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How to make a recruitment video

How to Make a Recruitment Video: Eight Steps From Brief to Measurement

The whole sequence, with the artefacts attached: a one-screen brief, a finished script, a six-shot storyboard, every platform's own length and ratio figures with the page they came from, and four real ads playing inside the placements they ran in. No stock advice, no invented numbers.

Niels GeominyFounder, RecruitmentAds.com

Read the eight stepsWatch four finished ads

To make a recruitment video, start from one vacancy and write a one-screen brief: the role, the person, the single strongest fact, and where the video will run. Turn the brief into a short on-screen script, storyboard it as shots, shoot or generate the assets, cut it to the ratio the placement wants, publish it, and read the results.

That is the whole sequence, and the eight steps below are that sentence unpacked. What you need before you start is smaller than most pages on this subject imply: a real job post, one person willing to be filmed or one set of approved brand assets, and a phone. What you get at the end is a cut per placement, a caption, and a way to tell whether it worked.

Everything here comes with its working attached. The script and the storyboard are reconstructed from an ad that actually shipped, frame by frame. The length and ratio figures are transcribed from each platform's own documentation, with the URL and the date we read it. The four videos on this page are ads we made for real employers, playing inside the placements they ran in rather than in a YouTube player. Where we hold no number, we say so instead of borrowing one.

If you have not decided whether video belongs in this hire at all, the recruitment video hub covers what the format is and where it fits.

On this page

How to make a recruitment video in eight steps

Read this list first. If you only do the first three properly, the video will be better than most of what runs in a hiring feed, because almost nobody does the first three at all.

  1. Write a one-screen brief.

    One role, one audience, one message, one strongest fact, one placement, one action, and a short list of what the video will not cover. If it runs past a screen, it is not a brief.

  2. Write the on-screen script.

    In a sound-off feed the on-screen text is the script. Six or seven cards, one idea each, with the strongest fact landing inside two seconds.

  3. Storyboard it as shots, not ideas.

    Turn the script into a numbered shot list with a duration, a frame, the on-screen text and the audio for each row. This is the document you actually film from.

  4. Gather the assets, and get consent before the camera comes out.

    Footage, photos, logo, colours, fonts and a voice. Get the release signed first, and decide what happens to the video when the person in it leaves.

  5. Produce it: film it, generate it, or both.

    Four honest routes, from a phone in a workshop to a booked crew. Pick on how often you will need to do this again, not on how good the first one has to be.

  6. Cut it to the format each placement wants.

    Ratio and length are decided by the placement, not by taste. Every platform publishes figures; this page prints them with their sources.

  7. Publish it in the cut that placement expects.

    Career site, paid social, organic social, job posts and outreach all want different cuts of the same video. Export once, deliver several.

  8. Measure it, and be honest about what you can measure.

    Read views against what that platform counts as a view, then read the only two numbers that matter to a hire: qualified applications, and cost per one.

Steps one to three take an afternoon and cost nothing. Steps four to eight are where the money and the calendar go, which is exactly why the first three are the ones worth being strict about.

Four finished ads, in the placements they ran in

Before the steps, here is what they produce. These four are ads we made for real employers, and they are the same four ratios the format table further down is about: 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 and 16:9. Each one plays inside the chrome of the platform it ran in, because a recruitment video judged in a full-width player is not being judged at all. In a feed, the platform takes the edges of your frame back.

The first one, Profield, is the ad the script and storyboard sections take apart. You can watch it, then read the shot list it was built from.

The captions, headlines and buttons in the frames are illustrative. They are written to the character counts each platform documents, so the frame shows you the real limit rather than filler, but they are not transcripts of the posts these videos ran in.

Every one of these carries no result data, and that is deliberate. We hold two first-party performance numbers and both are still with the customer for verification, so neither appears here. Any page that shows you an ad and a percentage without naming where the percentage came from is showing you a percentage it made up.

9:16Instagram, 9:16, 8.04 seconds

Profield: 9:16 vertical, Instagram

Illustrates: Steps 1 to 3, the ad this page reconstructs

Made with RecruitmentAds.com. Instagram, 9:16, 8.04 seconds, measured with ffprobe on 19 August 2026.

The first two seconds

A mechanic lifts an oversized open-ended spanner off a case in a workshop, and "VACATURE: Monteur Defensievoertuigen" is fading up over him inside the first half second. By two seconds the gross monthly band of €2.500 to €4.000, a line about a family firm in Amersfoort, and a purple Meer informatie button have all arrived.

Why this cut

Vertical is the only cut that fills a phone, and a reel placement gives you the whole screen or nothing. Copy stays in the left column so the footage keeps out of its way, and three bullets is the ceiling: money, location, team, in that order. The workshop is the workplace, so the footage qualifies the viewer before a word of copy does.

What we would change

The most interesting thing in the ad, building unique military vehicles, sits in the third bullet. We would test it in the headline, where a fast scroller cannot miss it.

Result: No result data.

1:1LinkedIn feed, 1:1, 14.04 seconds

Dunhill: 1:1 square, LinkedIn

Illustrates: Step 4, when you cannot film anyone at all

Made with RecruitmentAds.com. LinkedIn feed, 1:1, 14.04 seconds, measured with ffprobe on 19 August 2026.

The first two seconds

A woman in an office with a city skyline behind her is mid-sentence at half a second, with "Release Engineer SME, TS/SCI Clearance" stacked beside her and the Dunhill mark in the corner. By two seconds three facts have stacked underneath: three days a week onsite in Arlington, VA, a band of $130k to $200k, and a note about the regulated government setting.

Why this cut

Square takes more feed height on a LinkedIn mobile timeline than 16:9 does and never gets letterboxed. This one also answers the hardest version of step 4: Dunhill recruits for cleared federal IT roles where neither the staff nor the sites can be filmed, so the professional on screen is a generated stand-in and their customer story says so plainly. No footage is not a reason to skip the video. It is a reason to change how you make it.

What we would change

The fourth bullet, two lines on CI/CD pipelines, is the one we would trim next time. A shorter card there gives the Apply now button more room to land.

Result: No result data.

4:5Facebook feed, 4:5, 12.05 seconds

Grant Thornton: 4:5 feed, Facebook

Illustrates: Step 6, the cut that fits two feeds at once

Made with RecruitmentAds.com. Facebook feed, 4:5, 12.05 seconds, measured with ffprobe on 19 August 2026.

The first two seconds

A purple panel wipes down over a yellow band and the line "Join Grant Thornton as Economic Consulting Analyst" is already set at half a second. By two seconds a consultant has appeared in the curved cutout below it, smiling at the lens, with the Grant Thornton mark parked bottom left.

Why this cut

4:5 is the workhorse. It runs in the Facebook and Instagram feeds, it takes close to the height of a vertical without losing the sides, and it is the one cut you can deliver if you are only delivering one. Naming the firm and the job in a single opening sentence means the first frame still works for everyone who watches nothing else.

What we would change

Twelve seconds is generous for a feed placement. We would test an eight second cut with the London line earlier, because location filters candidates faster than a responsibility bullet does.

Result: No result data.

16:9YouTube, 16:9, 14.04 seconds

Haldu Groep: 16:9 landscape, YouTube

Illustrates: Step 7, the one placement landscape belongs in

Made with RecruitmentAds.com. YouTube, 16:9, 14.04 seconds, measured with ffprobe on 19 August 2026.

The first two seconds

Three fitters install metal stud framing on an unfinished floor, under a blue bar carrying a phone number and [email protected], and nothing else for the first second. By two seconds the Polish headline "Oferta pracy: Monterzy Metal Stud w Rijswijk, Holandia" has landed with a Dutch flag beside it and the orange Haldu Groep badge in the corner.

Why this cut

Landscape has one home and this is it. Because the frame has room, the ad can hold unedited site footage for a full second before any text arrives, which is a trade you cannot make in a reel. It is also written in Polish for Polish tradespeople and advertises work in the Netherlands, which is a cross-border problem most templates cannot handle at all. All four cards are logistics, because that is what this audience decides on.

What we would change

The top bar carries a phone number, which is a hard action to take from a video placement. We would test that space on the pay figure and keep the number for the landing page.

Result: No result data.

Fifteen recruitment ads taken apart hook by hook, eight of them ours, are on the examples page.

For LinkedIn specifically, the LinkedIn recruitment ad examples show the same videos in that feed.

The Facebook and Instagram cuts have their own example pages.

Step 1 of 8

Step 1. Start from the vacancy, not from a camera

The most common way a recruitment video goes wrong is that it starts as a video. Somebody has a budget, or a camera, or a deadline, and the question becomes what shall we film. The question is what does this hire need, and the video is the answer to it or it is decoration.

So start where the demand is: an open vacancy, with a job post already written. If the post is thin, fix the post first. A video cannot make an unclear job clear; it can only put the confusion in front of more people, faster. The free job ad template will get the wording into shape in an afternoon.

Then write the brief. Seven fields, one screen. The discipline is the point: a brief that fills two pages is a brief that gets skimmed by the third person who touches the project, and by week two the video is carrying five messages and belongs to nobody.

The field people skip is the last one, and it is the one that saves the project. Writing down what the video will not cover is what stops a stakeholder adding the benefits list in week two, and it gives you something to point at when they do.

Here is that brief, filled in, for an ad you can watch above: a defence vehicle mechanic role at Profield in Amersfoort, which became a 9:16 vertical running eight seconds on Instagram.

recruitment-video-brief

7 fields, one screen

The vacancy

Monteur Defensievoertuigen, Profield, Amersfoort

Finished ad: 9:16 vertical, 8.04 seconds, Instagram

01The one job

One role, one location. Defence vehicle mechanic, Amersfoort.

One video, one vacancy. A video that advertises three roles advertises none of them, because the viewer has to work out which one is theirs and they will not.

02Who it is for

A time-served mechanic already in work, in commuting range, who does not read job boards.

Write the person, not the persona. If you cannot picture where they are standing when the ad reaches them, you are not ready to film.

03The one message

This is unusual work on military vehicles at a family firm, and it pays a stated band.

One message. Not five. If the video has to carry culture and pay and progression and benefits, the culture line is the one that gets skipped.

04The single strongest fact

€2.500 to €4.000 gross per month, stated on screen.

The fact that would make your target stop mid-scroll. Usually pay, sometimes the shift pattern, occasionally the work itself. Whatever it is, it goes on screen inside two seconds.

05Where it runs, and in what cut

Instagram, 9:16 vertical, sound off by default.

Decide this before you write a word, because it sets the ratio, the length and whether the script can rely on audio. Deciding it afterwards is how you end up cropping a 16:9 master into a reel.

06The action

One button, to the vacancy page.

One action, visible in frame, inside the safe zone. A phone number is a hard action to take from a feed placement; keep it for the landing page.

07What we are not saying

No benefits list, no company history, no mission statement, no team photo.

The most useful line in the brief. Writing down what the video will not cover is what stops the fourth stakeholder adding it in week two.

Notice how much of the brief is subtraction. One role. One message. One fact. One action. Everything that makes a recruitment video worse is something that got added to it.

Step 2 of 8

Step 2. Write the recruitment video script

Every guide on this subject tells you to write a rough script. None of them shows you one. So here is a real recruitment video script example, read off an ad that shipped, and then a blank you can fill in fifteen minutes.

The first thing to accept is that in a feed placement, the on-screen text is the script. Sound is off by default for most of the people who will see this. If your script is a voice-over and your on-screen text is a logo, you have written a radio ad and paid video prices for it. Write the cards first. Add the voice afterwards, following the cards rather than leading them.

The second thing is the two-second rule, and it is not a style preference. In a paid feed the viewer decides in the time it takes to move a thumb. So the role goes on screen in the first half second and the single strongest fact from your brief lands by two seconds. Usually that fact is the pay. Sometimes it is the shift pattern. Occasionally it is the work itself, when the work is unusual enough to sell on its own.

The third is that numbers beat adjectives, always, and in fewer characters. A stated band outperforms competitive salary, an actual city outperforms flexible location, and a named stack outperforms modern tech. If a card can be made specific and is not, that is a decision somebody made, and it is the wrong one.

This is the Profield ad as cards. Rows marked verified were read from frames pulled at half a second and two seconds; the rest describe the structure of the finished ad. The lines are English renderings of what each card carries, because the ad itself is in Dutch. They are not a transcript.

profield-script.txt

7 cards, 8.04 seconds

  1. 0.0s to 0.5sVerified from a frame

    No text. A mechanic lifts an oversized open-ended spanner off a case in a workshop.

    The audition. The footage qualifies the viewer before a single word does: anyone who has held that spanner knows what this ad is about.

  2. 0.5sVerified from a frame

    VACANCY: Defence vehicle mechanic

    Role in the first half second, fading up over the shot rather than cutting to a title card, so the footage never stops.

  3. by 2.0sVerified from a frame

    €2.500 to €4.000 gross per month

    The strongest fact from the brief, on screen before anyone has decided whether to keep scrolling. This is the line the ad is built around.

  4. by 2.0sVerified from a frame

    A family firm in Amersfoort

    Location and the kind of employer, in one line. Location filters faster than any responsibility bullet.

  5. by 2.0sVerified from a frame

    More information (button)

    The action, in frame, from two seconds onwards. Not saved for the end card, because most viewers never reach the end card.

  6. middleStructure, not a frame

    Building unique military vehicles

    The third card, and the interesting one. Our own note on this ad says we would test it in the headline instead, where a fast scroller cannot miss it.

  7. closing frameStructure, not a frame

    No new text.

    The subject turns to camera with the spanner still in his hand. A person is a better last frame than a logo card, and it costs nothing to hold the footage a second longer.

Where these lines come from

A reconstruction of a shipped ad, not the document the ad was made from. The English lines are renderings of what each card carries; the ad itself is in Dutch.

Source file
src/content/examples/own-examples.ts
Verification log
src/content/research/examples-own-verification-2026-08-19.md
Frames pulled
t=0.5s and t=2s
Measured on
19 August 2026
Method
ffprobe for duration and ratio, frames read by eye for the rest

And here is the blank. Braces are ordinary text to type over, the same convention as the job ad template, so the two artefacts work as one system.

recruitment-video-script.txt

7 cards, under fifteen seconds

{like this} is yours to replace. Everything else is wording you can keep.

0.0s No text. {the most specific shot you have of the actual work}

0.5s VACANCY: {job title, exactly as someone would say it out loud}

1.5s {the single strongest fact: pay band, shift pattern, or the thing about the work nobody else offers}

3.0s {where, and what kind of employer, in six words}

4.5s {the interesting thing. The reason this job is not the same as the one down the road}

6.0s {action} -> {one link, one button, nothing else}

7.0s Hold the footage. Person to camera if you have one.

Five rules that survive contact with a real feed

  • One idea per card. If a card needs a comma and an 'and', it is two cards.
  • Numbers beat adjectives. €2.500 to €4.000 outperforms competitive salary every time, and it does it in fewer characters.
  • Write for sound off, then add sound as a bonus. Captions are not an accessibility afterthought here, they are the script.
  • Nothing important within the platform's safe-zone bands. On Meta's vertical placements that is the top 14 percent and the bottom 20 percent of the frame.
  • The button goes in early and stays. Most people never see your end card.

If you would rather start from a written structure than a blank page, the recruitment video templates cover the common role and industry variants.

Step 3 of 8

Step 3. Turn the script into a storyboard and a shot list

A script tells you what the video says. A storyboard tells you what to point the camera at, and in what order, and for how long. Skip it and you will film for two hours and discover in the edit that you have five versions of the same wide shot and nothing that cuts.

You do not need to draw. A table is a storyboard. Six rows, and each row carries a duration, the frame, the on-screen text, the audio, and one line on why the shot is there. If a row cannot answer the last column, cut the row.

Two rules make the difference between a shot list that survives contact with a real workplace and one that does not. First, every row is a shot, not an idea: show the work is not a row, hands and tool on the vehicle panel, two seconds, is. Second, plan for one more shot than you need. Something will be unusable, and it is always the one you were counting on.

The last row is the one people leave out. Ending on a person who looks up at the camera converts better than ending on a logo card, and it costs nothing except holding the footage a second longer. If the brand frame is non-negotiable, make it the smallest possible tax on the ad. In an eight second video you cannot afford to spend two of those seconds on a logo.

Same Profield ad, expressed as the thing a person holding a phone can actually shoot:

profield-storyboard

6 shots, print it and tick them off

  1. 0.0s to 0.5s
    Frame
    Mid shot, workshop. Hands and spanner, subject slightly off centre.
    On screen
    Nothing
    Audio
    Workshop room tone

    Why the shot is there. Half a second of pure footage buys the ad its credibility. Text over the first frame reads as an ad; a workshop reads as a workshop.

  2. 0.5s to 2.0s
    Frame
    Same shot held. Text enters over the top third.
    On screen
    Role, then pay, then location
    Audio
    Room tone continues

    Why the shot is there. Three facts land while the footage is still moving. No cut is needed and no cut is wanted: a cut this early costs attention it cannot buy back.

  3. 2.0s to 4.0s
    Frame
    Closer on the work itself. Hands, tool, vehicle panel.
    On screen
    Action button stays in frame
    Audio
    Room tone, or a bed if you are adding one

    Why the shot is there. The proof shot. Show the work, not the building. Offices, drone footage and logo animations appear in none of the ads on this site that work.

  4. 4.0s to 6.0s
    Frame
    Wider, so the vehicle reads.
    On screen
    The interesting fact: the unusual thing about this work
    Audio
    As above

    Why the shot is there. This is where the ad earns a click rather than a scroll. It is also, on this particular ad, the card we would move to the top next time.

  5. 6.0s to 8.0s
    Frame
    Back to the subject, who looks up to camera.
    On screen
    Action button, held
    Audio
    As above

    Why the shot is there. A face at the end converts better than a logo. The person is the employer brand; the logo is only the receipt.

  6. Optional, plus 2s
    Frame
    Hold the last frame.
    On screen
    Logo, small, corner
    Audio
    Fade

    Why the shot is there. If you must have a brand frame, make it the smallest possible tax on the ad. Never spend two of your eight seconds on it.

Print it. Take it to the location. Tick the rows off as you get them, and do not leave until every row is ticked or crossed out on purpose. This is the whole reason a fifteen-second video does not need a fifteen-hour shoot.

Step 4 of 8

Step 4. Gather the assets, and get permission before you film

Assets are the boring half of the job and the half that decides whether this becomes a habit or a one-off. There are four buckets, and the honest question for each is not what do we want, it is what can we get again next month without asking anyone for a favour.

  1. Footage, or something that stands in for it.

    The best material is the work itself: hands, tools, screens, the actual room. Offices, drone shots and logo animations appear in none of the ads on this site that work. If the workplace cannot be filmed at all, and for cleared or regulated employers it often cannot, that is a production constraint rather than a stop sign. One of the ads above solves it with a generated stand-in and the employer says so plainly.

  2. People, and their permission.

    One colleague who is happy on camera is worth more than a crew. Get the release signed before the camera comes out rather than after, agree in writing where the video may be reused, and decide now what happens when that person leaves. That last question is the one that catches teams out eighteen months later.

  3. Brand: logo, colours, type, and the safe zone they live in.

    You need the marks marketing will actually approve, in files you can use at speed. The constraint that matters is geometry: platform chrome sits over the edges of your frame, so nothing important goes in the bands each platform documents. The format table below has the figures.

  4. Voice, if you are using one.

    Recorded or synthetic, the same rule applies: it follows the on-screen cards rather than replacing them. A video whose meaning depends on audio is a video most of its audience will not understand.

The permission step, in five lines

  1. Get the release signed before you film, not after. Afterwards you are negotiating, not asking.
  2. Write down where the video may be reused: paid social, career site, job posts, outreach, the lot, or a named subset.
  3. Name who signs the video off, and keep it to two people at most. Three is a committee and committees produce mission statements.
  4. Agree what happens when the person leaves. Most teams pull the video; some agree a window. Either is fine, deciding in advance is the point.
  5. Keep a record of which video used which consent. In a year, with forty videos, you will need it.
Free employee photo release formThe full governance version, for employer brand video

If the video is carrying your employer brand rather than one vacancy, the employer brand video guide has twelve examples and the governance that goes with them.

Step 5 of 8

Step 5. Recruitment video production, four ways to actually make it

There are four honest routes and the right one is decided by frequency, not by ambition. One hero film a year and one video per vacancy every week are different problems, and the mistake is solving the second with the tools built for the first.

Phone and a free editor

Best for: Your first one, and any single urgent role.

A recent phone shoots better footage than the equipment most recruitment videos were made with a decade ago. Shoot vertical, keep the subject in decent light, get the microphone close if anyone is talking, and cut it in whatever free editor you already have. The ceiling is real but the floor is much higher than people expect.

Where it stops. It does not scale. Every new vacancy is a new shoot, and the fifth one is when the calendar stops cooperating.

A template you fill in

Best for: A steady trickle of roles that all look similar.

Build one branded structure and refill it per role. The gain is not speed on the first video, it is recognition on the fifth: after a few posts the format itself starts carrying the brand, and nobody has to argue about design again.

Where it stops. Somebody still has to open the editor and do it, and templates drift when four people edit them.

Generate from the job post

Best for: Weekly hiring, several markets, or a small team with more vacancies than hours.

This is what our own product does, so treat the next paragraph as first-hand rather than neutral. You paste a job URL, the system pulls the title, requirements, perks, logo, fonts and brand colours into a locked template, you choose how the visuals are made, you add a voice if you want one, and you export the cuts. The three visual routes exist because employers differ on this: fully generated scenes when there is no footage for every role or region, real employee photos brought into on-brand layouts when the brand needs real faces, or approved assets only with no synthetic people at all, which is the common choice where portrait rights or AI policy are strict.

Where it stops. It is very good at turning a written vacancy into a finished, on-brand ad quickly, and it is not a substitute for a day on site with a camera when what you actually need is footage of your own people. If the brief calls for a specific human moment, film the human moment.

An agency or a crew

Best for: The one film a year that has to carry the whole employer brand.

When the output is a hero piece with a concept, a script, talent, locations and a grade, hire people who do that for a living. It is the right call for a flagship, and the result will beat anything on this list.

Where it stops. The lead time and the cost make it the wrong instrument for a vacancy that opened on Tuesday. Nobody books a crew for a shift-work role in Amersfoort.

We are not going to print a price range for agency production. Every page on this subject that does prints a range with no source behind it, and the honest answer is that it depends on the crew, the country and the day count. What we can price is our own side, and that is on the pricing page.

Step 6 of 8

Step 6. Formats, and how long a recruitment video should be

This is where most of the advice on this subject falls apart. Google's own AI Overview for this query, read on 2 September 2026, tells you to aim for one to two minutes and to hold your phone horizontally, and attaches no source to either instruction. So here are the figures the platforms themselves publish, each with the page it came from and the date we read it.

Three kinds of figure get mixed together whenever anyone writes about video length, and separating them is most of the value in the table. A technical requirement is a wall: go past it and the ad is rejected. A design recommendation is a platform's own opinion, which is worth more than a blogger's and less than a test. Not published means the platform has never stated a number, and every page that gives you one for that placement invented it.

The ratio question answers itself once you accept that the placement decides. Vertical 9:16 for Reels, Stories and TikTok. 4:5 for the Facebook and Instagram feeds, and it is the workhorse if you can only deliver one cut. 1:1 for LinkedIn, where square takes more feed height on mobile than 16:9 and never gets letterboxed. And 16:9 for YouTube, which is the one placement where landscape is right. Cropping a landscape master into a reel is visible from across a room.

Published length and ratio figures by placement, with source and read date

PlacementRatioLengthTypeSafe zoneSource, and the date we read it
LinkedIn feedFull spec →1:1, 4:5 or 16:93 seconds to 30 minutesTechnical requirementNone published, for any LinkedIn ad formatLinkedIn Help Centre, video ads Read 16 August 2026.
LinkedIn feed, recommendedFull spec →1:1, 4:5 or 16:915 to 30 seconds for all placementsDesign recommendationNone publishedLinkedIn Help Centre, video ads Read 16 August 2026.
Instagram ReelsFull spec →9:160 seconds to 15 minutesTechnical requirementTop 14% (250 px), bottom 20% (340 px)Meta Ads Guide, Instagram Reels video Read 5 August 2026.
Instagram StoriesFull spec →9:161 second to 60 minutesTechnical requirementTop 14% (250 px), bottom 20% (340 px)Meta Ads Guide, Instagram Stories video Read 5 August 2026.
Instagram feedFull spec →4:5 or 1:1Follows the Reels figure; Meta publishes no separate feed capNot publishedNone published for 4:5 or 1:1. Meta's safe-zone page covers only 9:16 feed video, which it points back at the Reels guidanceMeta Ads Guide, Instagram Reels video Read 5 August 2026.
Facebook feedFull spec →4:51 second to 241 minutesTechnical requirementNone published for feedMeta Ads Guide, Facebook Feed video Read 16 August 2026.
TikTok in-feed, auctionFull spec →9:16Up to 10 minutesTechnical requirementDocumented; the tool page carries the figuresTikTok Ads Help, auction in-feed ads Read 5 August 2026.
YouTube skippable in-streamFull spec →16:9No published maximum, under 3 minutes recommended. Viewer can skip after 5 secondsDesign recommendationPlayer controls overlay the bottom of the frameGoogle Ads Help, skippable in-stream Read 16 August 2026.
YouTube non-skippable in-streamFull spec →16:930 seconds in auction, 60 seconds in reservationTechnical requirementPlayer controls overlay the bottom of the frameGoogle Advertising Policies, video ad requirements Read 16 August 2026.
YouTube bumperFull spec →16:9Up to 6 secondsTechnical requirementPlayer controls overlay the bottom of the frameGoogle Ads Help, non-skippable in-stream Read 16 August 2026.

Each row links to the tool page that carries the full specification for that platform, which is the single source of truth. Safe zones are the areas platform chrome never covers.

The exact figures, and the pages they came from, are on the mockup page for each platform.

See your own cut inside the platform chrome

What the AI Overview says

one to two minutes

Google’s AI Overview for how to make a recruitment video, read 2 September 2026. No source is attached to the figure.

What our shipped ads measure

7.38 to 14.04 seconds

All 8 product-made ads in our examples library. The 4 on this page run 8.04 to 14.04 seconds. Method: ffprobe, on the files at the URLs this page plays, on 19 August 2026.

Now the first-hand half, which is the answer to how long a recruitment video should be that nothing on this SERP will give you.

The four ads on this page run between 8.04 and 14.04 seconds. Widen it to all eight product-made ads in our examples library and the range is 7.38 to 14.04. Those are measured durations, taken with ffprobe on 19 August 2026 from the same files this page plays, not targets we set afterwards. Not one of them is a minute long.

That is not an argument that a minute is always wrong. A careers film on your own site, watched by someone who chose to click it, can run three minutes and hold. It is an argument that the advice everyone repeats was written for a different placement. In a paid feed you are not competing with other recruitment videos, you are competing with a thumb, and the related searches on this query include thirty second recruitment videos for a reason.

The working rule: under fifteen seconds for feed placements, under thirty for anything with a play button the viewer chose to press, and longer only when you can name the person who will sit through it.

Step 7 of 8

Step 7. Publish it in the cut each placement wants

One video, several deliveries. The mistake is exporting a single file and pushing it everywhere, because every surface below wants a different shape, a different length and a different first frame.

  1. Paid social

    Where a recruitment video earns its keep, because it reaches people who were not looking. Deliver 9:16 for Reels, Stories and TikTok, 4:5 for the Meta feeds, 1:1 for LinkedIn. Keep the action visible from two seconds and inside the safe zone, and run a static variant of the same message so the campaign can tell you which one the audience prefers.

  2. Organic social

    The same cuts, posted from the company page and, more usefully, from the hiring manager's own account. Organic will not carry a hiring campaign on its own, and it makes the paid version look like part of something rather than an interruption.

  3. The job post itself

    Embed it at the top of the vacancy page, above the responsibilities. Someone who clicked through from an ad has already shown interest; the video is what stops them bouncing off a wall of bullet points.

  4. Career site

    This is the one place a longer cut belongs. The visitor chose to be there, so a ninety second version with more of the team can hold, and the fifteen second cuts can sit beneath it per role.

  5. Outreach and messaging

    A link in an InMail or an email sequence, and the same video works in a talent community update. It is the cheapest reuse available and almost nobody does it.

  6. In the room

    Careers fairs, open evenings, screens in reception, the laptop in a first interview. One of the ads on this page is an open-evening invitation rather than a vacancy ad, which is the version almost nobody makes and the lowest-commitment ask you can put in front of someone.

Before any of it goes live, look at the cut inside the placement rather than in a player. Platform chrome eats the edges of every frame, and creative that survives a full-width preview can still lose its call to action to a progress bar.

Drop your cut into the free ad mockup tool and look at it inside the chrome before you spend anything on it.

Where the finished cuts go, and in what order, is the subject of the social media recruiting guide.

Step 8 of 8

Step 8. Measure it, and be honest about what you can measure

Two numbers decide whether the video worked, and neither of them is views. Qualified applications, and what each one cost. Everything else is diagnostics.

Views are the number everyone quotes and the number that travels worst, because a view is not a fixed unit. Each platform defines its own threshold and they are not close to each other. Google publishes its thresholds, so here they are, read from its own help page.

What counts as a view on YouTube

Source: Google Ads Help, About YouTube ads and view metrics , read 2 September 2026.

FormatWhen a view is counted
Skippable in-streamA viewer watches 30 seconds, or to the end if the ad is shorter, or clicks an element of the ad.
Bumper and non-skippable in-streamNo views are counted at all. Google's reason: the viewer cannot skip, so their intent is not clear.
In-feed videoA viewer clicks the thumbnail through to the watch page, or watches the inline autoplay for at least 10 seconds.
YouTube ShortsA viewer watches 10 seconds, or to the end if the ad is shorter, or clicks the call to action, Like, Comments or Share.

Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok all report a video-view metric of their own, and all three define it differently from Google. We tried to read each platform's own help article on 2 September 2026 and could not: Meta returned an error page and the LinkedIn and TikTok articles we could reach did not carry the definition. So we are not going to tell you what those thresholds are. Read the metric definition inside the ad manager you are actually reporting from, and never compare a view count across two platforms without checking that they are counting the same thing.

That is the whole reason a view count from one platform cannot be compared with a view count from another, and why a report that adds them together is worse than no report. Read the metric definition inside the ad manager you are reporting from, every time, before you put a number in a slide.

The diagnostics that actually help you improve the next video are further down the funnel and easier to trust. Hold rate, meaning how much of the video the average viewer sits through, tells you whether the opening is working. Click-through tells you whether the offer is. Application starts against application completions tells you whether the landing page is the problem rather than the ad. And time to first qualified applicant is the number a hiring manager can feel.

Give any version at least a week and a real budget before you judge it, change one thing at a time, and keep the losing cut. The most useful test in this whole discipline is the same message as a video and as a static image, run against each other, because the answer differs by audience and by role more than anyone expects.

You will notice this page quotes no performance figures of its own. We hold two first-party numbers and both are still with the customer for verification, so neither appears here. When they clear, they will appear with the customer named and the measurement described. A number without a source is not evidence, it is decoration.

One customer runs this loop weekly across six roles: the Dunhill story has the detail.

Recruitment video ideas when the concept will not come

Eight formats that work, roughly in order of how little they cost to make. Each one is a whole video, not a theme: pick one, do it properly, and do not try to combine three.

  1. One person, one question

    Ask a colleague in the role you are hiring for a single question and film the answer on a phone. What surprised you in your first month is the best of them. Sixty seconds of filming, fifteen seconds of usable answer.

  2. The work itself, in close-up

    No talking. Hands, tools, screens, machines, with the role and the pay on screen. This is the format that works best for trades, warehouse, hospitality and manufacturing, and it needs no one to be comfortable on camera.

  3. The number nobody else puts on screen

    Lead with the salary band, the shift pattern, or the days on site, held for a full second in the largest type in the video. In sectors where everyone hides it, this is the entire creative idea.

  4. A day in the role, as five shots

    Arrive, start, the hard part, the good part, leave. Five shots, three seconds each, no narration. Concrete beats aspirational every time.

  5. The honest downside

    Name the thing about the job that puts people off, then say who thrives on it anyway. Early starts, on-call weeks, the commute. It filters candidates before they cost you an interview and it reads as confidence rather than weakness.

  6. The invitation, not the vacancy

    An open evening, a site tour, a coffee with the team. There is no application to be rejected from, so the ask is far smaller. One of the ads above is exactly this and it is the format most teams never try.

  7. The same role, in every language you hire in

    One structure, several language versions. If you recruit across borders, this is where the value is: an ad written in the candidate's language for work in another country outperforms a translated afterthought.

  8. The manager, in thirty seconds

    The person who will actually be their boss, saying what they are looking for. Nothing builds trust faster and nothing is cheaper to film.

If none of these fits, the constraint is usually the brief rather than the imagination. Go back to the single strongest fact and build the video around that one thing.

The five mistakes that kill a recruitment video

Every one of these is common, expensive, and visible in the first two seconds of the finished file.

  1. 01The video is about the company, not the job.

    Founding year, office, values, a drone shot of the car park. None of it answers the only question the viewer has, which is whether this job is better than their current one. Employer brand has its own place and its own page; a vacancy ad is not it.

  2. 02It was shot landscape and cropped afterwards.

    The most repeated bad advice on this topic, and it is repeated by the AI Overview on this very query. Decide the placement before you film. A 16:9 master squeezed into 9:16 loses the sides of every frame, which is where you put the person.

  3. 03The important information is under the platform chrome.

    Captions, buttons and progress bars sit over the edges of your frame. On Meta's vertical placements that is the top 14 percent and the bottom 20 percent. Creative that looks finished in a preview can lose its call to action entirely in the feed.

  4. 04It only works with sound on.

    If the meaning lives in the voice-over and the screen carries a logo, most of the audience gets nothing. Write the cards first. Captions are not an accessibility extra here, they are the script.

  5. 05Nobody agreed what happens to it afterwards.

    The video runs, the person in it leaves, and now there is an argument. Consent, reuse scope and an exit rule, agreed in writing before the camera comes out, cost ten minutes and save the whole asset.

Questions about making a recruitment video

What should you say in a recruitment video?

Four things, in this order: what the job is, the single strongest reason to take it, where it is, and what to do next. The role goes on screen in the first half second and the strongest fact by two seconds. Everything else is optional, and most of what teams want to add, values, history, benefits lists, belongs somewhere other than a vacancy ad.

How long should a recruitment video be?

For a feed placement, under fifteen seconds. The four ads on this page run between 8.04 and 14.04 seconds, measured with ffprobe on 19 August 2026. For a video someone chose to click, on your career site or a job post, thirty to ninety seconds holds. The platforms publish their own figures and they vary hugely: LinkedIn recommends 15 to 30 seconds, YouTube bumpers cap at 6 seconds, and a Facebook feed video may technically run to 241 minutes. The table above carries each figure with its source.

How to make a good recruitment video?

Be specific and be early. A good one names the role and the strongest fact before the viewer decides to scroll, shows the actual work rather than the building, uses a real person from the team, keeps the action visible in frame, and works with the sound off. A bad one is usually not badly shot, it is vague: competitive salary, great team, exciting opportunity. Replace every adjective you can with a number.

How much does a recruitment video cost?

It ranges from nothing to five figures, and any page that gives you a tighter range than that without naming a source is guessing. A phone, a colleague and a free editor cost you an afternoon. A template you refill per role costs a subscription. A booked crew for a hero film is priced by day count, location and post-production, and it varies by country enough that a single number would mislead you. What we can price is our own side, and that is on the pricing page.

Can you show examples of recruitment videos?

Four are on this page, playing inside the placements they ran in: 9:16 on Instagram, 1:1 on LinkedIn, 4:5 on Facebook and 16:9 on YouTube. Fifteen more recruitment ads, taken apart hook by hook, are on the examples page, and twelve employer brand videos with the governance behind them are on the employer brand video guide. None of them carries a performance claim, because we do not publish numbers we cannot source.

What is a recruitment video?

A short video that advertises a job or an employer to candidates on the channels they already use, rather than waiting to be found on a job board. The recruitment video hub covers the format itself, where it fits and what it is not. This page is only about how to make one.

Do you need a camera crew to make a recruitment video?

No, and for a single vacancy you usually should not book one. A recent phone shoots better footage than most recruitment videos were made with a decade ago. Crews earn their fee on the one flagship film a year that has to carry the whole employer brand. For a role that opened on Tuesday, the answer is a phone, a template, or generating the ad from the job post.

How do you make a corporate recruitment video without filming anyone?

It happens more often than people admit: cleared roles, regulated sites, night shifts, or simply nobody willing to be on camera. Three routes work. Use approved brand assets only, with no people in frame at all. Use existing approved photography of the team, brought into an on-brand layout. Or use a generated stand-in and say so, which is what one of the employers on this page does. The one thing not to do is film the building instead and hope nobody notices the job never appears.

Make the first one this week

The hardest recruitment video is the first one, and it is hardest for reasons that have nothing to do with filming. Pick one open vacancy. Fill in the seven-field brief. Write six cards. That is the afternoon, and after it the rest is logistics. If you would rather not open an editor at all, paste the job post into RecruitmentAds.com and it comes back as a finished ad set, video and static, inside your brand template and cut for the feeds you are going to run it in. Or start smaller: drop whatever creative you already have into the free mockup tool and see whether it survives the platform chrome.

Try the free mockup tool