Recruiting – Want a new job? Watch a Video

Houston Chronicle
6.07.2010 

They weren’t hired for their acting skills. But when John Ehlinger and Brad Schaefer showed up to work one day ready to tackle vexing software problems, they discovered they were going to star in a company video.

The two software developers have become the public face at HCSS, a fast-growing construction software company in Sugar Land. To showcase its corporate culture and attract the sort of people who might like to work there, HCSS is relying on YouTube and other social media to get the message out.

As the economy improves and recruiting heats up, some companies are using funny home-style videos and sponsoring employee-written blogs to promote their corporate cultures. The featured employees highlight their benefits and present day-in-the-life vignettes to generate interest from potential employees, including those who are not necessarily looking for a job.

And they’re doing it on dedicated websites specifically designed for potential employees. HCSS uses www.dreamjobshouston.com.

One HCSS video shows Ehlinger, playing “corporate guy,” trying to offer an idea, then being dismissed by an executive as the “nobody of the week in cubicle No. 7” and told to get back to work. HCSS does it differently, the video says, and is a place “where your ideas count.”

“I was hoping Steven Spielberg would notice,” said Ehlinger.

In another video, Schaefer plays a casual techie who works at HCSS and ends up making a whole lot more in profit sharing than his corporate friend Ehlinger. The video ends with the news that every HCSS employee got a 26 percent cash profit-sharing bonus last year.

Schaefer said his most exciting moment was when he was recognized as a video star by a job candidate he was interviewing at Texas A&M.

Most companies focus on skills and qualifications, said Sebabi Leballo, organizational development manager for HCSS, who cast Ehlinger and Schaefer in their promotional roles.

HCSS has carefully cultivated its culture and devised the videos to attract the right kind of employees — the kind who are comfortable with speaking up, embrace a culture of ownership and have a take-charge attitude. The company has 110 employees but constructed its office building to accommodate twice that number.

“The key is to make the business toxic to those who won’t fit,” said Leballo.

For example, if you want employees to stay connected while they’re on vacation, say it in the video, he said. Or if employees are on the road constantly, focus on the life of a road warrior.

Rackspace, a Web-hosting firm in San Antonio, still posts job openings and looks for job candidates in traditional places like college campuses. But it also invited its employees to write blogs and in just two months, 13 employees have signed on, said Michael Long, the firm’s global talent scout.

The writers focus on what it’s like to be a “Racker” in big and small ways, he said. One of them wrote about being new in a strange city and how her co-workers took her to the hospital when she needed emergency medical care. Another focused on the reasons he enjoys his job, and it received more than 300 hits in one day as people sent it around their social media, Long said.

“It’s really exciting for us,” said Long, because the blogs are driving visitors to the company’s dedicated career website. And it’s not just active job seekers but people who come upon the site and like what they see.

As freewheeling as they seem, the entries at rackertalent.com must be approved first by Long, who checks for grammar and then sends them to the communications department to check for inadvertent disclosure of proprietary information.

The company, which has 2,900 employees worldwide including 1,800 in San Antonio, also produced a video that chronicles a day in the life of an employee. Rackspace originally designed that video to showcase support services to customers, Long said, but the company realized it also had value as a recruiting tool.

As the economy improves, one of the biggest challenges facing tech companies is to find enough qualified employees.

The company, which has 2,900 employees worldwide including 1,800 in San Antonio, also produced a video that chronicles a day in the life of an employee. Rackspace originally designed that video to showcase support services to customers, Long said, but the company realized it also had value as a recruiting tool.

As the economy improves, one of the biggest challenges facing tech companies is to find enough qualified employees.

On Dice.com, a career website that specializes in technology jobs, the number of job openings is up more than 40 percent compared to a year ago, said Tom Silver, senior vice president of North America in New York. An increasing number are also full-time positions, he said, which shows employers are feeling more confident about making long-term commitments.

Companies are hoping to attract the attention of dissatisfied workers who haven’t had raises or who have seen their benefits cut during the past couple of years, said Silver.

The videos have become so popular that Dice.com is about to roll out a new feature later this summer that will allow job seekers to see them along with more traditional job postings.

Job candidates are more likely to click on a video than read a lengthy job description, said Kathy Rapp, vice president and managing director of hrQ, a Houston recruiting, contract staffing and human resource consulting firm.

“It whets your appetite,” said Rapp, who is working on a promotional video for hrQ as well as 15-second videos for all its job openings. People get deluged by e-mails and their attention spans are short.

While the promotional videos make jobs appealing, Silver cautioned prospective employees against putting too much stock in them. It’s still important to do the old-fashioned research about a company and talk to rank-and-file employees about what it’s really like, he said.