a downfall the recruitment market switches from employee-driven to candidate-driven. Companies end up fighting left, right and centre to attract the best graduates and stop young people from walking out the door.
Today, smart graduate and early careers recruitment have one thing in common for companies: presenting your value proposition in an engaging way. Which, let’s face it, for the new generation is video.
The YouTube generation cannot be attracted by anything short of exceptional. Gone are the days of recruiters and HR managers being inundated with CV’s half an hour after posting a job ad.
Knowing your audience and how to engage with them is now a MUST rather than a nice to have. And, young people respond to video. According to research by CareerBuilder, videos have a 34% higher job application rate than any other content type.
Top 5 tips for engaging graduate recruitment videos to attract and retain top talent
The most important aspect of any video is to make it engaging! Anyone can record a video these days but creating an engaging graduate recruitment video that helps your company stand out isn’t as simple. Any video you make needs to be relevant and pique the interest of your audience. A corporate recruitment environment also needs to compel action, whether it’s motivating the existing workforce or attracting new talent.
Late Millenials and Generation Z are also the harshest critics. Think about it, they are video natives and know what makes an exceptional video.
Use these top tips to make sure your next recruitment video is engaging enough to attract and retain new-generation talent.
1. Make employee voice central to your employer brand.
There is no better way to get your message across to graduates and apprentices than through their peers. People trust their colleagues which means any message from your apprenticeship cohort will have all the credibility you need.
Social proof is one of the most important elements graduates look for. Yes, these formative years are highly influenced by their peers but the new generation is also less and less trusting of corporate advertising.
The 2022 Edelman trust barometer shows a rise of trust in experts, but many disbelieve traditional media and CEOs beyond their immediate network. Instead, graduates are relying on their peers to help them learn and influence how they feel about things.
Plus, this will make sure you’re simultaneously supporting employee retention. For a busy recruiter or an HR Manager, this is a double win: a great way to share the workload AND get the best talent for the company.
Encouraging graduates to reflect, codify and communicate work experiences not only produces valuable content to help others but also the act of reflecting and crafting concise narratives means your graduates will develop must-have future skills at the same time.
There is no doubt that getting your employees involved will yield the best results. But, before you jump in, remember: it is not always easy for them to share their reflections in a corporate environment. It might be natural for many Millenials and Gen-Z to create personal content, but when it comes to sharing business stories things get a bit more tricky.
Our research uncovered three primary barriers which stop people from sharing reflection videos on their phones:
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- According to Harvard research, 82% of people struggle to reflect which makes it hard to codify their own work experiences.
- A fear of filming and a lack of confidence.
- Technical complexity when making this work at scale from GDPR to transferring video to enterprise networks.
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Before you ask your graduates to reflect make sure you have made it super easy for them with clear guidelines, recording tips and prompts. This might be achieved with technology (there’s some great advice on tech further down in this article) or it might be by setting up processes internally to coach, mentor and educate before you start filming.
“Harvard researchers have found that 82% of people struggle to reflect and codify their experiences.”
2. Show employees your company culture
Make sure your messaging is on point and aligned to your company purpose, mission and values. The job market has changed and job seekers are looking for an organizational culture that works for them when applying for a job.
98% of employers and 97% of employees agree cultural fit is important. In addition, 81% hiring managers believe candidates are less likely to leave when this is the case and 85% believe they will also perform better at their job.
A good graduate recruitment video should be natural and succinct. But there are some elements that you need to remember to encourage people to share particularly around why they chose you, what they love about their role as well as the support and growth opportunities available. Cultural fit rules when it comes to graduate recruitment!
3. Promote specific early careers programme support
Whether you are looking to recruit new graduate talent or retain existing graduates within the company, showcasing your early careers programme support and pathways are a great way to engage the next generation.
In terms of recruiting new talent, it is important to remember that these are job seekers who are driven by career growth and development. They want to learn and progress. Making sure they understand how your company will help them accelerate this journey will build trust and belief.
Ask programme managers to create a video introducing what early careers programme support is available, describe how it’s structured, what team and social activities are included and what future progression looks like. These are powerful videos to complement the apprentice and graduate stories giving new recruits a 360 view of what to expect.
Attracting and retaining top talent through promoting progression and employee experience, has become an even bigger challenge in 2022. It’s an employee market and graduates are spoiled for choice. And, storytelling is one of the most engaging formats to ensure your company stays on top of hiring the very best early career candidates. Up to now, a lack of time and resources have prevented people from curating stories at the kind of scale that can make an ongoing and meaningful impact. This is where technology makes all the difference.
StoryTagger can help you create inspiring stories and scalable workflows, making it perfect for organizations looking to level up their ability to attract and retain next generation talent. Book a demo to find out how!
4. Leverage National Apprenticeship Week and other career events
Anyone looking for their first proper break in the job market has done their research and will use awareness raising events like National Apprenticeship Week to support their decisions. This is your chance to leverage the trust and media attention already built around the event.
Thousands of apprentice programmes each year follow events like this on social media. And, you should be part of the conversation, showcasing why your company is the best choice to start their career through the voice of an existing graduate.
5. Make employee jobs easier
Producing and editing a video can be daunting. Many HR and recruitment professionals simply don’t have the time to edit hours of footage sent to them by employees. And, a good graduate recruitment video can’t be hours long!
This is why planning is critical. Here are some of the elements you need to consider:
A) Be clear on the purpose of the video
This is the starting point. Before you, or better yet your graduates, even begin to record a video start with a clear goal of what you want to achieve. This will save you a lot of precious time during the filming and editing processes. Everything you do will point back to your video’s purpose. Think about the action you’d like your audience to complete after watching your recruitment video and build the structure around this.
B) Provide a storytelling framework
Graduates are native to video but this doesn’t mean they can quickly whip up an on-point video that people want to watch. In fact, most people aren’t natural storytellers so it’s helpful to provide guidelines, questions and prompts. A great framework, or a storyboard, will help keep things concise and on-point. This will help the video storyteller work out what they want to say before you start shooting.
C) Record in sections
Break your script or questions into short paragraphs or simple points and record it section by section. Some reshooting can happen but this saves you a ton of time in post-production and also enables you to use the separate video clips easily across social channels or as a whole story internally.
D) Think about the tech you are using
Phones are an obvious choice here for capturing footage but video conferencing tools such as Zoom are also an option.
You will need to think beyond just how you will record and plan. How are you going to edit your videos? How will you upload and share them? All of these will use technology and it’s essential to think about workflows.
For editing, there are a few editing tools out there. If you have a Mac, the native iMovie will do the trick. There are other excellent online tools including the Adobe Creative Suite for an even better end result. But for those, you will require someone on the team with the skills to use these tools.
The video files will be too big to email so you’ll need to consider a transfer. Some next-gen learning systems provide this functionality. Other options are WeTransfer, Google Drive and DropBox.
The good news is that there are a number of emerging user-generated video platforms such as StoryTagger that remove many of these technical barriers and make it easy for users to capture, upload and share videos. Give it a try for free.
In conclusion
Graduates and early career talent have always been in high demand. And, today there’s tough competition for the best apprentices and graduates. The talent pool is small and the race is on. Your hiring process needs to be customized to speak to young audiences.
Hiring graduates can make recruitment more affordable for companies because they naturally start on lower salaries. But early career programmes offer so many more benefits to organisations than just cost saving: it’s an effective way to develop a highly skilled and qualified workforce who share your company vision and purpose, turning graduates into long term valuable employees.
Recruitment videos are no longer a ‘nice to have’. They’re essential. Use them to level up your graduate talent acquisition and make your early careers programmes stand out from the competition. This will help you attract the best of the best and stop essential skills, knowledge and experience from walking out the door.
Find out how StoryTagger can help you attract and retain the best talent in your early career programmes.
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