This weekend I was checking out the Sleepy's career Web site and found its excellent recruitment video targeting retail salespeople. I like it a lot because of what feels like very honest employee interviews without a lot of scripting. Examples - a bank manager turned mattress salesman refers to banking as a "thankless profession" and talks about being "burned out by banking," a female salesperson says she is one of the top earners in the company then quickly qualifies that as "top female" earners, and another salesman admits that "no one really grows up wanting to sell mattresses."
Along with good production values, the video excels because it doesn't have one second of B-roll. You don't see salespeople working with customers or happy people pretending to load a new mattress in their minivan while cheesy music plays. It's all about the employees and their Sleepy's experiences, which feel real. To me, they don't sound like puppets, and I'm happily surprised by some of the content that I wouldn't expect to get through an edit by corporate communications or the legal department.
Along with the good, there are a few criticisms - the video is very long (about 15 minutes) and huge to download (more than a 50 MB Flash file), neither of which are ideal for the Web. Maybe there is a shorter edit that would work, or multiple clips? Also, the video ends with three minutes of Sleepy's TV commercials, which seem out of place. Lastly, I could not find the video on YouTube - you would think that Sleepy's would want something this positive to be shared among job-seeking salespeople.
