As some of you know, Shannon is a Vice President at Bernard Hodes, the online recruitment marketing agency that makes next generation careers web sites and the like. Shannon was very fortunate to hire some former Jobster talent this year and one of those people was Adam Einiger. During a recent video shoot for a client the video and client team were testing the cameras when they asked for someone in the team to get on screen for the video and mic check. This is Adam’s version of a mic video/audio check…
I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed his rendition and I’m pretty impressed by Adam’s creative side (awfully important at an agency where creative solutions are a must). I asked Shannon for a few words about what Adam does and she gave me this…
“Solutions Provider, Interactive Producer, Sales Engineer, Magician, F-bomb dropper, flip-flop wearer, new daddy, all around straight up good guy!”
There’s only one thing missing as far as I’m concerned with this content and it’s easy to fix. Get it front and center on the main Hodes web site. Hodes has some good video content on their site but I feel this content is better because it isn’t staged and it demonstrates (rather then telling) a creative mindset, technical ability, and a healthy culture.
While it’s a great example of personal branding it also represents a fantastic employer branding opportunity. I hear many people lament that they don’t have any good employee video to put on their careers sites. When was the last time you searched on Google and YouTube for your company name or the names of employees with the mindset of finding valuable content you can leverage? Right, social media has much better uses than as a recruiters tool to bust recent college applicants with wild Frat party pictures!
Just because the video isn’t about how great your benefits are doesn’t mean it won’t work when placed in context of an employer branding theme. More and more, there is fantastic employee generated content that employees would be only too happy to have featured in a positive light on your corporate site. Just ask and ye shall receive.
Technorati Tags: Adam Einiger, Bernard Hodes, Omnicom
EXCELER8ion is where Shannon and Julian Seery Gude write on Social Media, Interactive Marketing, Technology and Internet Business Topics. 
5 comments ↓
wow…I’m flattered Julian.
I think you’re right on about this. We yap a lot about work/life balance, but this is a great example of work & life becoming one…where you can be who you are at home, at work…not just socially self-segregating yourself and a company saying that we support/accept who you are at home and who you are at the office…but rather, we encourage you to be who you are, wherever you are. By encouraging employees to do this, you’re boosting retention, forming tight bonds-that go past normal work stuff with co-workers, and just plain ‘ol being real…isn’t that what we all want?…to cut through the BS and find out what a company is really like?
Even if it’s our own company.
Tie this video in with a case study of everything that went into developing the website, shooting parameters, people involved, samples of the work, etc., and it would be a valuable piece to every single Hodes Employee. Post it on the Hodes site and get some people jazzed about this industry and their jobs again.
Great job Adam
I blogged about the notion of candidates “turning the weapon around” here:
http://www.digitalrecruiter.com/digital-recruiter-blog/2007/9/22/social-media-tactics-vs-strategy.html
Great opportunity for recruiting for sure, but the social media lens is turning to employers; whether they produce stuff like this or not..
Adam, this is a very thoughtful comment and I think you are spot on in your content and ideas. I would add more if I could but I think you said it all well. Cheers!
Hi Rob, thanks for stopping by and posting your link. If I’ve understood you correctly, you’re making the argument that goes something like the conversation is happening with or without you - do you want to be a spectator or a participant?. Agreed!
Many companies miss that their employees are an untapped resource who have already created (or could create) great content because they fear the negative side of employee feedback. To which I reply, what helps turn the situation around faster, pretending you don’t have a employee morale or culture problem, or engaging your talent and asking for their help in fixing the problem.
Adam said it well, in his comment and as Hamlet. Social media shows recruiters only part of who a candidate is or was. So the candidate may have partied in college, who didn’t? That candidate could be management material. With individuals and companies flocking to join the useful and amusing online social networks, the areas between social and professional life is becoming muddier. There are still a lot of places where it’s unacceptable or unsafe to be “who you are, wherever you are”. Although that’s slowly and thankfully changing, I have to agree with an article from Focus Management, a recruitment consultancy that boundaries need “to be set between an individual’s personal social life and their attributes at work. With everything being accessible, our lives are now under the microscope 24/7. According to the Times, a survey of 600 British companies revealed that one in five had logged on to Facebook and other networking websites to vet potential employees.”
Full article: http://www.focus-management.co.uk/foodblog/2007/10/what-will-food-recruitment-loo.html
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