Video Content

Why Your About Us Video Fails to Attract New Talent

Michael Pirone
February 5, 2022

If you find yourself posting your job descriptions on a gazillion job boards before people apply for your jobs, then your current about us video has got to be updated.

When we took on our first about us video project, we started things by taking a deep look at what was already there. Our goal was to understand how people approached and created about us videos so we could easily sketch out performance techniques. 

Too soon, we’ve found a lot of production and optimization shortcomings that keep ‘about us’ videos from delivering on their true purpose. Here is what we mean.

We’ve produced videos for companies such as Amazon, Uber, Airwallex, and many others. So if you also want us to take care of your about us video and are wondering how much it will cost, this online calculator will help you get an estimate in 30 seconds.

Content

    Typical scenarios that prove that most about us videos are doomed to fail

    Most about us videos are multifaceted. They’re careers videos, pitch deck videos, and one million other things at the time. But that is not the only thing wrong with them.

    Let’s break down the typical problems that make most about us videos fail to deliver results. 

    Scenario 1: Most about us videos have no purpose—they’re just career page filler

    An about us video can have a gazillion purposes.

    When you ask the People’s Team, “what is the purpose of your current about us video? To attract new talent? To fuel your company’s talent acquisition? To keep your current employees engaged? To facilitate new fundraising? All four goals at once?” 

    Chances are they’ll tell you it’s to attract talent. 

    But in most cases, if you dig a little deeper, you will realize that the same video is used in a Pitch Deck or in other campaigns.

    The consequence that arises from this lack of clear purpose is that many companies miss out on their goals—investors have a hard time understanding what the business is or stands for, or talent skips the application process. 

    This problem is certainly not due to the technical skills of the person or the video production company that produced it. The real problem is that many specialists don’t go in-depth to understand the WHY behind the video they were asked to produce. 

    And so, we make it our duty to fix that. (See solution 1)

    Scenario 2: Most about us videos lack authenticity, are filled with segments from stock video sites, and are not geared toward promoting the actual company’s culture

    How many about us videos have you seen showing happy employees living a dream lifestyle? The workplace feels like home and their co-workers look like family—let’s say a lot of career videos look like that. 

    The thing is, happy faces, a beautiful work environment, and a great company culture don’t necessarily equate to GREAT COMPANY CULTURE. 

    Job seekers want an authentic experience of your company culture. The benefits package your company has to offer comes second, and it makes little sense to put those at the forefront of your about us video. 

    A LinkedIn study proved that the one thing talent wants to know most about your company when they’re looking for a job is the company culture, for 66% of them indeed. As part of this study, respondents pointed out that despite the wide availability of about us videos, they feel the content lacks authenticity and looks more like marketing hype.

    Also, some about us videos are often a combination of real on-location footage and stock footage. Companies see this stock footage as an excellent alternative and an easy way to avoid the hassle of creating a fully-fledged about us video. First of all, no stock clip or image can ever portray the authentic culture of your company.  

    Second, in an interesting experiment, VWO compared real images to stock images and found that real images improved page conversion by 45%. This means that people relate better to real images than to stock images. It also means that the key to success with “about us” videos is to convey your culture in an authentic and relatable way.

    Scenario 3: Most about us videos don’t emphasize enough the company’s mission statement and overall goal

    There are plenty of about us videos capturing the workplace with Ping Pong tables, a tennis court, and a fun environment. While that is great, it is not enough to convince today’s job seekers. 

    According to the aforementioned LinkedIn study, the top three things people want to know about a company before considering working for them are: 

    • The company’s culture is 66 percent
    • Its perks 54 percent; and 
    • Its mission, 50 percent

    That is, 50% of the people are willing to work for you based on your mission statement. 

    Moreover, according to Inc., millennials will represent 75% of the workforce by 2025, and this generation only wants to work for socially responsible companies. This indicates that they need mission-driven employers, and it applies to your current employees and the ones you’re trying to bring to the company. 

    Now, we’re sure any business can argue that they have a solid and well-articulated mission on their walls. 

    But the real question remains: how do the different teams and departments function and live by it within your organization? Best of all, how do you depict this in your about us video? Well, most about us videos fail to clear these, especially the latter.

    On another interesting note, Forbes found that workers motivated by a firm’s mission are 54% more likely to stay for years and grow into high performers than those driven merely by the paycheck. 

    This means that clarifying your company’s mission works both ways. It can help you attract relevant talent and keep those who work at your company engaged. On the other hand, it is only logical that failing this can disengage even the most enthusiastic of your employees. As for the talent, you will lose them by a long shot. 

    Our strategy at Vidico for creating ‘about us’ videos that shape culture and attract top talents

    We understand the competition for talent in industries such as software development or skilled technicians is increasingly fierce. More importantly, you don’t want the pay to be the main attraction to your company. Or even worse, the pay being what keeps people at your company. 

    That’s why we set out to build you a unique about us video that takes into account the true persona of the talent you’re wooing and depicts your company’s culture in the best way possible. 

    Let’s break down what we do at Vidico to produce a top-notch about us video that brings results. 

    Strategy 1: We create our about us videos keeping your ideal talent profile at heart.

    We like to listen to our customers and understand what they want. But very often, we also explain to them that a multipurpose video cannot be effective enough. 

    So we figured we should make our clients’ about us videos depending on the goal they want it to achieve. 

    We start by conducting extensive audience research to come up with your ideal target profile. In most cases, it’s job seekers.

    Next, we take an in-depth assessment of your current employees, the type of talent you want in the company, and what your company has to offer. This lets us keep the video aligned with your company’s standards (i.e., culture) and your target audience’s lane.

    After this, we aim to capture real moments of collaboration, teamwork, and unique events to touch a responsive nerve in the audience. (More on the latter in Solution 2). 

    Part of making the video about the target audience is also dropping everything that can put talents off in the about us video. Here is why this is a great idea. 

    In a survey by SocialTalent, 57% of the talents surveyed said jargon in job ads discourages them from applying. More significantly, 3 in 5 reported they find job ads were annoying, 1 in 3 said it’s confusing, and 14% said it’s intimidating. 

    So, we strive to keep it all simple and digestible. We drop all the technical side and express things in plain English. 

    Once production is complete, we work to ensure that your videos are viewed by the right people and that they deliver results. We devise a distribution strategy that encapsulates the channels and places your target audience frequents. Along with this, we provide video cut-downs (hero videos, if you will) specific to every platform so that you can distribute without worrying about the site crushing your video to not following specs.

    Across all platforms, we aim to position your brand as a leader and one of the best places to work.

    Strategy 2 (Gap 2 and 3 ): We shoot real workplace activity moments to keep our videos as authentic as possible.

    According to Robert Walter’s research (a company specialized in recruitment and career coaching), almost 73% of professionals have left a job because of poor company culture fit. 67% of respondents in the same study believed they were misled about company culture during induction. 

    So with this in mind, we’ve come up with a unique thought process for shooting the careers video we produce for our clients. We shoot our video making sure it reflects what it is like to work at your company, the genuine feel of your workplace environment, and the co-working network sensation. 

    We aim to capture real-life moments of actual company exercises that usually take place. Not a scenario that we have come up with or teleprompter-led or beautifully-buttered speeches and dialogues. The moments we capture are natural and authentic, making our videos more relatable. 

    Doing so helps us portray everything down to the behavioral pattern of the employees at the company and what applicants can think of as the standard. As a result, it provides insight into what working for you would indeed be like. It eliminates all the unqualified applicants, keeps you only genuinely interested people in your company (as it is), and saves you lots of trouble down the road.  

    Competition for the best professionals is fierce and employers are keen to promote the best aspects of their company culture to secure the best professionals. However, employers should consider the importance of being transparent regarding the realities of working for their company. Ultimately, securing a highly skilled professional who does not remain with the company for long can be detrimental, impacting the bottom line and potentially having a negative impact on their co-workers as well.

    James Murray, Associate Director at Robert Walters.

    Strategy 3: An end-to-end approach. We assemble a team that includes all the key individuals to cover pre-production (coordinate the logistics of the shoot day like questions, location, etc.), production (shooting), and post-production (editing). 

    We like to call this an end-to-end approach to producing videos that encapsulate everything it needs to drive results. We put together a talented team that serves our strategy very well. 

    You get to work with experts who understand your video’s true purpose and lay down the requirements to help you achieve it. 

    Let’s assume that your employee value proposition can be applicable to a global audience in multiple verticals. We make sure your company can drive talent from all around the world. 

    For example, Airwallex, one of the happy clients in our portfolio, facilitates global trade, helping people access interbank exchange rates between more than 130 different countries. Thus, it was only natural that their first employee value proposition would be applicable to a global audience.

    Using our production expertise, we created two videos together with Airwallex; one for a general talent pool for which we developed translations, and the other explicitly geared toward technical engineers—enabling the recruitment, engagement, and retention of high-quality talent in the field. 

    What’s next now?

    If any of the above resonates with you, you can explore our services. Vidico is a leading global video production and video marketing agency with a proven methodology for creating world-class, high-converting videos for our clients. 

    Get a quick estimate of how much it’ll cost you to have us create an about us video for you. 

     

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