Insight by Richard Thomson
Why post-production matters in your recruitment film.
Post-production includes editing, graphics, grading and sound mixing. This is where you can get maximum value from your recruitment film. At the filming stage, you should be thinking about the different ways your film will be used so you make sure to shoot all the material you need on your filming day/s.
1. Music to recruit staff
Choosing the right music to go with your story can make a HUGE difference to the feel of the film – and how watchable it is. It also says a lot about your brand. Recruitment films by the tech giant Apple are often a quirky and innovative, Red Bull choose dynamic, energetic music (music that gives you wings), whereas Aviva’s music, like this film we made about their Parental Leave policy, is generally warm and inviting.
Music should be appropriate to the story you are telling, and to your brand and its values. Library music is a lot cheaper than commercial music, where you can spend thousands to clear one commercial track, and with a little searching there are some good library tracks out there. Does the music in your films represent the personality of your brand and suit the story?
2. Subtitles. Always.
Subtitles are now a must for all brand films online, and nowhere is this more true than with your recruitment film. Many videos are viewed on social media without audio – for example 85% of Facebook videos are watched on mute. Subtitles allow the viewer to still see what people are saying even if they can’t hear it. In fact, many people prefer watching videos with subtitles even if they don’t have to.
Subtitles can also give your film and brand a boost in search rankings. Subtitles improve SEO, because Google indexes captions that you’ve added to videos (they don’t index automatically generated captions, like those YouTube can add for you). If you are using the video on social networks, be conscious of the sizing and format, and that subtitles don’t get obscured by set features – such as LinkedIn’s time countdown feature on mobile.
But it’s not just the stats and SEO that make subtitles a must. The context of watching a recruitment film is likely to be personal and on mobile, and mobile viewing is more likely to be without sound. No-one who is thinking of changing jobs is going to watch a recruitment video on their desktop machine in the open office.
3. Sweat the assets
Users interact with different social platforms in different ways. In short the length and style of your video should be different for different platforms. For Instagram and Twitter where people are scrolling through, 15-30 seconds in duration works best. For LinkedIn around 60 to 90 seconds works well, whereas on YouTube and your own website viewers are more likely to watch for longer, although we’d still recommend keeping films to between 2-3 minutes maximum. Think about where your potential audience are most likely to be watching and make the most of your recruitment films by re-cutting and re-purposing for the different social channels where you’ll be posting.
Once you find and start to share those powerful people stories, you’ll find other people will come forward with stories they want to share. There’s no better way to recruit staff than sharing powerful films about people and your brand values.
Being featured in a film is an honour. Well-made people films make your colleagues, customers and candidates feel proud to be part of your brand story.
Richard Thomson
Richard is CEO of Kaptcha. He cut his teeth at the BBC, where he directed some of their biggest and most engaging shows including Top Gear, Crimewatch and Holiday. Bringing these skills to the corporate world, he then launched the multi award-winning HSBC TV. Today he harnesses the power of film to tell the engaging stories behind the brands, creating real change in the way audiences – internal and external - feel and think.
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