The other day I saw this Microsoft college recruiting video featuring The Daily Show's Ed Helms. Two things struck me about it. First, it's laugh-out-loud funny, as you might expect given that the budget was quite likely in the seven-figure range. Second, it actually spends very little time talking about the details of working at Microsoft. But that's not the point. Everyone knows that Microsoft is a huge company working on large projects. The purposes of this video is to show today's college students that the giant in Redmond hasn't turned into your father's Oldsmobile. They even poke a little fun at themselves while referencing the company that is ostensibly their main competitor for top college recruits.
It would be easy to dismiss this by saying, "Yeah, that's great, but we can't do that here." And chances are that unless you're the VP of Recruiting for a fairly large corporation, you can't hire professional comedians or supermodels to produce broadcast-quality videos. But all too often that becomes an excuse to do nothing instead of thinking about what you could do.
One of my clients is Avidyne, a fairly small (150-200 employee) company that designs and builds flight instruments for small aircraft. This kind of work is Engineering with a capital E and supporting their fast-growing business requires a constant stream of fresh talent of the highest caliber. In this they are competing with plenty of giants--companies like Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon come to mind, all of which do have the resources for flashy marketing.
So what did Avidyne do? They made a video of their own. Though the budget was clearly lower than Microsoft's, for a very specific group of people the content is just as glamourous as Victoria 's Secret. Sure, you can go to work for Boeing and design a doorknob for the Space Shuttle, but you'd be very lucky to even get to touch it, let alone take a ride on it. But as this video goes to great lengths to show, at Avidyne they'll actually pay for you to get your pilot's license and learn to fly the planes that use Avidyne's products. This isn't the sort of perk that appeals to everyone. But for a certain group of people, many of whom just received engineering degrees from places like MIT, it means a lot more than a paid endorsement by some celebrity. Those of course are precisely the people that Avidyne wants to reach.
As fashion and entertainment marketers learned long ago, few things sell better but are harder to imitate than authenticity. The converse is also true. If you are funny then by all means be funny with your candidates. But humor is a lot like dancing—easy to do very poorly, difficult to do well—and unlike dancing, you don’t get much credit for trying. But if you can identify those things that your company and your candidates are both passionate about, then your message will come across loud and clear and you will start the conversation at a great advantage over your competition, even if they are sometimes funnier or better looking.
Technorati tags: recruiting hiring
Colin,
Microsoft started an online video campaign to put a human face on a company that many customers see as big and sometimes intimidating.
So they added the human element along with the concept of Today's successful marketing (recruiting) efforts. Your company must be real, transparent, and ready to be honest with itself and with customers.
The proven ground for all this information is AMERICA'S OBSESSION reality TV; we love it because it is refreshingly honest and real with its customers.
Microsoft embraced the negative public perception and made fun of themselves. How honest can you get? Great Article Colin
Posted by: Scott Graham | July 20, 2006 at 09:08 AM