Roger Stanton believes in the power of video to grab the attention of job seekers across a broad range of media. Most important, he’s gotten some of the nation’s biggest recruiting and advertising firms and major corporate clients on board with him.

Stanton, a 1975 Drake University graduate and seasoned marketing executive, two years ago co-founded Job Search Television Network (JSTN). Based in the Chicago suburb of Geneva, Ill., JSTN produces short, news-style recruitment videos that client companies use to fill vacant postitions and promote their businesses.

“The compelling nature of video is that it’s more informative and more captivating than print,” Stanton said in a telephone interview with the Business Record. “So candidates will listen and learn more about the position.”

In addition to being featured online at www.myjstn.com, the multimedia recruitment platform’s short videos are distributed on cable television in three major metropolitan markets – Chicago, San Francisco and Boston – as well as Des Moines. The video job postings can also be distributed through social media networks and e-mail.

“For the employer, the TV exposure is the gravy,” Stanton said. “Being able to send out the video through all the social networks is powerful, and to be able to do it through mobile phones is even slicker.”

Last week, JSTN announced its newest partnership, an agreement with AccountingJobsToday.com. One of the top 100 job boards in the country, the site will offer JSTN’s video posting product to all of its clients, which include accounting and financial services companies throughout the country.

“I think it’s an excellent tool and resource for both job seekers and recruiters,” said Todd Goldstein, president of Adept Resources Inc. in Carlsbad, Calif., which launched AccountingJobsToday.com three years ago.

“Video technology is clearly not a new tool in the employment industry,” Goldstein said. “But to create a video job report and to highlight the features of a job opening, and to cross-distribute it through various social media such as YouTube, that’s pretty unique.”

Though he’s hopeful the majority of his jobs-board clients will use the premium video service, Goldstein said it may initially be more suited to larger companies. “I think JSTN is priced very well in the marketplace, to allow people to try it,” he said. “I think it will just require education and marketing.”

In Greater Des Moines, Palmer Search Group has partnered with JSTN to use the video format to augment its recruiting efforts for some of its clients.

“We have used video previously, but not in the fashion that JSTN is presenting it in as a television show,” said Austin Palmer, president of the executive search firm. “It’s unique and interesting.”

Palmer said it will take time to evaluate the effectiveness of JSTN’s approach. “If this avenue were to prove successful, we would continue with it,” he said.

Stanton said his company also entered into formal partnerships with a number of other leading recruiting and advertising agencies, including TMP Worldwide Advertising & Communications, the world’s largest independent recruitment advertising agency, as well as Bernard Hodes Group in New York, Cleveland-based NAS Recruitment Communications and CKR Interactive & Global Recruitment, based in San Francisco.

The concept behind JSTN took about five years to develop, said Stanton, who left a position as executive search vice president for Kensington International, an Oak Brook, Ill.-based executive search firm, to develop the concept for a Kensington client, cable operator Comcast Corp.

“They wanted the television programming of this; they thought it was very compelling,” he said. “It became very clear to Comcast as well as myself that it was going to take 100 percent full effort to get this thing up and running.”

JSTN launched on Comcast’s Chicago cable television system two years ago, and its television distribution now reaches 17 million viewers, including more than 250,000 Mediacom Communications Corp. cable subscribers in Iowa.

Online, JSTN in May held its first video-based virtual career fair, which enabled job seekers to record 20-second video introductions to send to recruiters, as well as have live online interaction with recruiters. The company will hold another virtual career fair on Sept. 16.

“Truthfully, when we first debuted in 2008, it was more of a beta test to prove the quality of the video,” Stanton said. “But clearly what’s evolved over the last 18 months has proved that the whole human resources space is evolving to where social networks are becoming prominent platforms for recruiters.”

All of JSTN’s content can be accessed using mobile devices, which makes the site a particularly powerful tool for employers to reach prospective job candidates, he said. Part of that content is expert career advice provided by Career Partners International, parent company of Stanton’s former employer, Kensington International.

Stanton pointed to the results Boston-based Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. has seen as an indication of his company’s potential.

“So far, all their job listings with JSTN video are getting a 39 percent conversion rate, which is frankly unheard of in the industry,” he said. The average conversion rate, or percentage of candidates who apply for a particular position after viewing its video, is 5 percent, he said.

CNBC earlier this year expressed interest in carrying JSTN, Stanton said, which would expand its content to a national television audience.

“We’ve accomplished three of the top 10 markets on our own; we’re confident we can (expand that with CNBC) because the content is what the networks are looking for,” he said. “It’s high-quality video, expert career advice along with openings. We think we’re going to be the CNBC of employment.”