1. Don’t Buy Special Gear

You don’t need to spend a fortune on special recording equipment because you can create well-produced, compelling interview content straight from your smartphone. Just pick a quiet, well-lit place to conduct your interview, and remember to shoot everything in landscape mode (turn your phone horizontal).

2. Identify All Your Stories Before You Start Interviewing

Think about what you want your candidates to know about your recruitment brand so you can showcase those things in your employee testimonials. For example, if you want to position yourself as a military-friendly recruiter, you’ll know to interview a member of your company’s veteran’s resource group. If you want to demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion, you can plan a series of talks with employees involved in your efforts.

3. Create a Content Plan

When do you intend to share your testimonial content? When do you want to make it? Get out a calendar and start sketching out a plan. Your goal is to generate enough testimonials to provide a steady stream of re-assuring, first-person, “I love this aspect of my job!” content for all your recruitment marketing activity.

4. Take the Recruitment of Your Interview Subjects Seriously

Once you’ve committed to a content plan, you need to find employees who are willing to share their stories. Don’t just rely on people you know personally. Get buy-in from senior management and promote the program like crazy with plenty of internal communication throughout the organization.  

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Also, be as transparent about the process as possible. Let people know what you’re looking for, what they’ll get for participating, how long the process will take, and where the content will appear.

5. Be Flexible with Your Interviewing Technique

Depending on the size of your company, you may not be able to conduct face-to-face interviews with all of your subjects. That’s OK. If it’s not possible to talk in person, arrange a few minutes for a video conference—you can even talk on the phone (there are plenty of free or nearly free apps and tools for recording voice calls). If a phone call isn’t possible, you can always send your questions for a written response.  

6. Have Your Recorded Interviews Transcribed

There are two great reasons to get transcripts from your interviews. Great reason #1 is you can easily pull out compelling quotes to help promote the content on your website, social channels, email communication, or text messages. Great reason #2 is transcripts make editing easier. If you ever decide to do a supercut of all your interviews, for example, having the transcripts will speed up the process (reading is faster than watching video).

To get your transcripts made, use a service like Rev.com. Don’t be a hero here by trying to do it yourself. Transcription is tedious work, and it’s well worth the going rate of $1 per recorded minute to have it handled by a pro.

7. Don’t Be Afraid to Pander Every Now and Then

If you want to engage candidates who are already in the talent pipeline, plan to interview fellow members of your talent acquisition team every once in a while.

Candidates like to know who they are up against. On the eve of an upcoming campus recruitment event, take a minute to record your colleague recruiter’s response to a question like, “What are the three most impressive things you’ve seen from candidates at a career fair?” or “Tell me about the last three hires we’ve made at a campus job event.”

You can also bring in members of the hiring team to talk about their open position. Ask them to describe what they hope to see in their new colleague, or to explain what they think is exciting about the work being done on the team.