Recruitment Business Owners I talk to are always asking how to get their people enthused about speaking to new clients and candidates. Here’s something that could resonate with them now…

The issue was rooted in the way recruiters advertised job roles. It was an apparent trend to post text-based ads that were stuffed with keywords in the hope that they would get onto a job-hunter’s radar.

That, combined with a lack of imagination and the infuriation of anonymity, made the job boards dull and the application process even duller.

Fast forward five years and unfortunately, the problem is as pronounced now as it was back then. We live in a world where video content is king and yet, the recruitment industry still hasn’t caught on!

When I first discussed the lack of visual media within the sector, video was a fast-growing format and early-adopters had seen an 85% increase in sales when using video marketing.

Since then, video has not only shaken the digital world – it has completely transformed it.

The mere mention of video in your email subject line can increase open rates by 19% and 90% of consumers say video can help them make a buying decision.

So why aren’t more recruitment businesses catching on?

I could forgive my clients of five years ago when they expressed their initial adversity to video – it was time consuming, you needed to have at least one ‘techy’ in the office to help support any new system and our favourite social media platform, LinkedIn, didn’t seem to care that video was on the rise.

Now, 100 million hours of video content are watched on Facebook daily and by 2020, it’s predicted that over 75% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video.

This is because it can be produced on our mobiles in minutes, edited on free software easily and takes a few seconds to upload and the results have fantastic ROI. Even bespoke video interviewing software, like Odro, can be implemented company-wide in a few hours and all consultants can be up and running within the day.

Recruitment businesses may be slow to the uptake purely because what they are currently doing is working for them. The text-ads attract some applicants. The mailshots don’t all bounce back. The state-of-play is perfectly fine.

That’s where I want to challenge recruitment business owners. Look at where we have come in the last five years of having video as a medium to advertise. Where do you think we’ll be in another five?

Differentiate and diversify the platforms your consultants can utilise for job advertising – whether this is a video interviewing system or simply permission to film a video-intro for their LinkedIn page from their phones – and you’ll soon start to notice the impact visual media can make on conversion and the added-benefits it has on your company culture too.

For more advice on how to implement a visual-media strategy within your recruitment business or for consultancy, training and coaching to help you dramatically improve your business, please get in touch today.

Alison Humphries is Founder Director of Recruitment Leadership Ltd, a business which helps recruitment business owners across the UK improve performance and profitability, implement strategy and systems, and develop staff.

She is uniquely positioned to advise Recruitment Business Owners and Directors on all aspects of developing their brand and increasing market share, from strategy to sales techniques. Contact her using the form here or call on 07720 677557.