Shooting a recruitment video on your phone: shot list, sound and schedule

A recruitment ad on Meta lives or dies by its video, and most agency campaigns still run on a stock photo with text on top. That is down to the idea that moving images require a film crew and a four-figure quote. With your phone and one hour on your client's shop floor you can shoot material for three to five ads. Below: what to agree beforehand, which three shots you always take and what to leave alone.

Why a real employee beats a polished corporate video

The candidate is scrolling a feed full of other people talking. He recognizes a corporate film with drone shots, color grading and music as advertising within a second. A technician in work clothes telling you what he did that morning reads as information from a colleague.

You get a selection effect for free: someone who sees the hall and hears the temperature mentioned knows whether this work suits him. That saves conversations with people who drop out after one tour. Same logic as employer branding on a small budget: real material does more than something that merely looks expensive, and you simply reshoot it once an ad is worn out.

Settle this with your client before you set foot on site

Shooting days rarely fail on technology, but often on agreements nobody made. Send this list a week ahead to the person who actually decides.

• Who takes part. Two to four volunteers, and saying no has no consequences. An employee who is there because his supervisor said so shows up as exactly that on camera.
• Written consent per person. Record where you use the footage, for how long, and that a recording is pulled on request. Portrait rights and the GDPR both apply; have your own lawyer review your form once.
• What must stay out of frame. Client names on boxes, order lists, screens, license plates. Ask — this is where approval falls apart afterwards.
• Safety comes before the shot. If protective equipment is mandatory on the floor, it is mandatory on camera. One employee without a helmet costs you the video and the client.
• Who approves, and when. One round, within 48 hours, by one person.
• Who may use it. Only your campaign, or the client on his own channels too? Agree on that now.

The three shots you always want

There are three kinds of shot, and with those you can edit any ad you need.

1. The answer. The employee framed from chest to just above the head, answering one question. Fifteen to twenty-five seconds. This shot carries the message.
2. The work. Hands doing something: a reach truck pulling out a pallet, a weld seam, an IV being connected. Five to ten seconds per action, camera still, no zoom. This shot holds the viewer.
3. The environment. One wide shot per space: the hall, the van, the ward, the building site on arrival. It answers the question "where would I end up".

Which questions to ask

You direct with your question, not with a script. Ask short questions and have the employee answer in full sentences, so you never have to edit your own voice out.

• What was the first thing you did this morning when you came in?
• What do you do here that you didn't do at your previous employer?
• What does someone need to be able to do to keep up here on day one?

Shoot every answer twice: the first take is the rehearsal, the second is usable.

Format, sound and light

Shoot vertical, because the format determines your reach

Shoot vertical, 9:16, at the highest resolution your device handles. Reels, Stories and TikTok are full-screen vertical; horizontal material gets squeezed into a postage stamp with bars. From 9:16 you can still crop to 4:5 for the feed; the other way round does not work. Tap and hold on the face to lock focus and exposure.

Sound is the one thing you cannot economize on

A picture that wobbles a little the viewer forgives; sound in which the ventilation is louder than the employee he does not. Use a lavalier — a clip-on microphone — on the collar, a hand's width below the chin and turned out of frame. If you don't have one, place a second phone thirty to fifty centimeters away just outside the frame and sync later on a hand clap.

The built-in microphone in a production hall is not an option: it picks up reverb, compressed air, forklift beepers and the conversation two racks down. Record ten seconds as a test first and listen back with earbuds. If the hall is too loud, film the talking shots in the canteen and the work in the hall.

Light and background without equipment

Put your employee facing the light: towards a window or the brightest part of the hall. Never with a window behind him, or he becomes a silhouette, and not directly under a fluorescent strip, which drops shadow into the eye sockets. Choose a background with depth — racking, a machine — instead of a white wall.

The first three seconds are a separate product

Your ad is not judged on the video but on the start of it. Begin mid-sentence, on the face or on the hands — never on a logo or a van pulling up. Have every employee record three to five different opening lines so you can test hooks against each other. One creative without variants is the most common mistake in recruitment campaigns on social media.

Usable opening lines are concrete: "I drive a reach truck in the freezer here, minus twenty-two degrees." What does not work: "Hi, I'm Kevin and I work at…"

Subtitles, because a large share of viewers watch with the sound off

Burn your subtitles in and correct the automatic version by hand: technical terms, brand names and accents go wrong as a rule, and one wrong word in the first line costs you the viewer. Keep the text in the middle third of the screen: the top and bottom carry the platform interface.

One hour on site, material for three to five ads

Without a schedule you walk around for an hour and end up with two usable clips. With this schedule you fill a campaign.

1. 0–10 minutes: walk the site, pick your spot, check light and sound, listen back to the test recording, confirm who is taking part.
2. 10–42 minutes: four employees, eight minutes each. Two questions, each shot twice, plus three opening lines.
3. 42–54 minutes: B-roll. At least eight separate ten-second shots: hands, machine, walkway, the outside of the building.
4. 54–60 minutes: buffer for the shot you forgot, thank-yous, collecting consent forms.

Worked example. Assumptions: four employees, two usable answers each, and one ad consists of a 3-second hook, a 15-second answer and 7 seconds of B-roll. Four times two is eight answer clips; count on keeping half after a strict selection, so four. That ad runs 3 + 15 + 7 = 25 seconds. One hour therefore yields three to five ads — not thirty. The schedule adds up too: 10 + 32 + 12 + 6 = 60 minutes.

What not to do

• Voice-over on stock footage. The candidate recognizes stock, and it says nothing about this particular employer.
• Letting the director talk. He sells the company; the candidate wants to know what the work feels like. Five seconds is fine, no more.
• Having someone read a script. You hear it immediately. A stumbling real sentence beats a smooth recited one.
• Music underneath a talking employee. It makes him neither clearer nor more credible.
• An intro bumper with a logo. Three wasted seconds, exactly where you cannot afford to lose them.
• One ninety-second video as your only asset. You need variants to test with.

The video wins attention, but it doesn't close. Make sure the text it lands on promises what the footage promises: how to write a job ad candidates actually read is covered separately.

Conclusion: the shot list you take with you

Filming with your phone is not a matter of talent but of preparation. Run through this list before you leave.

• A signed consent form per participant, before the camera goes on
• Phone: storage free, airplane mode, lens clean, 9:16, focus and exposure locked
• Lavalier plus cable or batteries, and a ten-second test recording you listened back to
• Per employee: two questions times two takes, plus three opening lines
• Eight ten-second B-roll shots and one wide environment shot per space
• One shot in which nobody talks and people are simply working — your best hook material

Want this material to end up in a campaign that drives candidates rather than likes? Book a call — we'll go through your ads and your footage together.