As the way that we interact and engage evolves so will your recruitment marketing strategy. From social to SEO, you need to embrace different ways of attracting and engaging with candidates looking for your employment opportunities.  Nowhere is this more true than mobile which represents a growing medium for which candidates access, research and engage online.

Getting mobile into your recruitment strategy doesn’t mean just one thing or one implementation, however, but really will differ for each organization and their strategy as Mobile impacts many different areas in recruiting.  And it really has it’s own advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

• Accessibility: The phone is the most precious device to a person you can have.  It’s always with them and provides a great way to communicate.

• Speed of Feedback: Because mobile is so accessible to candidates, you are able to receive pretty immediate feedback on any communications you send, typically in the first few minutes.  This enables you to better understand the messaging that really sticks.

• It’s Different: Today, using mobile in your recruiting process is in it’s infancy and with that, it can really differentiate your process in candidates eyes if done correctly.  It can especially help in terms of branding and candidate experience for your company as well.

• It’s Fun and interactive: I think a point that is not brought up enough is the likeability factor of phones.  It’s the center of my universe at times and very rarely do I feel like using or playing with my phone is a chore.  And it can provide a level of interactivity that is unique.

Disadvantages

• Still the minority but growing: Mobile is the future and will certainly grow in importance but right now it’s still a relatively small percentage (can be anywhere form 1-10%) of Career Site visits and Talent Network sign-ups.

• Short attention span: Mobile isn’t built for more lengthy functions.  So things like applying via mobile (which people are working on) are difficult for candidates to do with these devices.  Real work is still done with a laptop or desktop.

With that being said, let’s take a look at how one recruiting organization is leveraging mobile intelligently in their process and how they take advantage of the different benefits mobile brings.

Mobile Candidate Experience

Organizations are continuing to figure out how they want to interact with candidates that engage with their recruitment brand via mobile devices.  It’s all about determining the touch-points that need to be mobile optimized for them to be able to not only do research on your jobs but ultimately take action if they decide to.

For the organization in question, they realized the need to cater to the mobile audience.  Now on their Career Site, they provide a mobile version of their site for anyone that comes in via a mobile device.  Once a mobile user visits, all of their jobs are easily searchable and optimally displayed for mobile.  They also provide a simple way to take action on a specific job enabling candidates to join their Talent Community via a mobile optimized form.

Any mobile user that joins the Talent Community will automatically be contacted with an email trigger campaign that includes a link to whatever job they joined the Talent Community from so they can continue the application process from a non-mobile device.  Thus providing an easy way for mobile users to schedule applying for positions at the company.

Career Fair Strategy

Many organizations are still in the stone ages with their Career Fair strategy.  By this I mean, they use a pen and paper, business cards and other print materials to interact and most importantly capture candidate information for events.  Just from a pure management perspective this is often a huge pain.  I know I’ve done a number of Career Fair events and the follow up with these methods was hit or miss and a huge time sink.

Look at this process.  This team uses iPads to engage with candidates.  Candidates fill out mobile optimized forms with their information and are automatically flowed into talent pipelines in a CRM database for future engagement.  They also incorporate recruiter face to face feedback on candidates with a “Recruiter Only” field on the form with an “A”, “B” and “C” option for each candidate (think about the different piles of candidates you use to group the best and worst candidates you meet at the event.)  They then engage with these candidate groups in different ways post event.

The other aspect of this is that their table stands out at the event.  Candidates like using the iPads and really see it as an innovative brand as they try and attract technical talent.

Referral Outreach

Referrals are one of the most important aspects of recruiting today.  However, the big challenge for organizations is how to get current employees more involved in this process.

To get this involvement, they are working on rolling out a campaign around referrals.  As part of this campaign, they are looking to create cards with unique QR Codes on them to provide to potential referral candidates.  These codes will directly to mobile optimized landing pages and be targeted for specific skills and disciplines they are looking to recruit.  This ensures that employees are better at directing candidates to the messaging and opportunities that the recruiting team wants them to help in their efforts while providing an interactive and cool way for them to engage with these candidates.

Using Mobile in your Process

Mobile can be utilized in a number of ways and these are just a few examples of leveraging mobile in meaningful ways.  I’d love to hear how other organizations are using Mobile to better engage, interact and attract candidates to their positions.

Please share the stories you have in the comments below.