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August 09, 2006
Blogswap Week Four: Video Recruiting
This blogswap posting comes courtesy of David Manaster, CEO of ERE Media, Inc.
I’ve never met David Kippen before, but my first “real” job after college (i.e. not a temp job) was at David’s employer, TMP Worldwide (which at the time was the parent company of Monster). It was 1997, the idea of the Internet as a vehicle for recruiting was a new concept, and many of our efforts involved basic education about the opportunities how to use it for recruiting.
Some of the ideas that we championed back then have since hit the mainstream. Examples include keyword advertising (which we had to use with traditional banner ads, since the whole keyword advertising boom had not yet begun), and using niche sites (which have only proliferated since then) to target specific pools of candidates.
But we never used video. In 1997, most people were on slow dialup connections at home, and it just wasn’t practical. But as Dave pointed out in his post on Google’s recruitment video, video has come of age online, and it presents a great opportunity to communicate your employment brand to millions of potential candidates.
My favorite example is the very professionally produced Microsoft College Recruiting video that has been making the rounds in the blogosphere, but maybe that is just because I am a huge Daily Show fan and love Ed Helms. Colin likes the video too, and he wrote a great Blog Swap post on it's ALL about the experience about some other recruitment videos that he likes.
Interestingly, the Microsoft video used to be hosted on YouTube, but is no longer there. I don’t know why it was taken down, but I hope that it was not at Microsoft’s request – I can’t think of a better way for them to reach their target market!
On the other hand, a poorly executed video can just as easily hurt your employment brand. Case in point - the Six Flags recruitment video.
So where did the Six Flags team go wrong?
For starters, when I tried to watch the video in my computer’s Windows Media Player (the default video player), I was told that I needed to download an additional codec in order to make it work. Most people don’t know what a codec is, let alone how to download one, so right off the bat, a large portion of the potential audience is frustrated while trying to learn more about working at Six Flags.
I had better luck watching the video in my RealPlayer. It is mostly geared towards hiring young people, but the approach is way off. There is no real broadband option for the video – the largest downloadable file size is 300k, and is so tiny and grainy that I can’t read the legalese at the bottom of the video.
And really - legalese??? In a video that is trying to sell kids on how cool (a word used three times in the one minute eighteen second video) it would be to work at Six Flags? And that’s the real problem with the video - it is guilty of the most offensive possible teenage offense – trying too hard to be cool.
It’s a fading memory for me, but does anyone remember what high school was like?
In defense of the team at Six Flags, it is obvious that they were working with a budget that was a fraction of the size of Microsoft’s. If you are considering making a video to promote your employment brand, I highly recommend that you check this one out first and form your own opinions.
Posted by davidkippen at August 9, 2006 05:01 PM