Mobile Recruiting & The Rule of Thumb

A few weeks back I attended the end of year recruitment conference hosted by Louise Triance of UK Recruiter

The topic of mobile recruiting was high on the agenda, as it has been for much of this year and Matt Alder of Metashift gave a few examples and some pointers for recruiters to think about on the subject. For those in-house recruiters looking to get up to speed quickly on mobile recruitment, trends, strategies & tips, then I would recommend you have a browse through the following 2 papers/reports:

1) Mobile Recruiting Guide – 2012

http://s3.amazonaws.com/pocketrecruit/assets/MobileRecruitingGuide2012FINAL2.pdf  – split into 3 easy to read sections, ‘Strategic Thinking’, a ‘How Too Guide’ and a ‘Checklist’)

2) Mobile Recruitment Survey

http://www.educate-direct.com/mobile-1

The MoRecNews blog is also a good source of mobile recruiting info: http://morecnews.com

The purpose of this article is to simply show a few examples of mobile career sites from companies that seem to be on the right track with their mobile recruitment strategies.  This isn’t about illustrating a perfect end to end mobile recruitment process as no one seems to have nailed it yet. Essentially these are sites that provide a good mobile user experience that allow you to learn more about the companies as a candidate and to search for jobs.  I’m not looking at actually applying for a job on my phone.

The fundamental difference in the user experience between a desktop and a mobile optimised site is how you navigate around.  When I get bored on the commute to work I often play games on my mobile to pass the time (Like Temple Run – my current high score is 1,633,302, just shy of 9,000m….that’s pretty good!).

As I escape from rabid apes, jump chasms and slide under trees, I do so while holding my phone with one hand and using my thumb to navigate the obstacles – simple.  You use your thumb a lot when navigating around  and using apps on your smart phone, so you can expect candidates to want a similarly easy experience when exploring a mobile careers site.  If you’re looking into a mobile recruitment for the first time, then rather than view the subsequent screen shots, I encourage you to actually explore these sites on your own smart phone.

AT&T (US)

The first mobile careers site I checked out was that of AT&T (US).  Matt had shown some screen shots during his presentation (you can view Matt’s mobile recruitment slides here) so I thought I’d take a look for myself.

As soon as you land on their mobile career site, you can see it’s has nice big, clear thumb friendly icons.

As you continue to explore the site there are some brief explanations of each function and it’s very easy to navigate around, learn about the various departments, and to perform a job search.

I wasn’t expecting to be able to apply for a job on my phone (often once you are searching through jobs, you’re in the ATS environment, and if your ATS is not mobile optimised, it ruins the experience) but you do have the option to email a link of the job to yourself to complete your application at a later time.  Overall it’s a very simple, easy to navigate site.  Note the home page button is in the top right corner, again thumb friendly.

Given I was randomly searching while on a train on the way home, finding other mobile optimised career sites was difficult.  Finding any UK sites proved fruitless so I took a look at some of the big US brands.

Starbucks (US)

Another easy to navigate site that incorporates multimedia action as well.  An icon displayed in the top right of the screen provides a drop down if you want to learn more about the corporate side of the business.  Candidates like consumers want a nice mobile experience too.

Scrolling down from the home screen you can click on various functions to learn more.  It’s full of additional videos and short employee testimonials.

When I wanted to view and search individual jobs I was faced with the issue of being directed within a non-mobile optimised ATS environment, a challenge many companies are facing.  The mobile careers site itself, is good, and just to compare how it looks compared to a non mobile optimised site, have a glance at the UK version of the same company’s careers site on a smart phone.

I know which one I would prefer (and spend more time exploring) if I was a candidate.

Sodexo

Sodexo have won numerous awards and praise for their overall mobile recruitment strategy (click here to learn more about that).

Again the site is easy to navigate on your phone (perhaps a little less thumb friendly than the earlier sites, but when you consider this mobile careers site has been around for 2 years or so, it’s still way ahead of the game compared to most).   There’s a whole bunch of easy to access information on different career paths and short snip-its from what employees have to say about working for Sodexo.

These are just a few examples to illustrate what some companies are currently doing regarding mobile recruitment, and to stimulate you to think about your own site.

Another useful thing you can do to help get your head around mobile – if your business has a corporate mobile optimised site already, ask marketing or the web team to show you the mobile CMS (Content Management System) assuming you have one.  You might be pleasantly surprised (if built right) at how easy amending and changing the content of a mobile site can be.

Augmented Reality & Recruitment – Your Thoughts Please?

OK before I go on about recruitment, firstly let me just quickly outline exactly what augmented reality (AR) is if you don’t know already, given it sounds like something out of Star Trek.

AR is a way to use technology to enhance your view of the physical world.  It may for example involve using an application such as Layer (downloadable on your android or iphone hand set) to superimpose computer generated imagery (such as text or a photo) in live-video streams.  For instance, when using the camera on your phone and you point it at a restaurant, up pops an info box providing details of the restaurant and a link to related info such as possible reviews, a menu, a map, a contact number etc.

The video below illustrates how Layar works:

You can use AR to find nearby restaurants, bars, people tweeting, people looking to date, go on treasure hunts, explore a new City, cash machine, practically anything.  So can you use it to recruit, or let potential candidates know about your jobs?

I’ve played around with a few AR apps, and they can be fun even if you do look a bit strange standing around waving your phone.

So how is AR currently being used for recruitment?

Well from a candidate point of view, CW Jobs, in conjunction with David Wood (the co-founder of Symbian), put together the world’s first augmented reality CV last year.  It’s a novel idea, although probably a little sophisticated and expensive to go mainstream.

So what about employers and suppliers? Layar itself has a number of applications or ‘content layers’ that enable you to search for jobs around you.  MightBe.Me available in Sweden (Stockholm only) feeds in jobs from a couple of job search sites and allows you to see jobs superimposed on their office locations as you walk around.  Career Builder in the US also has a content layer that allows you to search for jobs around you.  Capgemini has a content layer for its global office locations under the employment section within the Layar platform, although it does not seem to display any locations, or jobs for that matter.

Company Spot in the Netherlands is a different AR application and I find this one a little more engaging.  Rather than just pointing your phone and seeing jobs around you, you can also see more in-depth company information such as the number of employees, as well as industry and salary information, etc.  You also have the option to click through to a full company profile (created by the employer, hosted on the Company Spot site), view company videos, and potentially contact the recruiter of the job you are seeing.

I think that at the moment, although a lot of this is quite innovative, there are quicker and easier ways to look for jobs.  People are increasingly using applications that bring information to them, and as far as geo-location goes, I would much rather set up my job search criteria once, and then receive some kind of push notification on my phone when I was within a certain radius of a matching opportunity. But hey that’s just me.

The most innovative use of AR as a recruitment tool I’ve read about so far has been that of the US Air Force Command Centre Alpha AR marketing tour initiative.

The Command Centre Alpha Hangar - Source: http://www.af.mil

Prospective candidates are initially asked to complete a survey to guage their enthusiasm for joining the service.  They are then handed a tablet computer and a wristband containing a radio tag.  Participants then walk around a kind of exhibition/hangar area where the walls and ceiling are lined with screens displaying images and live video fields.

Image Source: http://www.af.mil

By pointing the tablet computer at specific points the live video is ‘augmented’ with 3D graphics and images.  The participants are able to witness a number of different scenarios/experiences including a full-size F-16 Thunderbird display, and a search & rescue mission involving a sky diver from the ceiling! (there’s about 20 different scenarios/experiences).

Although not so practical from a technological or financial perspective for most companies (not sure what the US Air Force’s recruitment budget is but it’s probably larger than the GDP of a small country) I think it’s a really engaging example of the use of AR in the wider recruitment process, that goes beyond the obvious ‘point and see job’ approach of most applications.

If you have any ideas on how AR could be used in any aspect of the recruitment process I would like to hear them.

By Jean-Paul Smalls

My Foursquare Recruitment Experiment

Towards the end of 2010 I was asked to put together a campaign to hire a large volume of IT professionals in the Surrey and Essex area for a large gaming company.

One of the challenges faced by the client was simply to increase local knowledge that they have ongoing IT opportunities in the area.  Specifically they wanted IT professionals to think twice about commuting into London.  After all, if you enjoy IT and all things tech, then perhaps doing what you love within a company that creates online games is more enjoyable than say, working in the IT department of a bank (after 2 hours of commute on a sweaty overcrowded train/tube).

The campaign was heavily centred around the use of leading technology job boards, and boards that were specifically strong in relevant locations.  These have worked very well placing a number of promising candidates even for the very tricky niche and senior positions.  However I also decided, just for the crack, to see what else we could do to target local candidates.

As an avid foursquare fan (finally got that free miso soup from the local Itsu yesterday), I wanted to test if people would actually respond to simple tips relating to job opportunities.

So here was the theory.

I would create a local twitter account (IT Jobs in Surrey for example) which I would then populate with several jobs.  I would then use a bunch of Twitter apps such as twellow, twiends, twibes, formulists etc (to name just a few) in order to identify and build a relevant following of IT people.

Next I would create a foursquare account of the same name and leave tips (something along the lines of “Tired of the commute? Are you an IT professional living in the area, check out IT Jobs in Surrey (with a link to the Twitter account listing the jobs).

Why use a Twitter account in the first place? Well (in theory) I’ve built up a following of IT people in the Twitter account.  By linking the foursquare account to the Twitter account I can see if any of the Twitter followers are on foursquare.  I can then invite them as friends.  I wasn’t expecting many to accept the foursquare friend request but If lets say, 5 out of 100 did, then I could assume that those 5 would actually be interested in IT Jobs in the area.  I could then do the odd shout out to these followers regarding new jobs in the future.

The recent updates to foursquare over the xmas period meant popular tips at a location are more prominent when you check in.  I was gambling on this to increase the chances that an IT professional might see the tip and click through, explore the list of local jobs, and perhaps eventually even apply for one.

So what was the result in practice.

Well firstly I only ran this experiment over a 2 week period (you’ll read why in a minute); secondly the twitter apps for identifying relevant profiles (and I went through a lot) were not quite as accurate as I needed.  Quite simply there was not enough info in the twitter bios to create sufficient lists, so inviting them as foursqaure friends wasn’t really fruitful.  Also bear in mind this was a very short term experiment, over a 2 week period, and to really get the most from this type of project (or any social recruiting strategy, you really need to invest months).  But as I mentioned earlier, I just wanted to know if people would actually take a look.

The tips I scripted were left at approximatley 25 stations along the commuter route in and around the location I was targeting.  I used tracking url’s to measure click throughs to the the IT Jobs Surrey Twitter account.

In turns out that 14 users clicked my tips (the majority from Woking station).  It says 16 above but a couple were my test clicks.  This is not an amazing number of click throughs although it did outperform several postings on a a relatively large local job site! It appears that most of the click throughs occured during the first week back to work in January, perhaps those were people feeling depressed about another day in their current job?  It’s too early yet to tell if any interviews or placements resulted from the experiment and I’m confident the click through rate would have been higher had I been a bit cleverer with the tips.  Because I entered 20 odd tips in a relatively short space of time, foursquare identified them as spam and despite “appreciating my enthusiasm” deleted them (hence the reason the experiment only lasted 2 weeks).

I’m fairly confident that with some new tools I’ve discovered recently and a longer time span, the original plan to build a targeted foursquare following could have been more successful (and indeed this experiment is being revisited) and the click through rate would have been closer to 30 over a month.

There are other ways to use foursquare for recruitment.  A far simpler way for head hunters is to look for the major of a competitor company and cross reference them via other social media.  Andy Headworth of Sirona Consulting blogged about this a while back, see here.

I could have also resorted to guerilla marketing and literally left tips at releavant IT companies in the area, however this was likely to be frowned upon by the client.  Also I personally don’t think it would be sustainable, as potentially you end up in a ‘tip war’, which would probably result in the location owner just deleting your tips.

Another example I heard of recenlty at the Smart 2011 Social Media in Business Conference, was a company in Texas who targeted senior execs.  The way they did this was to leave tips at high end designer retail stores.  They were actually targeting the wives of rich execs to encourage them to notify their husbands of new job opportunites.  Apparently they did this with some success!

So to summarise the experiment, it seems even by leaving simple tips targeted to a particular audience in a particualar location, people will actually check out jobs you promote via foursquare.

By Jean-Paul Smalls of VONQ UK

Do you have a Mobile Recruitment Strategy for 2011?

Various sources estimate that by 2014 the number of people accessing the internet via a mobile device such as a smart phone will surpass those accessing the internet via a desktop computer.  In fact, more people in the UK already access social networking sites via mobile than desktop (Source: Jobsite and Allthetopbananas.com whitepaper: Future of Mobile Recruitment Report – well worth a read!).

Source: Morgan Stanley - The Mobile Internet Report

The rapid adoption of smart phones means we can access email, watch videos, share information and use social networks anytime, anywhere.  A variety of apps allows us to organise our professional and social lives, reducing the time we actually need to spend browsing the net.  The information we want is increasingly coming to us via our phones, and this will include job seeking.  This shift in internet behaviour away from the desktop to the mobile is already having an impact when if comes to attracting candidates.

In my experience speaking to a number of in-house recruiters, when you mention the term mobile recruitment there is tendency to assume we are only thinking about candidates actually applying for a job (actually uploading a CV and cover letter) on a mobile phone.  This is just one small part (and not the most important) of what mobile recruitment is about.  And although I’ve personally received CV applications sent via an iPhone, I don’t think this is particular practical for the vast majority of people (at least for now).

Mobile Recruitment – Considerations for In-House Recruiters.

Below of listed a few things to highlight the impacts that the increase in mobile internet usage is currently having on job seekers and employers?

1)     A significant volume of candidates are already looking for jobs on their mobile phones

The above mentioned whitepaper already mentioned that between January 2009 & April 2010 Jobsite saw a 390% increase in mobile traffic to its site.  5% of all visitors to jobsite are via mobile.  This is just one example but as one of the UK’s largest generalist job boards, it implies that a significant volume of candidates will search for a job on their phone.

2) Is Your Career Site Mobile Friendly?

Have you ever visited your own career site on a mobile to see what it looks like from a candidate’s perspective?  Many recruiters may think that candidates would not naturally visit their career sites on their mobile.  But consider the following common scenario.  When searching for a job online many candidates will make use of job alerts from job sites, aggregators etc to aid job matching and the speed at which they are notified of jobs relevant to them.  Many people check their personal or business emails on their phones.  When you receive such an alert, (it could be an SMS, or via your email) you are likely to click on a link which takes your through to the full job spec on a subscribing job site.

 

Left: Sodexo US careers site viewed on a desktop – Right: Sodexo US careers site viewed on a mobile

If it’s an interesting job you may choose to be directed to the career site of the company advertising the role.  When this occurs, do you have to mess around zooming in, out, scrolling up and down on your phone to view the job properly?  Is it as easy to browse and search for similar jobs on your mobile compared to accessing it via a desktop?  Is there an easy option to email a job link to myself?  It may not be practical to apply for the job at the time of browsing, but I may want to be reminded to apply for the job when I get home where I have more time to perhaps do some research and draft a cover letter.

3) The 5 Peaks – Desktop vs Mobile Internet Browsing Times

Another interesting aspect highlighted by Jobsite, and one I think is significant for firms to take advantage of, is the difference in peak mobile internet usage times.

Internet browsing behaviour has quite a well established pattern.  Its peak traffic times are 0830-0930, lunchtime, and between 16:30-1800l.  Mobile internet browsing peaks between 06:00-08:00 (the commute to work?), and shows significant use throughout the evening till 23:00.

Source: Jobsite UK

From a recruitment perspective, combined with traditional online recruitment methods you can broaden the time frames that candidates are searching for your jobs from 0600 till 2300 (inclusive of all 5 peak internet access times).  And don’t forget, many candidates search for jobs while in a current job, and mobile browsing cannot be blocked by IT.

4) Mobile Apps

The majority of the leading job sites now have mobile apps that can easily be downloaded by job seekers.

A number of corporates such as Transport for London, adidas & London Victoria have mobile career apps already. Unlike a job site app, corporate career apps require a bit more customisation to reflect your brand.

adidas Graduate Careers iPhone App

As well as being able to view company information and search through jobs , you can Integrate your company social media pages, facebook, YouTube etc.  This can help to enhance a candidates experience and learn more about your company.

adidas Graduate Careers iPhone App

One feature which I think provides one of the biggest advantages of using an app, is the push notification functionality.  Essentially this means candidates can choose to receive notifications on their phone when a job that matched specific criteria is uploaded onto the app.  The great thing about push notifications via an app is they don’t cost anything, and can also be used to push news/announcements etc.  Having an app built is not massively expensive; costs tend to vary between £5000-£10000 depending on the sophistication and functionality required.  It’s important to remember that apps are not just all about the iPhone or iPad which use Apple operating systems.   Alternative operating systems like Android as used by Motorola or HTC are used by a significant proportion of the smart phone market and therefore you really need to have apps both in the iTunes/App Store & Android market places.

Finally, if you are thinking about creating an app, bear in mind that once built, candidates need to be able to find it.  Marketing your app is an essential part of a mobile recruitment strategy.

5) Location based Gaming & Services

Location based games and services on mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular.  The likes of Foursquare has over 5 million users worldwide and allows you to push out real time messages to nearby phones.  Facebook places also allows users to check in to locations and the application of recruitment within augmented reality apps is already being experimented with via Layer. Such gaming and location based mobile services, and how you would apply them to recruitment, may not be an immediately obvious route for in-house recruitment (yet) but it’s worth keeping an eye on them as they are potentially another mobile environment to recruit from.

So just to summarise, above are just some of the mobile considerations I think in-house recruiters should be thinking about, both in terms of potential new methods to attract staff directly, or simply as a catalyst to enhance existing online recruitment approaches.  How could you take advantage of:

1)     Candidates that are already looking for jobs on their phones

2)     Having a mobile friendly careers site

3)     Differences in peak mobile internet job browsing times

4)     Mobile recruitment apps, including social media integration and push notifications

5)     Location based applications and services

There’s a lot more to mobile recruiting, if you think I’ve missed anything obvious or would like to contribute some additional mobile methods and approaches, feel free to comment.

By Jean-Paul Smalls of VONQ UK

Thoughts on Mobile Recruitment

Mobile recruitment is a regular topic of debate doing the rounds right now.  The increasing popularity of smart phones means we are now more connected than ever with the web & social networks literally at our finger tips.

An insightful presentation from Geoff Peterson emphasises the power of mobile technology for recruitment purposes.  As he points out, the three things people tend to carry at all times are their keys, purse/wallet, and mobile phone.  Therefore the ability to leverage mobile technology for candidate attraction is going to increase in importance.  The Q4 MDA mobile trends report indicated that in the UK we send 11 million text messages an hour, and web traffic from mobiles is already estimated to be growing eight times faster than web traffic from UK PC’s.  Many job boards such as Research Job Finder, Monster & Jobsite as well as direct employers such as Transport for London have already launched iPhone apps for jobseekers.

Smart Phones & Recruitment

All The Top Bananas recently hosted a twitter debate on mobile recruitment that raised some interesting questions concerning smart phones, augmented reality, mobile gaming and short codes.  Early questions concerned whether the sheer volume of available apps will lead to confusion for job seekers.  Given that the average job seeker visits approximately 5 job sites, maybe mobile job seeker behaviour will reflect this with candidates downloading a similar number of apps covering some generalist boards and some relevant industry or Company apps?  I can see the aggregator sites perhaps becoming popular in this respect as you would only need to use one app to search multiple job boards.  I’ve tested a few of these apps myself to see how easily I could find my own clients jobs.  Interestingly with many of them, you are not encouraged to actually complete the entire application process via your mobile, but to email jobs of interest to your inbox for review once you are behind a computer.

During the debate Glen le Santo (twitter @lesanto) brought up the issue of hosted CV’s.  Is there a demand for ‘CV clouds’ where candidates can store CV’s remotely for mobile applications? Also would it be useful if an application could map a web document from a LinkedIn profile for mobile job applications?  You can already attach CV’s to your Linkedin profile; I was surprised there was not a job search icon on the Linkedin iPhone app, to make it easier to apply for a job via your phone.  Such a feature could allow you to submit your CV with a pdf of your LinkedIn profile direct to a recruiter on your phone.

Augmented Reality, Gaming & Mobile Recruitment

Another interesting topic raised was the role of Augmented Reality (AR) and recruitment.  AR refers to a display in which simulated imagery, text or graphics are superimposed on a view of the surrounding environment in the camera screen of your mobile phone.   So for example you point your phone at a theatre, and superimposed on your phone screen are the current shows and opening times.  The Layer smart phone app is an example of this technology.  I’ve used similar apps for choosing local restaurants and begun to wonder how this could be used for recruitment.  While I’m pointing my phone at a restaurant, as well as the consumer ratings popping up telling me how delicious the food is (or isn’t) surely it could also display vacant positions (or the option to view available positions) such as a head chef.  No chefs may be using such an application at the time and pointing their phone at that specific restaurant; but someone in my network may be interested, and a quick tweet, foursquare or Face book update later and the job is already making its way around the web.

This also got me thinking, what if something like Glassdoor was integrated with an AR application? Consider a fresh graduate visiting London, perhaps for a career fair viewing landmarks in the City via an AR app.  Available jobs at surrounding companies could pop up on the phone screen referenced with employee ratings of what it is like to work there.

During the mobile tweet debate the notion of gaming apps like foursquare, and where they fit into the future of mobile recruitment was also discussed (if you don’t use foursquare, it’s a mobile game, a kind of location based social network  aimed at helping you find new ways to explore your city/ environment.  You can earn points or unlock badges for discovering new places, new things and meeting new people).  Starbucks have already created reward programmes for users that ‘check in’ regularly to their locations.  If you are able to attract followers in this way, could this be used for recruitment purposes?

Foursquare is already being used for retention and employee engagement purposes (click here to see a few examples).  It may not translate into a direct recruitment method, but take the example of a high street retailer.  If you have a loyal customer base frequently checking in and purchasing goods at your store, you could assume that they are relatively well engaged with your brand and are also interested in fashion.  Similar to Starbucks you could use foursquare to communicate certain promotions or competitions.  How about a competition to find talented up and coming designers?  Or to promote a Graduate scheme?  Users that check in and share such data with their foursquare friends and twitter followers would be virally distributing your job opportunities across the web.

Short Codes

Short codes are numeric codes, typically 5-6 digits used to address SMS and MMS messages from mobile phones.  They are widely used in television voting (just think X factor) but also by brands looking to create a more interactive experience with consumers.  For example with British Airways you can text ‘D’ followed by your flight number to a short code such as 60747 to receive the latest flight details to your phone.  Short codes can also be used to help interact with potential candidates.  I’ve previously used short codes to try and enhance the performance of job adverts in print.  Included in the print ad was the option to text your email address followed by a code in order to receive the full job spec and recruiter contact details directly to your inbox.  The point being an interested reader on the way to work could have the full job, company, and recruiter details sent to their inbox for consideration when they have more time available later in the day.  The email would act as a kind of reminder of the opportunity should they not rip out the page or keep the paper.  This is quite a basic use of short codes that had mixed results; no doubt there are more innovative ways they can be used to enhance the candidate experience.

 

 

Passive Candidates

Another interesting question raised during the twitter debate concerned passive candidates.  Would a passive candidate be searching for jobs on their mobile?  As Bill Boorman (twitter @Bill Boorman) put it “Passive job seekers need ‘stumble upon’ opportunities” on their mobile.

How can we generate these stumble upon opportunities?  As discussed AR and mobile games could play a role here.  Over the past few years the big press sites such as the Times and Guardian have been heavily promoting the use of behavioural targeting for recruitment.  Essentially this means targeted ads will appear on the internet pages you are viewing based on the history of your online browsing behaviour.  Furthermore these ads follow you regardless of which part of the site you are visiting.  You don’t need to be an active job seeker, if you frequently read the environment section of the Guardian; you may find yourself constantly seeing adverts for Environmental Consultant opportunities even though you are catching up on the latest sports or business news.

If such targeting can be applied to mobile news sites then this would provide a more targeted avenue for attracting passive job seekers.  Research into mobile app usage by Flurry towards the end of 2009 indicated that news and reference apps have the highest frequency of use and retention rates.  They seem an obvious place to attract candidates in the mobile world.  Of course any advertising would have to be discreet so they don’t annoy and alienate the user.  Many free apps use discreet banner adverts along the bottom of the screen.  It would be interesting to see the results of discreet recruitment advertising like this used in conjunction with behavioural targeting on mobile news sites.

Given the pace of technological change and the growing popularity of smart phones, no doubt it won’t be too long before we start seeing some of the more innovative practical applications of mobile recruitment.

By Jean-Paul Smalls of VONQ UK