How to 3x response rates with AI video

We spoke with Lothar Grünewald and Cedric Schütz, the managing directors of Grünewald Consulting. They told us how they use Synthesia to create personalised videos for hiring outreach, like the one below:

200%

increase in response rates

125+

videos for outreach every week

30%

increase in the number of candidates submitted for consideration

Grünewald Consulting is an executive search firm based in Germany and member of INAC, a global network specialising in recruitment. Their job is, to find leaders for companies all around the world.

Industry: Service
Headquarters: Germany
Company size: Small Business: <100

Industry Context

Recruiting teams need to move fast while delivering consistent, engaging messaging to candidates across roles and regions. Traditional tools like PDFs and slide decks are hard to scale and slow to adapt—making it difficult to stand out and create a personalized, high-impact candidate experience.

The Challenge

Grünewald Consulting’s bread and butter is to reach out to hundreds of candidates - every day. Traditionally, this was done through emails, direct messages on social media and cold calling.

Lothar and Cedric realised that this outreach method was no longer sufficient in an overheated job market. As recruiters bombarded applicants with messages from all sides, response rates dropped rapidly.

They needed to figure out what could be their differentiating factor that would increase responses rates.

We lacked a clear USP when it came to contacting candidates. What can make the difference for us? How can we make candidates feel like they’re at the centre of attention? - Lothar Grünewald, Managing Director

To put prospects at the centre, the team wanted to make the outreach experience as personal and human as possible.

The most appropriate medium for that? Video.

However, traditional video creation has major limitations:

Flexibility: As they needed to experiment with messaging, it would be nearly impossible to update the videos once created, and it would require additional time.
Scaleability: Without a big budget, it's unfeasible to scale video production, especially at the rate that is required for outreach.
Translation: Localisation of traditional video content is time-consuming, costly and difficult to scale.
Speed: Creating personalised videos would take up many hours in the calendar, which could be spent on other tasks.

In their search for solutions that make it possible to create videos at scale, Lothar and Cedric found what they were looking for in Synthesia.

The Solution

Synthesia not only enabled large-scale video creation, but also a high degree of personalisation of outreach videos by allowing Lothar and Cedric to create their own avatars.

Here's how they developed a new process to improve their outreach efforts:

The team has created templates for scripts and videos that they can easily edit or update depending on the job title or location of the applicant.
If the candidate is from a non-English speaking country, they translate their message into the appropriate language and paste it into the script field.

Here are the main values of Synthesia that Lothar and Cedric advocate:

Localisation: Synthesia can generate videos with 120+ languages and accents, allowing to reach new countries without leaving the desk.
Ease of use: The platform is easy to use and includes all the necessary video editing features to create high-quality training videos without the need for additional tools.
Custom Avatars: Synthesia offers digital, but photorealistic representations of a human being, enabling highly personalised video content.

Creating a video with Synthesia is just so easy. You plug the text into the script box and the video is ready to share. And people are blown away - it is a great ice breaker! - Cedric Schütz, Managing Director

The Results

With the help of Synthesia, Lothar and Cedric could address each prospect with a personalised video message.

A few months after creating the first AI video, the team looked at its business and hiring metrics:

Response rates: The team has seen a 200% increase in response rates when prospects have received their video messages. Now, up to 60% of all prospects get back to them.
Number of candidates submitted for consideration: Grünewald Consulting’s new outreach process has increased the number of candidates presented to clients by 30%.
Outreach speed: The team sends 125+ videos to job prospects - every week.

Synthesia's AI videos are now a central part of Grünewald Consulting's outreach process. In the future, the team plans to standardise and expand the use of videos in relationship management and client acquisition as well.