Cisco's recruiting video pitches culture where employees don’t have to conform

Cisco Systems has, for several years, recruited with the tagline, “Be You. With Us.” In order to explain just what that means to the talent the company needs—technical specialists working in software, security and cloud who aren’t looking for new jobs—the Talent Brand team turned to video. “We wanted to create a mini-movie—not just a video—as the cornerstone of a set of videos,” according to Cisco. The video has won first place in the “Workplace Culture” category of PR Daily’s Video & Visual Awards.

The project included a set of vignette videos that would connect thematically to the main video, featuring real employees sharing their sentiment for Cisco in key hiring pools. Working with a talent brand consultancy, Cisco settled on the theme, “Don’t Follow the Herd.”

That led to the adoption of the “technicolor” tactic—all visuals in black and white except for Cisco-related elements, which appear in color. The team also inserted several Easter eggs—code for candidates to find and solve and security “bug” icons to discover.

The video features no dialogue (accommodating the audio-off default of many social feeds). The team also created two versions of the video, a long one featuring job descriptions and a shorter version for social media and other channels that people would be more likely to watch to its completion.

The video was shot on Cisco’s San Jose, California campus with employees serving as the stars (and 120 as extras). It was rolled out first on LinkedIn, where the team ran an A/B test confirming the vignettes would be more hyper-targeted to talent and the cornerstone video would help achieve the broader awareness goals.

In addition to performing well in terms of views, the videos generated more than 1,000 clicks to the company’s career site.

Congratulations to the team of Marcy Andrews, Carmen Collins and Raymond Leung.