Relocation Recruitment Video: Selling a Move to Ireland to International Candidates

You found the right person. They’re a senior data engineer in São Paulo, a clinical pharmacist in Manila or a validation specialist in Hyderabad. They’ve done three rounds of interviews, your hiring manager wants them, and the offer is out. Then, a week later, they turn it down. The reason is rarely the salary or the role. More often it’s the flat they couldn’t picture, the school their daughter might not get into, or a partner who couldn’t see a life for themselves in Dublin.

Talent acquisition teams in tech, pharma and healthcare know this pattern well. When you fill Critical Skills roles from overseas, the candidate is deciding whether to move their whole life, and the job is only one part of that. A relocation recruitment video for relocating international talent in Ireland gives that candidate, and the family they’re talking it through with, an honest look at what the move involves. This article covers what to film, how to keep it credible, and where it fits in your hiring process so it cuts late-stage offer declines and early leavers.

Relocation recruitment video – Destination Dublin – for LinkedIn

Why the Relocation Decision Needs Its Own Video

Most employer brand content sells the organisation: the mission, the culture, the people and the work. That still matters. But an overseas candidate who has already said yes to the interview process is past that stage. What they want to know now is harder to find on a careers page.

The questions candidates don’t ask in interviews

International candidates often hold back on practical worries during interviews. They don’t want to seem less committed than local applicants. So the questions go unasked, and they get answered instead by Reddit threads, expat forums and a cousin who lived in Dublin in 2015. None of those sources will show your organisation in a fair light, or even an accurate one.

Common unasked questions include:

• How hard is it really to find somewhere to rent, and how long does it take?
• What does a normal month cost once rent, childcare and transport are paid?
• Can my partner work, and will they find anything in their field?
• How do school places, GP registration and healthcare work for a new arrival?
• Will we have a social life, or will we be isolated for the first year?
• What’s the weather actually like in February?

The cost of getting it wrong

A declined offer at the final stage wastes weeks of recruiter and hiring manager time, and it often restarts a search that was already hard. An early leaver costs even more. You’ve paid for relocation support, permit processing and onboarding, and a Critical Skills hire who goes home after eight months takes all of that with them. In our experience, many of those exits trace back to a gap between what the candidate imagined and what they found when they arrived. Honest relocation content closes that gap before the contract is signed.

What International Candidates Actually Want to See

The best relocation video for candidates answers the questions above in a way that feels real. It sits alongside your existing employer brand library, which may already cover the working day, hard-to-fill roles or content in several languages. Its job is different, though. It’s about life outside the building.

Location and neighbourhood content

Candidates want to see where they would live, and not just the view from your office. If your site is in Sandyford, Cork’s Ringaskiddy, Galway’s Parkmore or a regional pharma campus, film the towns and suburbs your employees actually live in. Show the commute as it is, including the Luas at 8am or the drive in along the N40. Film the local shops, the parks, the coffee place people stop at. Shoot in a mix of weather; a video made entirely on one sunny June day will be noticed, and not in a good way.

Community and belonging

This is where overseas hires who have already made the move are your most valuable asset. A software engineer who moved from Lagos three years ago and now coaches an under-10s GAA team is more persuasive than any voiceover. Interview employees at different life stages: single graduates, couples, parents with young children, and people who arrived with a partner who had to rebuild a career. Let them talk about the hard parts too, such as the first lonely winter, the house hunt that took four months, or learning how things work at the local GP surgery.

It also helps to show the wider community. Cultural associations, places of worship, international food shops and sports clubs all tell a candidate that people like them have built full lives here.

Practical settling-in information

This is the content most employers leave out, and it’s often the most useful. Short, clear explainer pieces can walk candidates through:

• What your relocation package covers, and what it doesn’t
• How temporary accommodation works and how long it typically lasts
• The steps after arrival, such as registering with immigration, getting a PPS number and opening a bank account
• How school enrolment and childcare places work in the areas your staff live in
• What support your organisation gives spouses and partners

Keep this factual and date it. Permit rules and processing times change, so this content should point candidates to your HR team and official government sources rather than promise specific outcomes on camera.

How to Film Honest Location and Community Content

Credibility is the whole point of this format. If candidates think they’re being sold to, they go back to the forums. A structured approach to planning and production keeps the content trustworthy and still on-brand.

1. Start with your data. Talk to your recruiters about why offers are declined and ask HR what exit interviews say about early leavers. The recurring themes become your content plan.
2. Cast from your existing international hires. Choose people who volunteer, not people nominated by their manager. Aim for a spread of nationalities, roles, family situations and lengths of time in Ireland.
3. Interview, don’t script. Unscripted interviews with a good producer asking open questions give you honest, specific answers. Scripted testimonials almost always sound rehearsed, especially when the speaker is working in a second language.
4. Film at home and in the community, with consent. A few minutes in someone’s kitchen or at their child’s football match does more than an hour in a meeting room. Agree clearly in advance what will and won’t be shown, particularly where children are involved.
5. Include partners where they’re willing. A spouse describing how they found work, or why they’re still looking, speaks directly to the person who often has the final say at home.
6. Get HR and legal review before release. Anything touching on permits, tax, healthcare entitlements or relocation packages should be checked so the video doesn’t create expectations the organisation can’t meet.

You’d be surprised how often the most useful moment in a shoot is an unplanned one: an employee pointing out the bus stop they were too nervous to use in their first week. Leave room in the schedule for those.

Relocation recruitment video – Destination Dublin – for LinkedIn

Tone: aspirational without overselling

There’s a balance to strike. Ireland has real advantages for international professionals, including an English-speaking working environment, a strong tech and life sciences sector, good access to the rest of Europe and a friendly culture. It also has a tight housing market and a high cost of living, especially in Dublin. Candidates trust content that admits both. A quick acknowledgement that finding a rental takes time, followed by what your organisation does to help, is far more reassuring than pretending the problem isn’t there.

Format and length

Rather than one long film, most organisations get more from a modular library:

• A 2 to 3 minute hero film on life in your location, suitable for careers pages and LinkedIn
• Four to eight short employee stories of 60 to 90 seconds each, grouped by life stage or sector
• Short practical explainers of 60 to 120 seconds on settling in, the relocation package and partner support
• Vertical cut-downs for social channels and messaging apps

Subtitles are essential. Many candidates will watch on a phone, in a second language, with the sound off.

Where Relocation Content Fits in the Hiring Journey

The same footage does different jobs at different stages. Planning distribution before the shoot makes sure you capture what each stage needs.

Attraction and early interest

For attracting international talent to Ireland, the hero film and a handful of employee stories work well in paid social campaigns aimed at target markets, on international job boards, and on your careers site. At this stage the goal is to get a strong candidate to picture themselves here before they rule it out.

Interview and assessment

Once a candidate is in process, recruiters can send the relevant employee stories directly. A candidate with two young children gets the parent stories; a graduate gets the stories from people who arrived at the same career stage. This takes a few seconds for a recruiter and makes the candidate feel understood.

Offer stage

This is where the practical explainers earn their keep. Including them with the offer letter gives the candidate something to watch with their partner at home, which is usually where the real decision gets made. For critical skills recruitment in Ireland, where the permit timeline adds weeks between offer and start date, this content also helps keep candidates engaged through the wait.

Pre-arrival and onboarding

Between acceptance and arrival, settling-in content reduces anxiety and the flood of emails to your mobility team. It also connects naturally with your onboarding programme. If you’re already producing onboarding or induction video, relocation content can be planned as part of the same shoot days, which improves consistency and efficiency across both.

Recruitment video for LInkedin by One Productions

Measuring the Impact of Your Employer Brand Video for Overseas Hires

An employer brand video for overseas hires should be judged on hiring outcomes, not just view counts. Agree a baseline before launch so you can see what changes.

Useful measures include:

• Offer acceptance rate for international candidates, before and after launch
• Decline reasons recorded by recruiters, particularly those relating to location, housing or family
• Time from offer to acceptance
• Retention of international hires at 6, 12 and 18 months
• Volume of pre-arrival queries to HR and mobility teams
• Recruiter feedback on how often they share the content, and which pieces

Watch-through rates on individual pieces tell you which topics matter most to candidates. If the partner-support explainer is watched to the end far more often than the hero film, that tells you where to invest next time.

For a wider view of how this format sits alongside the rest of your recruitment content, see our overview of recruitment video production and how organisations build video libraries that support hiring year after year.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to produce a relocation recruitment video series?

For a hero film, a set of employee stories and a few practical explainers, plan for roughly six to ten weeks from brief to final delivery. Much of that time is pre-production: gathering decline and exit data, casting volunteers and arranging filming at employees’ homes and in the community. HR and legal review of anything touching permits or relocation packages should also be built into the timeline.

Should we film in Dublin only, or around Ireland?

Film where your employees actually live and work. If your roles are based on a regional pharma or medical devices campus, candidates need to see that town and its surroundings, not just Dublin. Many multi-site organisations produce a shared core film with location-specific employee stories for each site.

How do we keep practical information accurate over time?

Keep permit and process details in short, separate explainers rather than in your hero film, so they can be updated or replaced without reshooting everything. Point candidates to your HR team and official government sources for current rules, and review the practical content at least once a year.

What if employees are reluctant to talk about the difficult parts of moving?

Assure contributors from the start that they will see their interview before it’s released and can withdraw anything they’re uncomfortable with. A good interviewer creates a relaxed setting and asks open questions. Most people are happy to share a challenge they overcame, especially when they know it might help someone in the same position.

Can relocation content work alongside our existing recruitment videos?

Yes, and it usually works best that way. Content on the working day, specific hard-to-fill roles or language versions answers whether the job suits the candidate. Relocation content answers whether the move suits their life. Planning them as one library keeps the look, tone and messaging consistent across the whole candidate journey.

Overseas hires are among the most valuable and most expensive people your organisation will recruit. Giving them an honest picture of life in Ireland, before they commit, is one of the most practical things you can do to protect that investment. If you’re planning a relocation or international recruitment campaign and want to make an informed decision about the right approach, get in touch with One Productions. Got a video project? Get in touch today for a free quote.