The founders of Visionist were proud of the culture at the company they had built. People loved working there, and Visionist was featured every year on local best places to work list. But, despite the awards and rapid growth, Visionist still faced the same uphill battle that many companies face when it comes to recruiting: it had less brand recognition than the larger, better-known brands and found it challenging to compete with those companies in attracting talent.

To overcome its brand recognition hurdle, Visionist needed to provide a window into what it’s really like to work there, as its amazing culture was a true competitive advantage over some of the more recognizable brands it went up against for talent. Bringing Visionist’s culture to the table in the recruitment process would level the brand recognition playing field.

Visionist engaged Stories Inc. to help it do just that.

Creating content for employer branding

Stories Inc. spent a day and a half at Visionist’s headquarters in Columbia, Maryland, conducting filmed interviews with 15 “visionists” to uncover stories that embodied what it’s like to work there, what it means to pursue the company’s mission, and what it means to live its values. While on site, Stories Inc. also captured b-roll footage that provided a good sense of the office environment at Visionist. The b-roll footage even included views from a drone!

After going through all the stories and footage from the interview day, Stories Inc. created a video series covering several themes that truly captured the Visionist experience.

Sharing the content

In addition to posting the new videos front and center on its website, Visionist started weaving them into its everyday recruiting processes and highlighting them in early emails with candidates. “We are getting more interest from applicable candidates once we have initiated the conversation,” says Michelle Flesher, Director of Personnel at Visionist. “The submission of resumes has grown.”

Amplifying the content

Visionist also shared its new videos through its social media channels, and boosted the videos’ reach using Facebook ads. On average, three videos posted by this mid-sized government contractor were viewed over 4,800 times by targeted groups of passive candidates on Facebook alone.

Measuring the impact

In addition to the videos’ impressive engagement metrics, Visionist leadership was excited about the qualitative data that came in from new hires who had consumed the videos. One candidate told Visionist’s President Chris Berry, “I was looking for a good company to work for and I visited your website and watched your videos and was impressed, so I submitted my resume.” Another candidate noted, “I watched the videos and was able to get a good feel for the kind of people that work at Visionist and the leadership. I liked what I saw and heard.”

Chris found that the benefits of the projects transcended Visionist’s employer brand. “Our objective for contracting with Stories Inc. was to develop videos that would increase our brand recognition for recruiting,” Chris said. “We were pleasantly surprised to discover that not only did it help with recruiting, but it helped develop new business opportunities for us.”