For years now the technology of video has been available across the Internet for websites to utilise as they see fit. Over the last 5 years the success of YouTube has shown that people not only use video on the Internet, they demand it. The platform is improving everyday and is now ready to take off.

It is quite ironic that the largest news sites on the Internet all have video functionality………but wait…..so do the sports, weather, social media and travel sites, having all now adopted video media into their site offerings. All of these are part of our daily lives, jobs however, which we all get out of bed for everyday day is far behind. Why hasn’t the job board and recruitment market followed???

A recent report showed that, in the USA, the most searched term was “jobs”. In 2008 in the UK it was 10th. No real surprise given the current economic climate, but why are these sites that offers the most sort after search term not offering the latest gadgets and options to their users, candidate and advertiser. It is true that Monster and Careerbuilder have recently re-launched (again) their sites offering video to both users, to a degree, but why has it taken this long.

Both companies spent an enormous amount of money on Superbowl advertising and have yielded no result, in fact reports say they went backwards (http://www.ere.net/2009/02/09/what-do-you-get-for-100k-a-second-a-drop-in-traffic/). They spent money on TV advertising (video essentially) to gain brand awareness and traction to their sites. Is this a case of too little too late?

Television is still the most heavily utilised medium for advertising in terms of revenue. The Internet is fast catching up and the like of video across the “net” is the major reason it will pass it eventually. If you know your demographic is on the “net” why not engage with them in the best way?

Video is more engaging, more enticing and offers the viewer the ability to relate to a product or service far quicker and with more relevancy. How many times have you tuned out when an ad on TV comes on that doesn’t interest you? A video has the ability to filter out the irrelevant and a great video attracts the best……..

A well planned and executed job board video, candidate CV or advertiser (job ad or employer branding) will produce better results then words on a screen. A picture tells a thousand words, a video tells a thousand pictures………..

There was a recent article in recruiter magazine that really caught my eye - mainly because they had used the same stock photo we actually used in one of our marketing campaigns!

The article talks about branding and how important, in these hard times, to keep up the investment in your brand and how you are positioned in the market.

People automatically assume that branding is all about a marketing department spending huge amounts of money without having a definate ROI. In lean times branding and how your brand is perceived is more important than ever and Talent on View can go, some way, to helping this happen and creates a differentiator and makes you stand out in a crowd.

It is cost effective (and actually can save your phone bills) and also shows your clients you are using innovation to improve/enhance your service above and beyond your competitor.

A good example of this is that Recruiter A and Recruiter B are both pitching for some business - Recruiter A pulls out all the stops with their presentation but essentially their offering has remained the same. Recruiter B however does an OK presentation but offers the client the ability to view all candidate video interviews (answering specific questions the client wants answering in the first round of interviews) aswell as their CV’s on top of the usual process Recruiter A has offered? So Recruiter B has done an OK presentation however they have a differentiator that adds value to the process and doesnt cost the client anything more than Recruiter A- which one would you choose?

Recruiter B seeks to increase the product’s perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand equity and delivers more revenue. So it may well be you have Mr/Mrs Average doing the presentation but you have given them more brand definition.

Our client, financial services recruiter, Ardent Search & Selection have started using Talent on View to help with their recruitment processes but also to offer their clients an enhanced service.

David Colgrave, chief executive at Ardent, says: “Good candidates are hard to find, especially in a market where the number of job seekers is increasing. Having worked to source high calibre candidates we wanted an effective method of presenting the best candidates in the most time efficient way.”

Recruiters are finding it hard to “sift” through the huge amount of candidates currently on the market (the most difficult job being is the candidate genuinely good at their job but have been unlucky in the current climate or is the candidate weak and has the recent spate of redundancies enabled companies to get rid of dead wood).

David and his team were looking for a solution that could help them at both ends of the process - for the consultants to be able to “vet” a candidate better but also to present their great candidates to clients in a timely fashion.

Here is the link to the article in Recruiter magazine.

Some of my friends have recently joined Twitter according to their “facebook” status (which makes me laugh) and very shortly afterwards have changed their facebook status to “no longer using Twitter - dont get it?”

I am struggling (with a smirk on my face) how someone doesn’t “get” 140 characters of space to type in and the question “what are you doing?”. Is it the simplicity? its easier to use than Facebook?

Seriously though what these people haven’t “got” is how powerful a relaxed informal window on your own personal world enables a connection to happen with many people spread far and wide.

Andy Headworth from Sirona consulting has written a great post on this