After today’s show with Bill Boorman regarding video usage in recruitment, it dawned one me that the general view of video use is fairly narrow in terms of alternative areas of use outside of Employer Branding and Video Resumes (I hate this term but for ease of explanation for now).

Many people scoff at the thought of video as an effective tool for recruitment r employee communication, however in the age of Web 2.0 tools and companies competing for Talent, video is one of the key tools in connecting and engaging with a candidate more then most. I have blogged about this before on ERE

So here is a list of what aspects of recruitment and employee interactions that companies can use video with.

Attraction
Typical Employer Branding video’s, Day in the Life style content, we all know this so I don’t think there is that much to say. Don’t go out and produce an Oscar winning video, make it real, make it in line with your company values and culture and make it now.

Onboarding
Typical starting dates are 2+ weeks after the letter of offer has gone out, so why not take this opportunity to use video to introduce future team members. A quick 2 minute video of the new employees team saying Hi, can’t wait to meet you, or the line manager or better yet MD/CEO welcoming the candidate can go a long way to further exciting the new employee.

Most first weeks in a new job these days concentrates on training of new systems and processes. Why not use some of the many tools out there to record this training on screen with added voice. These tools are great to not only use internally but can give the new incoming employee a great head start on the systems they will be using and some of the process that is unique to your business.

Training
Sitting in a room learning something new in a class format is boring (trust me I know, I’ve taught English in a foreign country and had many in-company training sessions) Why not spice things up and have a good portion of all the different types of internal training that occurs in your business on video. Not only does this change the dynamic of the learning process but it also means that employees have access to this content at any time and potentially anywhere (stored on your intranet perhaps).

Employee Engagement and Communication
How many times have you sat there struggling to write that perfect worded email to your team or a company wide message only to get fed up and delete it all and start again. Writing is never easy and takes time to make sure that things like grammer, speling nad your message is right. How many times have you forgotten to spell check your email? ( I’m leaving those mistakes there to prove a point). Better yet, you can turn to your colleague and explain what you want to say perfectly, but on paper (so to speak) the words just aren’t professional enough.

DO A VIDEO. Make it personal and exciting. If it’s an exciting piece of information to tell, show emotion. How do you expect people to get excited every time just from yet another email. Similarly, what I would love to see companies do is Senior management send out a video to their teams reviewing the week, month or quarter. They are often more heard about then seen, so put them front personal, approachable feel back to the people that are often more maligned then loved.

Exiting
Staff leave, its only natural. So how could video be helpful if they are exiting your business. Well for whatever reason they may depart, a personalised video message from their direct manager or better yet CEO/MD thanking them for their service to the company is a great touch. Not only does that show that the company has valued your input, but how many CEO/MD’s, or even direct managers do enough to thank exiting staff for their time and service. Not everyone leaves on a bad note.

Interviews
Utilising video is a great way to enhance or speed up the hiring process. Maybe the candidate is remotely based, maybe your schedules are not lining up, maybe you want to save time and travel costs. Whatever the reason using video can add a different dimension to the early stages of the hiring process. You certainly don’t need to do this of course for every job, but when appropriate why not try it, what do you have to lose.

Screening
A past post of mine on ERE explains this one.

Candidate Video Profiles
Or Video Resumes as some people like to call them. They are going to happen, maybe not tomorrow but certainly in the very near future. The one thing that is going to make them worth while for everyone is the expectation of what Employers wish them to be. There are many BAD candidate video profiles out there. But can we blame the candidate? How are they to know what is a good video if we do not tell them what is expected.

I have also blogged about this before and this past post should also quell some of those DISCRIMINATION bandits out there screaming that it opens up to many problems.

Video is another tool in your armoury that can add tremendous value to a wide range of applications to the whole HR environment. Don’t be shy and give it a go, there is a reason that Youtube is so popular…….

Also check out Michael Specht’s views on video.