How can employers seeking top talent stand out in a crowded market? As Israel suffers from a shortage of skilled programmers and engineers being courted by a tech sector flush with cash, more and more companies are looking to videos on TikTok and other social-media networks to get the word out.
At AppsFlyer, a marketing analytics company with 700 employees in Herzliya and Haifa, the company knew it had to do something different to attract new hires.
“All the companies are competing for the same talent,” Daniel Cohen, the company’s talent marketing specialist, told The Jerusalem Post. “Our pay is as good as everywhere, so we wanted to advertise the culture of the company and make videos of our developers and recruiters.
“We love using TikTok because it is a great platform for a funny, cool 15-second video that looks natural, not produced. We produce a lot of videos just showing the day-to-day vibe in the office.”
“We are posting our videos on LinkedIn and TikTok, and they are bringing in good resumes,” he said. “Our videos have more than 100,000 views, and a lot of the people who come in for interviews say they saw the videos.
“We don’t use Facebook in our strategy because that’s more for older people. Also, we find it easier to be successful on LinkedIn because there isn’t so much video on that platform.”
In one video AppsFlyer shared, a woman walks around the office asking employees trivia questions about the company and hands out prizes to those giving correct answers. In another, employees complete “the rice challenge,” tossing a tray of rice with the number 200 written in the air to celebrate hiring 200 employees in one month.
“It’s fun to know that we are engaging a lot of people,” Cohen said. “It’s also good for the people inside the company. A lot of people want to be in the videos.”
Duda, which offers a website-building platform for Web-design agencies and businesses, is taking a somewhat different approach.
“We wanted to create an employee-branding video to convey the message of what we do and why we have a cool culture,” Avigal Ben-Nun, the company’s employee-experience specialist, told the Post. “So we had employees divide into four groups, and each created a script for the video. We chose one that parodies other employment-branding videos in the style of a documentary.”
“With 90 employees, we aren’t as big as other companies, so we wanted to highlight our culture and make sure the video feels humble and authentic,” she said, adding that the video will be released in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, Yaakov Gorbulsky, a customer-success representative at Atera, which makes remote-monitoring management software in Tel Aviv, made a video as part of the hiring process for his job.
“In my department, part of the application process was to shoot a video that would explain what the company does to my friends,” he told the Post. “I wanted to make it interesting and not too technical, and I wanted to stand out among applicants.”
The video starts off with Gorbulsky telling his friend about the company on Zoom before the friend is teleported to his room for a rap about the company.
“I didn’t get hired because of the video, but it was a great opportunity to stand out and show my creativity,” he said, adding that it was shared throughout the company internally but was not used in its marketing.