14 August 2010

Twitter Recruiting Video

The folks at Twitter put together a pretty compelling, hip and unique recruiting video.

Mercifully, no talking heads spewing predictable platitudes, like this utterly boring and vapid example from Symantec. Also, no half-assed wanna-be music video, like this awkward example from Ernst & Young. Twitter's is well paced and tasteful.

One of my previous employers, Guidewire Software, produced some high quality recruiting videos (a project initiated before my arrival, my involvement was limited) that are worth viewing (one, two, three, and four). They were carefully crafted for a narrowly defined target audience: bright, wary, discerning software engineers.


The best recruiting videos I'm aware of are the ones from Facebook. Great production values, well targeted messaging, with plenty of authenticity.

Perhaps it's no surprise for a hot web startup, but the video happens to reveal a limited degree of ethnic, gender, and age diversity amongst the company's staff. They are located in the city of San Francisco with the surrounding Bay Area presumable available to provide a highly diverse talent pool, so it does seem a bit out of whack. One of the easiest things to notice is how the relatively few women in the video are often positioned much closer to the camera than the men. Well, such disparity at tech companies is common.

Professionally produced videos, including recruiting videos, are not easy to make. The shoots and the editing are really time consuming. A really good professional videographer will not come cheap either.

Good job, Twitter! Best of luck with the recruiting efforts.