A&O Shearman and Reed Smith compete for the best legal talent in the world, and both came to me and my agency, Indigo Productions, for recruitment films with a simple promise: show candidates what working inside a top firm actually looks like. Real staff on camera, no actors, the same honest approach behind my award-winning films for Octopus Energy and Virgin Atlantic.
The first film in the series, shot inside A&O Shearman’s London offices with the people who actually work there. Honest and uplifting, built to show candidates exactly what they would be walking into, and why they might want to.
Hiring at the top of the legal profession is brutally competitive. A&O Shearman and Reed Smith are chasing the same exceptional candidates as every other elite firm, and polished brochure-speak stopped cutting through long ago. They wanted sharper tools: films that show candidates what these firms are really like from the inside.
I directed these films the way I’ve directed recruitment work for Octopus Energy, Virgin Atlantic, Mars and Unilever: embed with the organisation, work out what makes it tick, then put real staff on camera instead of actors. No scripts and no stage-management, just honest, uplifting portraits of a workplace filmed from the inside. Candidates can tell the difference, and so can the people doing the hiring.
Applications went up, and so did the quality of the people applying. Just as importantly, candidates now arrive knowing what they have signed up for, because the films showed them the real thing before their first interview. The approach has form: my recruitment films have won at the FIRM, ISE and Recruiter Awards for Octopus Energy, and took Best Employer Brand and Best Candidate Experience at the 2023 Recruiter Awards for Virgin Atlantic.