By Eric R. Elmore, PICPA Vice President, Marketing & Member Experience

Accounting profession recruiting is highly competitive, maybe more than ever. The market is tough, and there are no signs that it will be getting better soon. You may want to consider incorporating video into your recruiting efforts. It may not be a silver-bullet solution, but it sure can make you stand out from the competition.

In 2021, video was the most successful type of content marketing. It outpaced podcasts and webinars, which is where the market shifted during the pandemic, by as much as 300%. To be successful, however, video content must be creative, short, and impactful. No one wants to watch a long-format standard corporate video. Video must also be memorable, and the targeted audience must immediately associate it with your firm to make the recruiting connection. For example, when we see a guy in a red shirt named Jake, we know it’s a State Farm ad.

Your firm’s culture is often its greatest selling point. Accounting work is pretty much the same across the board, and salaries and benefits can be negotiated. But who your company is and what it stands for is in its DNA. Focus on the best parts of your firm’s culture – the key differentiators from others – and promote it as an asset. Video brings that asset to life much more vibrantly than words or pictures.

In the age of social media and streaming, video content has an increasingly important role in recruiting. People want to work where they are valued and can be their authentic selves. Your firm must convey that you are the place for them. Through video content, audiences can quickly gauge the authentic from the staged, so be as authentic as possible.

Creating videos has never been more affordable, and with multiple platforms for delivery it is much easier to reach targeted candidates. My previous firm’s annual video projects were known for demonstrating the firm’s ability to have fun. Our themes were timely (like a take on Game of Thrones around the show’s last season premier) or regionally familiar (like our Fresh-Prince-of-Bel-Air-style video) to our targeted college and university students. We made sure to include our interns as participants because we knew they would share the video with their classmates, further driving our message as a fun place to work to more accounting candidates.

The content was repurposed and edited to different lengths to accommodate various platforms, including LinkedIn, for experienced-hire recruiting. When we visited campuses in the region, we were surprised by the number of students, faculty, and staff who recognized our firm from the videos. We were branded as the accounting firm with the great workplace culture.

I believe there were six factors that made our video content work so well. And here is an overview of those six points that may help you plan your next video recruiting project.

Timing

We selected a specific time for launching videos that aligned with the recruiting calendar, a local news cycle, or other related event. After a few videos, people were used to seeing them at certain times of the year and anticipated their debut.

Promote Your Differentiating Asset

As mentioned, your firm’s culture is often its best recruiting asset. What is special about your firm? Is it the people, the work, the clients, the parties, or the travel? Whatever it is, showcase it in your videos and be known for that one thing. Candidates who share a passion for what makes your firm special will be attracted to your firm and will be more likely to stay once hired.

Get the Firm Involved

My old firm had over 100 people, each with his or her own network on social media. Our most animated and enthusiastic peers participated in the videos by writing scripts, doing set design and makeup, and taking on starring roles in the videos. We also created “click and share” emails that dramatically increased our video’s reach. The point is the team was invested and thus was more likely to share the content.

Choose Themes that Connect

I worked at a Philadelphia-based firm, so some locally familiar themes were parodies on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Rocky, and the Eagles’ Super Bowl LII win. We also capitalized on hit TV shows, such as Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead, by releasing our similarly themed videos around their season premier dates. Our audience connected with these themes because they were familiar with them, or they were hot topics of the time.  

Include the Targeted Audience  

In every one of our videos, we had the college accounting student in mind as the target audience. We timed the filming of our videos to begin when our interns started and gave them starring roles. Ambitious accounting students know other ambitious accounting students, and they all share their internship stories. Their experiences with us were unique because of the video projects. We also filmed some videos at college campuses. Again, this made for a familiar setting and made students more likely to view, like, and share our content.

Share on Multiple Platforms  

This seems like common sense, but just placing the video on your website’s SEO-optimized career page and hoping candidates stumble upon it is not maximizing its impact. You need to adjust the video’s length and focal points to fit different social and digital platforms. Create a trackable campaign so you can see which platforms perform the best and adjust in accordance with the campaign results.  

When competing for talent with firms that have more resources, you must be creative to stand out. For smaller firms with little-to-no budget for these endeavors, filming apps are available for your cell phone that offer quality video production. Create interesting content that accurately promotes the parts of your firm that appeal to candidates, and they will notice you.

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Statements of fact and opinion are the authors’ responsibility alone and do not imply an opinion on the part of the PICPA's officers or members. The information contained herein does not constitute accounting, legal, or professional advice. For actionable advice, you must engage or consult with a qualified professional.