A new Scottish business has invented a cost-effective way of bringing recruitment advertisements to life and thus opening the door for employers to a much wider pool of media-savvy candidates.
Glasgow-based VacancyVids is the world's first automatic recruitment video creation service and it is already attracting attention from major players in the lucrative recruitment sector who have immediately recognised its benefits.
And VacancyVids owner Peter Dobson, a recruitment professional with many years' experience, said that the business is measurably scalable, not only in the UK but globally, since the process is not affected by the language used.
He said: "VacancyVids is totally unique. It works because recruitment videos are a proven method of attracting more aware and more forward-thinking candidates for career opportunities.
"Recruitment companies have been attracted to videos for years, but until now it has always been too expensive. This system brings it within everyone's budget."
Newcastle-born Dobson has been operating in Glasgow and Edinburgh for 12 years, specialising in recruitment technology and running his own successful recruitment agency.
For the past four years, he has been running several recruitment websites including UK Recruitment, one of the largest free to post job boards in the UK.
It was from the recruitment websites that VacancyVids evolved, as Dobson pondered how to make video adverts more accessible.
He said: "I was looking at ways to enhance my recruitment website, particularly improving video content. The cost of video was prohibitive - but that applied to most other recruiters.
"I started to explore whether I could build something myself, and that meant teaching myself a whole new range of coding skills which would allow me to turn text into a video."
VacancyVids allows recruiters to fill in a webform, submit it, and a snappy 30-second video is automatically created. It provides a précis of information about the position and uses Google Maps to show the location of the vacancy.
Dobson has already signed up the Glasgow-based Hope Recruits consultancy to resell recruitment videos to their clients and is in advanced talks with an increasing number of other agencies attracted by the lure of an affordable video advertising solution. More than 100 recruiters and employers have also signed up online to create VacancyVids for their open job positions.
He said: "I'm really excited about going worldwide with this. It doesn't matter what language the text is in, it creates the video just the same, so the potential is enormous."
He is planning to recruit client service and sales staff for VacancyVids in the immediate future.
