Innovative businesses know they need to use innovative means to attract innovative talent. Prompted by Twitter’s recent foray into viral video recruitment, we decided to assemble five of our favourite recruitment videos from the not too distant past (including those that are so bad, they’re kind of good).

Meet the Class of Twitter HQ

When Twitter decided to spread the word that it wanted to add to its Twit-team, it didn’t fall into the old recruitment-video trap. You know: Semi-comatose talking heads droning in front of swooshy, morphing text that looks like it was composed in Windows Movie Maker.

No. Twitter, perhaps not surprisingly, chose hip. Viral-worthy hip.

In a clever clip making the rounds on YouTube, Twitter created a homage to the “Rushmore” trailer. We see members of departments, teams and clubs (the “design” team cutting out paper copies of the Twitter bird is especially choice.)

See the Twitter video below. If you want to compare it to the “Rushmore” original, here you go.

Lip Dub Recruitment by Connect Ventures

Last year, we wrote about a New York-based company that created a video featuring “lipdub” — a one-take video that choreographs an elaborate lip-synch to a popular song.

In addition to being flat-out fun to watch, the video by Connected Ventures (a company that describes itself as “a group of friends who work for Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker”) was designed to attract people who might dance to a different tune.

Skype’s Chilling Recruitment Video

Skype took a completely different tack last year, but it was no less effective. In fact, there’s no way for the viewer to tell that this bizarre and strangely chilling piece of work is a recruitment video unless they choose to follow the link shown at its conclusion.

Swedbank makes prospective staff wait to get payoff

Of course, not all recruitment videos on YouTube are serious. Check out this one for a European banking concern. Stick it out to the end; the payoff is worth it.

Licence 2 Chill (Worst recruitment video ever?)

And then there are the recruitment videos that were best left unmade. Yup, it may have seemed like a good idea at the time but this recruitment video for the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) can be described as anything but chillin’.

Image by Justin Cormack