Interactive video as a tool supporting your recruitment process.

The recruitment process is difficult nowadays – everyone knows it. It takes a lot of time, costs a lot, and you’re still not sure whether you hired a person who is the right fit for your company’s culture and will get along with other employees. But hiring developers is even more difficult – you have to test their skills and match their expectations, and these are getting higher and higher. They are right to do so, as their skills are on high-demand on the market. So how can a small to medium company – like Applover with over 50 employees onboard – recruit new talents?

This question is probably often asked by many HR Managers, especially in the companies which can’t afford to pay higher salaries imposed by giant corporations. They need to find a way to position themselves as an attractive workplace for candidates. Today I want to share my knowledge and experiences we had at Applover so far and show you how we do it.

Find a way to get recognition among your potential employees

I know it is not easy. We are overloaded with information, but when you come up with an idea that can help you get to your potential employees, just go for it. That happened in our case. Do you remember “Bandersnatch” created as an episode of a popular series “Black Mirror” aired by Netflix? We loved it! And we’ve seen how our developers talk about it for days. That’s when it hit us. We should do something similar. We wrote down our idea, and we had a simple yet interesting script for our new recruitment video which uses the Bandersnatch effect. It’s interactive, and a different scenario follows every action you take. We wanted to make it useful for our potential candidates who could then assess their skills on a basic level to see if they can apply for a developer job at Applover. We are a young company that hires many young developers at the beginning of their career path. This interactive video is for them. Want to try it yourself? Just visit our careers page

Why an interactive video is part of our recruitment process?

The idea behind this recruitment video was to create something interesting for our potential employees. This type of video is not only something different developers can encounter while looking for a job, but it’s also something they can recognize as created especially for them. It uses technology and is not long. We value everyone’s time. It has some snappy copy and perfectly shows off our company culture. We are open-minded, passionate and believe in people’s development. Moreover, we aren’t the guys who wear suits every day at the office and sit in the dark leather chairs in their offices with globes and personal assistants. We are a young full-stack digital agency and we are learning along the way we grow our business. And we wanted to show it in our interactive recruitment video. 

Video tells you more in a minute than 1000 words 

We love words, our marketing team especially. But we know that people rarely have time to read everything from the top to the end. That’s why we wanted to show our office, our team and how we work in this simple interactive recruitment video. You can see people who are dressed casually, speak freely with confidence, who focus on their tasks but value a good laugh and cherish moments of fun with a team. We want to work with people who would be comfortable with us and feel similar about such a company culture. Video is a perfect way to show our values and how we work. We were really happy that we managed to omit the words “young and dynamic team” which became a meme nowadays.

It doesn’t have to cost a fortune to recruit new talents

Our video wasn’t a Netflix production and it didn’t cost that much. We hired a great team from wewe and we are really happy with the result. They shot everything using professional equipment, we had a prepared script and props. Everything went as planned. 

We were also able to cut costs on the location because we shot the recruitment video at our office. We didn’t hire any actors, we engaged our team in this production. They could test themselves in front of a camera, help us as a company but most importantly – our employees had loads of fun together, doing something productive other than their everyday work.

Are we alone in looking for new ways to support our recruitment process? 

Definitely no. We’ve seen great videos created by Deloitte or Heineken, which also support their recruitment process with an interactive recruitment video. In Poland, CodeTwo is breaking the trail, but they focus on no interactive videos. They’re doing it really well, our team watches them regularly. It also confirms that our interactive recruitment video was a good move. Today, in the IT world, regular job offers on different boards just aren’t enough. 

Go the unwritten path

Our interactive recruitment video was watched so far by almost 500 users, over 200 users finished it and we haven’t even started promoting the movie! We’ve seen an increased number of new candidates’ applications and we can say that we recommend seeking new and original ways that can help you recruit new talents to your team. 

For us at Applover, it is essential to look for new skilled developers who can join our team or support our, already extensive database of programmers, for the outsourcing services we offer, and this way we can do it effectively.