Automated Job Ad Video: One Render per Open Role

An automated job ad video is one render per requisition, not one design project per role. Map eight fields from your ATS onto a 34-second template, POST one request when the role is published, and the video is ready before a designer opens a file. Each render costs one credit.

The finished video

This guide renders Job Ad Promo - Open Role Announcement - a 34-second 16:9 ad in seven scenes: a self-aware hook, the role reveal, the team scene, three numbered perk cards, and a full-bleed yellow Apply payoff.

Eight fields change per role and drive 35 overlays. Everything else - colour, type, timing, the copy between the fields - is identical in every render, which is the entire point.

What you need

• A Renderly API key. Create one in the dashboard under Settings → API keys.
• An ATS that fires a webhook when a requisition is published, or a sheet of open roles.
• A company logo at a URL that serves the file directly, ideally a transparent PNG, because the outro forces it to solid ink.

Step 1 - Decide whether you want one video or the same video

Search this query and you get makers. Biteable's AVA, FlexClip, Storykit and InVideo all take a job description and generate a video from it. VideoMyJob and Rezoomo do a different thing again: they put a hiring manager on camera inside a branded frame. Both are real products and neither is this one.

The difference is what varies between roles. A maker gives every opening its own copy and its own layout, so 40 roles become 40 different-looking videos, each needing a look before it ships. A template changes only the words, so the 40th render is approved by the same decision that approved the first.

That makes it a volume question, not a quality one. Four openings a year is a job for a designer. Forty, which must read as one company, is a job for a template: the design work is already done and each render is one credit.

Step 2 - Map the requisition onto eight fields

Eight fields cover the whole 34 seconds:

company_logo is one field used twice. Scene 1 renders it as supplied on the dark open; scene 7 applies brightness(0), so the same file knocks out to solid ink on the yellow Apply frame. One URL covers both, whatever colour the logo is.

The perks are the only fields that are not a lookup, and they carry the personality. Write three for the company, not three per role, and keep them true: "No-meeting Wednesdays. We defend them like it's our job." beats a line about a dynamic environment.

Step 3 - Keep the title, the location and the team inside their boxes

Every text field is a fixed size. Nothing shrinks to fit, and an overrun does not fail the render - it publishes a video with a line missing. Make the limits a validation rule in your mapping function:

Two of those are collisions rather than overflows, and they are the ones that surprise people. The location_mode pill grows to fit its text, but the Full-time pill beside it is nailed to x=514, leaving about 280px once the border and 44px of padding are counted. "Berlin · hybrid" lands 42px clear; "San Francisco · on-site" sits on top of its neighbour.

team_name collides the same way with the static word "team." at x=570. "Growth" ends 50px short of it; "Platform" ends 6px past it. The scene reads "You'd join the Growth team.", so map long team names down to one short word.

Step 4 - Pick a voice: the yellow ad or the deadpan one

Two templates ship on the same eight fields. job-ad-promo is yellow on ink in Space Grotesk and opens "Yes, this is a job ad." job-ad-promo-v2, The Honest Job Ad, is lime on spruce in Geist and reframes the perks as Full Disclosure confessions.

Switching is one word in templateId. The decision worth making is to stop switching: a candidate who sees three of your roles in a week should see the same video three times with different words in it.

Step 5 - Render one video the moment a requisition opens

One published role becomes one POST. The template's API id is job-ad-promo, the same string as its gallery URL.

curl -X POST https://renderly.video/api/v1/renders \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RENDERLY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "templateId": "job-ad-promo",
    "replacements": {
      "company_logo": "https://cdn.example.com/brand/logo-mark.png",
      "job_title": "Senior Backend Engineer",
      "location_mode": "Berlin · hybrid",
      "team_name": "Payments",
      "perk_1": "Actually flexible hours. Not \"flexible\" with air quotes.",
      "perk_2": "A learning budget nobody guilt-trips you for using.",
      "perk_3": "No-meeting Wednesdays. We defend them like it'\''s our job.",
      "apply_url": "example.jobs/backend-payments"
    },
    "webhookUrl": "https://your-app.com/hooks/renderly"
  }'

Any field you leave out keeps the template's default, and those defaults belong to a fictional company called Acme. A missing company_logo does not fail the render, it publishes Acme's logo on your careers page. Validate the requisition before the request, not the file after it.

The call returns a job id immediately and the finished URL arrives on the render.completed webhook, signed with HMAC-SHA256; the webhooks guide covers verifying it.

What this costs at scale

Renderly bills 1 credit per minute of 1080p output, rounded up to the nearest half credit. A 34-second ad is 0.57 minutes, which rounds to one credit.

At a thousand roles a month the video costs about ten cents an opening, well under the job board fee for the same posting. Rendering is not the constraint; writing three honest perks is.

Where to go next

The argument behind step 1 is set out at length in template-based video versus AI-generated video. If your open roles live in a spreadsheet rather than an ATS, the loop in the CSV guide renders the whole list, and the Google Sheets guide puts it on a trigger.