News about Social Media in the World of Recruitment.

• February 18, 2010


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In Social Media Recruiting…Don’t Forget About Mobile

One topic that does not get a lot of attention within the social recruiting landscape is that of mobile. I think mobile recruiting gets looked over for several reasons. There is a perception that it is expensive and you don’t get much return. Some think it gives job seekers a less-than-favorable impression of the company using this method in the application process. Others just don’t know where to begin or what mobile can do for their recruitment efforts.

Why is mobile important in your social media strategy? For one thing, it’s everywhere…literally. Here are a few stats:
• By 2020 mobile will be the primary means of connection to the internet
• The use of mobile extends the reach of the largest websites by up to 13%
• 87 million Americans have internet services on their mobile phone
• 53% (or more) of U.S. cell phone users text from their devices
• Lastly, there are more mobile devices than there are computers*.

Mobile can give organizations a way to separate their career opportunities from the rest of the pack. It extends a company’s recruitment message outside of traditional (and non-traditional) recruiting means. Mobile also gives you reach into the world of the ever elusive passive job seekers as well as the tech-savvy entry level job seeker.

How To

Mobile recruitment is not one tool or trick. There are many ways to use mobile in your recruitment efforts. Just like in choosing the right social media site, choosing the right mobile tool is also vital to your success. Recruiters can recruit using apps, the .mobi domain platform, barcodes and scanning, SMS services or a mixture of these options. Let’s look at each one independently.

Apps

The most recognized tool in mobile advertising / productivity today is that of the app. Once only an option on the iPhone, apps have become the go-to for pretty much all of the smartphone platforms. Today, users of Windows Mobile and Google Android phones have access to apps for their particular phones via apps markets powered by their respective phone platform. As you would imagine, there are a handful of job seeker tools offered at no cost on the iPhone platform. With over 8 million iPhone users in the U.S., it makes sense that all the attention for recruiting apps is for this phone. Three of the most popular iPhone job seeker tools come from CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, Snag-a-Job, and Craigslist who offer regular site functionality to users through the app portal. However, due to the perceived cost of developing an app, only a couple of employers themselves have fielded recruitment apps. Three that come up in a simple apps search are from AT&T, Raytheon, and Deloitte. What we see is that these are all three very large companies that do a high volume of recruiting. Above I mentioned that there is a perceived high cost to develop an app. The question is probably more accurate that of an ROI argument. Does it make sense for a small or medium sized company to invest $10,000 to create a recruitment app if they only plan to hire 20 people in a given year? Does your company have enough brand recognition that smartphone users are going to be compelled to download your app? These are better questions to ask when looking at an app strategy.

Mobile Web

One of the first mobile internet options was that of the mobile web. Mobile started out as a simple text form of the internet using WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) technology and has evolved into a tool that challenges regular web browsing in effectiveness. With more than half of all cell phone users hooked up to the mobile net, this option seems to be one to look at for recruiting. There are many vendors who offer mobile web services for clients. These vendors take a client’s .com web page and translate the content into a .mobi or m.website.com format so that mobile web browsers are better able to navigate the pages.

Looking out on the web today, only a small number of organizations are using .mobi. A couple of job boards have taken a stab at .mobi. CollegeRecruiter.mobi and EngineeringJobs.mobi are the two easiest to find sites. There does not seem to be any US or European recruiters using .mobi yet. However, South African recruitment consultancy, Trudy Q has a nice mobile site. TrudyQ.mobi allows job seekers to search and view the consultancies open vacancies. Stalwart of social media recruitment innovation, KPMG New Zealand also has a great .mobi option.

SMS / Text Messaging

SMS offers recruiters a couple of great options to find talent. SMS is most often used to drive direct response to recruitment advertising. HR consulting firm, Hewitt, made the biggest splash in 2009 for SMS recruitment. The firm partnered with Recruit2Mobile to host a direct response SMS campaign. Job seekers who saw one of several recruitment advertisements were encouraged to text HEWITT2 to 88000 from their mobile devices. They were then sent a text message with a link to a mobile optimized page with a list of the current Hewitt job openings.

On the other side of SMS is the ability to apply to jobs using text. Indian job board Naukri gives job seekers who search vacancies on their mobile devices the chance to instantly apply to openings via a text command. Applicants first register a resume on the .com version of the site. Then when they see a job they like on the mobile portal, they select to apply to the job using the resume they have stored. For jobs that are highly competitive, being able to apply instantly from wherever you are gives mobile job seekers an advantage by being first in the application queue.

Barcodes /QR codes

One technology a little slower to take off is that of barcodes or more accurately QR codes. QR stands for “quick response” and is akin to SMS when it comes to marketing or recruiting. A QR code is a square, black and white image that when photographed using a mobile phone camera and reviewed by a QR program, sends a mobile user a predefined response…usually a URL, phone number or opens the mobile browser to a webpage. It has only been recently that QR has started gaining steam. The first iterations of the technology didn’t ever get backed by a big user base. QR though has been propped up by Google, so it looks like this type of barcode will become mobile standard.

To integrate QR into a recruitment strategy, companies can create campaigns similar to what Hewitt did with SMS. However instead of using SMS, the campaign would encourage mobile users to scan the QR for more information.

Resources

If you think it’s time to look at mobile for your company’s recruiting, don’t be afraid. There are many vendors that can help you take that first step. As mentioned above, Recruit2Web can help with mobile job pages and SMS. Those interested in .mobi websites can visit mobiforge.com to find a partner that fits their needs. Jobs2Web and ExactTarget also provide innovative mobile tools that can be incorporated into a recruitment strategy.

*Source

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