How to Get More Recruitment Leads with Visual Storytelling (Plus Templates)

The corporate world has been using storytelling to sell and market products and services for decades. And because storytelling is innately compelling, this tactic hasn’t stopped working just yet.

When a company tells its brand story well, it has the power to enhance the value of its products or services by more than 20 times.

So, why not do the same in your recruitment processes?

Better yet, why not use visuals to improve your employer brand stories?

Unfortunately, not many recruiters know how to use visual communication for storytelling to get more recruitment leads. It’s not discussed as much as in the recruiting and human resources circles.

But you don’t have to be one of those recruiters and hiring managers after you read this.

Your employer brand stories will help determine how successful you are at getting more quality recruitment leads.

The stories you need to tell when recruiting should be about your work environment, the impact of your products/services, and the people in your team.

If you want to learn more about how you can use the art of visual storytelling to improve your employer’s brand and attract better candidates, keep reading.

• Visual storytelling humanizes the recruitment process
• Step 1: Identify your main objective
• Step 2: Create your storyboard
• Step 3: Start creating visuals
• Step 4: Promote your visual content
• Step 5: Track your progress
• Other benefits of visual storytelling in HR and recruiting
• More HR templates for hiring, talent management, and onboarding

You probably have the content you want to use and are ready to put it out by this point.

Or you’ve most likely cleaned up your website’s careers page, polished your job descriptions, and even had a few candidates apply to your vacant positions. It seems like you are doing everything right.

However, do you know what can help you stand out from other organizations competing for the same top talent?

Corporations need to do a little extra in today’s competitive recruitment space and create a relatable, fun employer brand story to make getting that “yes” from target candidates a bit easier.

Social media graphics, presentation slides, infographics, posters, video clips, and similar visual storytelling formats can help give your brand that competitive edge.

Below are a few things you must consider when using visual storytelling in your recruitment process.

Visual storytelling success requires you to have an effective content strategy. 

However, you’ll also need a centralized process and a product with an internal champion, such as a CRO (Chief Recruiting Officer) or CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), to ensure clear and consistent brand messages.

But before all this, you’ll need first to identify your main objective.

Recruitment objectives are the goals you set to make sure you get top talent for your vacant positions. Your main goal should be to get the most qualified potential candidates for your business.

When searching for the right candidates, you can refine the quality of your search by only looking at resumes that match your job descriptions. 

Another objective of your visual storytelling efforts could be to help develop a diverse pool of qualified candidates. You should look to create a pool of the best talent possible by developing content stories that’ll attract these people to you. 

Visuals can help tell a comprehensive employer brand story about the stuff you’ll need to describe in the recruiting process.

For example, when you want to explain how your office looks like, it can prove tough to describe the place without starting to write paragraphs of information. However, a video of the office space can deliver the same brand message in seconds.

The short video below is a great example from the Piktochart team.

Once you have the main objective, you can start to develop a storytelling strategy. The best way to do this is to begin by storyboarding the relevant areas of focus or subject areas.

Your storyboard should be based on the recruitment objectives you come up with. You can create content hubs, posts, resources, and guides for potential employees.

For instance, if your main objective is to attract the best talent, develop content that you think would be relevant and useful to this audience. Create stories that will resonate with the top talent you’re looking for.

Leverage ideation and brainstorming sessions when creating this content, and consider all the suggestions from the group you task with this particular project.

It’s always good to work with a team when developing a storyboard. However, make sure everyone is working toward the main objective.

You can create content in-house, but you might want to strongly consider including a competent third party to help you with execution and ideation. Third parties can give you outside perspectives and specific content and industry expertise, which can help you get more than you would have on your own.

The main elements of a good story are typically the setting, plot, characters, conflict, and resolution. 

However, when it comes to recruitment, the story you’ll most likely be telling is the story of the brand or company and how candidates and applicants can relate to it.

The specifics of the brand story are something you’ll ultimately decide. However, they’re often dictated by the company’s unique evolution and journey. Although, you don’t have to always talk about the company alone. You can craft stories centered on the talent you’re looking for.

However, if the viewer can see you don’t have authenticity, they will feel as if you’re duping them. So keep your visual content conversational, relatively informal, and use language that resonates with your target candidates.

If you’re using videos, keep your content short and sweet. Don’t fill your visual stories with unnecessary details or create long presentations because this will detract from your brand story. 

The more concise the visual storytelling, the higher the chance of positively impacting the talent pool you interact with. Use the following human resources templates to help you get started.

It’s time to promote your visuals!

First, you need to know which platforms will work best with your target audience. For example, Mailchimp’s recruiting team would instead use Instagram when trying to get the attention of potential candidates. This marketing automation company believes this is the best platform for visual storytelling to show recruits what to expect.

The tweet below is another stellar example by HubSpot’s recruiting team.

Share your employer brand story outside your company profiles and encourage your workforce to share it on their accounts like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Also, targeted digital ads can help drive clicks to your stories and the company’s career site. Many software tools can help you with managing ads. However, you can also use a consultant if you are unsure how to do it.

You don’t need a huge advertising budget to promote your story on different platforms. Even a small amount can significantly impact your recruitment promotion, especially when you know what you’re doing. 

It’s hard to manage something you can’t measure. You will not enjoy the benefits of your visual storytelling strategy if you don’t know how to determine how well it is doing. 

Ensure your website has a Google Analytics setup to regularly check how your content is performing.

For example, Cisco’s recruitment leaders measure how its social media platforms influence its recruiting funnel. The company uses metrics such as impressions and reach to analyze whether it’s getting awareness about its company culture and job opportunities.

Top-level recruiters also track engagement rates on social media or the number of followers interacting with the organization online. When using the Stories feature on social media platforms, measure viewer completion rates to identify the content that resonates with your target audience.

If you use paid advertising, test several different images and headlines for the same piece of content to know what works best.  

Aside from helping you get more high-quality recruitment leads, visual storytelling can also help you:

• Improve the candidate experience
• Enhance employee satisfaction

Candidates who feel disconnected from the recruitment process aren’t likely to accept what that company offers. So it’s important to make your candidates feel valued. 

Hiring managers and recruiters who master the art of visual storytelling can take advantage of this.

Tell the story of how employees are growing and succeeding in the role you’re looking to fill. Tell your candidates where they’ll fit in the company, the positive impact you’re offering in their lives, and what their daily work life will look like.

Candidates will feel more connected to your recruitment process when you make them the story’s heroes. Use visuals to show them what this would look like. The employee benefit infographic below is a good example.

Furthermore, you can also tell these stories in the job descriptions. When you paint realistic pictures and use conversational language, you’ll attract more top talent to apply for your vacant positions.

Like many initiatives, employer brand stories start from the top down. Think about it: most employees will mirror the mindset and tone of those in management and leadership positions.

If you create an employer brand story that your employees resonate with, even the most junior workers will embrace this resulting in a more connected and engaged staff. Showing this in your visual content will help increase your recruitment leads.

This visual storytelling culture can also help improve employee satisfaction and transform your current workforce into loyal advocates for the brand. In addition, satisfied employees are usually quick to offer up referrals which, in turn, will also help lead to an increase in quality recruitment leads.

Thus, companies may consider calculating eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) and get insights about employee engagement and make informed decisions to increase employee loyalty.”

Below is a preview of Piktochart’s visual templates for HR, recruiting, talent management reports, and employee onboarding.

You don’t have to make visuals from scratch because you can edit and customize these templates with just a few clicks. If you’re new to Piktochart, you can watch the short video tutorial on how to navigate your dashboard and find the best templates to suit your needs.

When done the right way, potential candidates will notice your efforts and eventually want to learn more about your company. 

Visual storytelling to help you attract the best talent is about commitment to long-term narrative creation and is not a short-term investment. 

With thoughtful research, creativity, and discipline, you can develop compelling employer brand stories that attract top talent and help you stand out from the rest. 

Your organization can stay competitive in recruitment by connecting, adapting, and responding to their target audiences’ emerging behaviors and needs. The evolution of visual storytelling over the years is a good example.

Visuals are no longer just a way of enhancing recruitment strategies. Hopefully, this article has helped show you why. 

Try Piktochart for free, get access to hundreds of editable templates for HR and recruiting, and see significant improvements in your recruitment leads.