Government consulting companies face interesting employer branding and recruitment marketing challenges, especially when taking a real-story approach to building content.

Because projects can be related to national security, employees can’t publicly discuss their innovative work. Also, forget sweet office shots—sometimes government consultants work in SCIFs (secured offices that don’t allow cell phones, much less cameras). And, because work often occurs on client sites amongst government employees and not fellow consultants, it can be harder for consultants to tell stories of workplace camaraderie about their government contracting company coworkers.  

Given those challenges, how does a government consultancy communicate their unique employee experience to their candidates?  In Visionist’s case, the company engaged Stories Incorporated to help define what it means to work at Visionist and increase its employer brand recognition.

Visionist engaged Stories Incorporated to help define what it means to work there and increase its employer brand recognition.

Creating employer branding content for a government contractor

Stories Inc. spent a day and a half at Visionist’s headquarters in Columbia, Maryland, conducting filmed interviews with 15 “visionists.” With Visionist’s encouragement and support, most of the storytellers took time away from their work on client sites to talk with the Stories Inc. team, which was just one indication that Visionist values creating interesting employee experiences over obsessing about hours billed.

Throughout the interview process, Stories Inc. uncovered stories that embodied what it means for Visionist employees to live the company’s values and pursue its mission. Since the SCIF was off-limits, Stories Inc. got creative with b-roll filming, even using a drone to get a shot of all the storytellers waving from the roof of the office building!

After going through all the stories and footage from the interview day, Stories Inc. had plenty of content to create a video series that brought to life Visionist’s unique approach to the employee 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 about this small government consulting company were viewed over 4,500 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 interviewee 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.” They were even able to attract experienced candidates from top commercial companies who said they wouldn’t have considered government consulting if not for the videos they watched about Visionist’s unique approach to work and culture. 

“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.”
– Candidate to Chris Berry, President

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.”