TL;DR: Key Takeaway
The best electricians, carpenters, and techs already have jobs. To pull them, they need to know who you are and what it's like to work for you. Here's how contractors use video to recruit when job boards stopped working.
Ask any Connecticut contractor what's limiting growth and the answer is rarely leads. It's people. There's more work than crew, and the job posting on Indeed gets a dozen unqualified applicants and zero experienced tradespeople.
Here's why: the electrician you want is currently employed. He's not browsing job boards. He'll only move for a company he already knows and believes is better than where he is. If he's never heard of you, you're not in the running, no matter what you pay.
The shift
Recruiting skilled trades isn't a job-posting problem. It's a brand problem. The candidates you want have to see your company repeatedly before they'll consider it.
A tradesperson choosing an employer is asking questions a job description can't answer: What are the trucks like? Is the equipment maintained? Do the guys seem miserable? Does the owner show up on site? Is the work interesting or is it all service calls?
Video answers all of it in ninety seconds. A candidate watching your crew work, hearing a foreman talk about the company, and seeing the shop is doing the equivalent of a site visit before they've applied.
Follow one crew from the yard to the job site to wrap-up. No script, minimal talking. Let the candidate see the pace, the equipment, and the people. This is the most-watched recruiting format because it's the most honest.
One current employee, on site, answering 'why do you work here?' in their own words. Ideally someone who came from a competitor. Keep it under 60 seconds. This does for recruiting what customer testimonials do for sales.
You, on camera, talking directly to the person you want to hire: what you're building, what you expect, what you offer. Tradespeople want to know who they'd be working for. Make it personal and specific.
Your most impressive recent work, with drone footage if it's a large site. Skilled people want to work on projects they'll be proud of. Show them what they'd get to build.
Producing the video is half the job. Distribution is the other half, and it's where most companies stop short.
A single unfilled skilled position costs a contractor tens of thousands in turned-down work over a year. A recruiting video package, shot alongside your regular marketing content, is a fraction of that and gets used for years. And because the same production day yields customer-facing content, recruiting video rarely needs its own budget line.
Jared Saucier
Founder & Creative Director at Allora Media. Running paid advertising campaigns and producing professional media content for Connecticut businesses.
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