Selling the Lifestyle: Using Video to Recruit
Your organization wants to attract high-quality leads. Maybe it's for military service, higher education, or corporate hiring. These are all vastly different opportunities, but your audience is weighing the same things: time commitment, level of effort, ultimate cost and benefit, and lifestyle. For all of these, your lead will be embracing a cultural change. Their day-to-day is going to look different, and whether or not that makes their mental list of decision factors, it’s one that weighs heavily. Do they see themselves on your campus? Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with your officers? Working alongside your team?
You can write a thousand words, or create a picture worth a thousand words. Or you can give them an immersive way to imagine themselves alongside your organization. That’s video.
Why Does Lifestyle Matter?
Your audience is making a decision to join your organization, and they have top-of-mind questions like:
What’s the environment (or “vibes”) like?
Will they “fit in” to the community?
What’s the work-life balance equation?
Do your organization’s values align with theirs?
While traditional recruitment materials explain these factors, video lets them see and feel them. They can experience your campus, people, culture, or mission on their phone as if they were part of it, and make the decision to learn more.
But don’t feel like you have to cover all these points in one video. The best videos address a few key questions your audience might have, with an overall visual experience that’s unique to your organization.
Example 1: Work-Life Balance and Opportunity with the University of Maryland’s Maryland Applied Graduate Engineering (MAGE)
Working professionals are increasingly seeking online programs for their graduate degrees that offer the flexibility of full-time employment while pursuing higher education. But these programs come with questions, such as “Will I have the same academic experience as on-campus students? Will I get the same networking and social opportunities to collaborate with my peers?” It’s one thing to respond on paper, but MAGE responds with current students and faculty so their potential students can hear it from the source.
Key moments:
The video showcases the technology students will get to use and interact with, and the beautiful campus they will enjoy, without heavy-handed explanation. The lifestyle in action is enough.
The benefits of the program are explicit–practical applications, real-world applications, and continuous knowledge development–and you get to hear it from students who can authentically communicate and endorse them.
Example 2: Life Beyond the Job With the U.S. Coast Guard
The military isn’t just a job. It’s a lifestyle. The skills you learn, the people you meet, and the friendships you build are unlike any other. It’s tough to convey this on a brochure or website–so Coast Guard’s King of Hammers mini documentary tells a story of two Coasties using the skills they learned in the field and the friendships they made in the service to face one of the toughest off-road races. Candidates interested in the Coast Guard get to experience the kind of adventure, unique skills, and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities a career can bring.
Key moments:
EM1 Ben Ertel and EM1 Mike Jury indirectly answer a common question about military service: “Will the skills I learn have real-world application?” The answer is YES, in your work and personal life.
Not every Coast Guard career takes you out to sea. This video showcases the diversity of backgrounds, jobs, and career paths beyond the traditional cutter.
Example 3: Show Off Your People with LMD Agency
We know what makes our organization great–and it’s probably what makes yours great too. Our team of strategists, creatives, leaders, and artists does amazing things in and out of the office, so we want candidates to experience what makes us, us! Our high-energy culture video shows off our team and environment in a snappy video that builds our brand and sells our opportunities.
Key moments:
We’re a Maryland company born and raised with a 50-year history! We wanted to show off our new office in the Merriweather District, a center of arts and culture for the region.
It’s our work, top to bottom. As a full-service ad agency, we aren’t ashamed to admit this piece is pulling double duty–we are also showing off our video services. Everything, from the voiceover talent to the transitions, is LMD.
A recruitment video is more than some shots of your organization. It’s a way to showcase your opportunities, talent, and uniqueness in an attention-grabbing way.
At LMD, our expert video product team makes your organization stand out and drive leads. We strategize from the start, so every second is thoughtfully chosen to push you further towards your missions and goals. Let’s get started!