Remarkable Company? Elevate Your Brand Story With Video Interviewing

In my professional life, I’ve worked for two very different companies, which both received high grades from employees when asked the question: "Would you recommend your company to others as a place of employment?" Most recently, at Montage, our employee survey revealed unanimous agreement – most of it strong agreement – that we have a great place to work. When you have this same intense feeling running deep within your employee base, your talent acquisition strategy needs to bottle it in every way possible. It’s the draw for so many others who strive to find such a workplace.

Here are a few ways you can elevate your employer brand today: 

It's OK to Show Off

That enthusiastic culture is something worth showing off. But how? The employer brand’s power is often difficult to relay to the outside world in a credible way. The bottling process must keep the employer brand pure, free of the corporate speak that too often threatens to dilute it or taint it with artifice. When you’re sure you have that special something that drives people toward loyalty and engagement, it’s in your company's best interests to package and promote it to the candidate marketplace. Equip each recruiter with the right messaging and tools to use it to land top talent, especially millennials who shop specifically for healthy workplaces that have a mission.

Invite Candidates to Look Beyond the Job

Video interviewing technology is an innovative way to package and broadcast successfully, showing outside candidates just what they, too, can have beyond the job itself. One benefit that’s not widely understood about a fully formed video interviewing solution is how it can help promote and elevate the employer brand. Sure, it plays an important operational efficiencies role that tops the list of benefits, but when you have a company culture that should be shown to its fullest, consider these ways a mature video interviewing platform helps: 

• Two-way interaction (even when asynchronous): How much is too much? What I mean is this –how much can you ask of job candidates to give, give, give to you without giving something to them in return? The on-demand or asynchronous video interviewing experience is notoriously “a pull” from job candidates, meaning that it asks them to give and share and shine without the benefit of receiving a whole lot from the employer.  It doesn’t have to be that way though. Inviting candidates to fulfill an on-demand interview request can be as warm and culture-rich as you'd like. Within the Montage platform, we integrate many ways for clients to give of themselves and show off their culture and employer brand. Videos can be from the hiring manager and/or colleagues within the team. Question delivery, too, can be personal. When you ask over video and share an example or some context for the question, it shows candidates who you are and what makes you tick.
  
  
• Be tech-savvy yet personal and personable: When job candidates are done with their interview, we measure their feelings about interacting with the potential employer through the technology itself. 98 percent say that the company itself is more innovative because of this technology¹.  Key to that high score is an equally high score on ease of use. If the technology inhibits and annoys, then the client does not win and their brand suffers. If the technology wows, it complements the employer by elevating the brand and making the company desirable by association.
  
  
• Demonstrate respect: Nothing shows off a company that knows what it’s doing better than respecting job candidates' time. Be thorough, yes, but show that you act decisively and quickly to proceed or not. Candidates appreciate and value transparency and communication. It reflects positively on the employing company, as the 2014 Candidate Experience eBOOK research shows. Our own independent research with job seekers pointed to this same fact². We asked job seekers how many rounds of interviews is too many. The most common response, to our surprise, was two. So bring a key talented candidate in for Interview number two, but make it your final round or else you risk losing his or her interest.

You know you have a remarkable company with an enviable culture. It’s getting the outside world to realize the same thing that takes effort. We can't all work at companies with household names and faultless reputations. The rest of us need the right programs and technology to help broadcast the culture and turn it into the talent magnet it should be.

1. Candidate Feedback: The Purpose-Built Video Interviewing Experience, Montage.
2. 5 Things Your Candidates Won’t Tell You, Montage.