Are You a Mobile Enabler or a Mobile Laggard?

By Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads

September marks the start of the 2012 fall frenzy of conferences, niche conferences, un-conferences, expos, seminars, webinars, (and yes, a Colloquium or two). Not every session at every event offers deep dives but the mobile discussion has been noted everywhere this year. One conference, held in mid-September, the second mRecruitingCamp, was totally devoted to the subject. (Michael Marlatt did an excellent job on this one-day niche event.)

Practitioners offering solid case study insights on mobile technology and recruiting included Matt Lavery [UPS], Chris Hoyt [PepsiCo] and Heather Tinguely [Microsoft]. We encourage you to look for their videos. Bottom line, a rapidly increasing percentage of prospects in their pipelines (prospects who are eventually hired) are engaged and in more and more cases applying through mobile devices. Continue Reading

Evolving labor market calls for evolving tactics

Livingstone Mukasa, Founder and CEO of Archability

Many of us can recall, rather recently, times when the majority of soon-to-be college graduates had secured two, maybe three job offers prior to donning the ceremonial gown and walking down the aisles to get their degrees.  In those days, recruiters were just about everywhere, many taking on new employees in droves and even throwing in signing bonuses and paid relocation expenses.  All that mattered was a college degree.  The rest simply fell into place on its own.

Seemingly overnight, this equation that had existed for generations was turned upside down.  Unbeknownst to many, market forces were at work chipping away at what had been the standard formula for job security.  The days of graduates finding jobs with minimal effort were coming to end as the very definition of job seeking and recruitment was undergoing a transformation that would set a new precedent in the sourcing and securing of employment. Continue Reading

College Students Connect Apps and Education

These days, college students (like most people) are constantly connected to their mobile devices, texting, tweeting, listening to music, etc.  However, they are also using technology for educational purposes.  The following infographic shows how applications, or apps, are impacting students’ education. Continue Reading

41% of Students Usually Have 3+ Devices Connected to Internet At Same Time

There’s little doubt that there’s been an explosion in usage of bandwidth on college campuses nationwide due to the rapid increase in number of smartphones, tablets, and digital media players used by students. It was only a couple of years ago when few students had smartphones or iPad-type tablets but now almost all have one or both.

The rapid growth in these Internet connected devices has led to significant bandwidth problems for information technology departments at the colleges and universities. Consider: Continue Reading

Video Interview in U.K. Immediately After Keynote About U.S. Job Market for College Grads

Last week I had the good fortune to fly over to Leeds, England to keynote their annual Graduate Employment Conference. CEO of Graduates Yorkshire and Gradcore Martin Edmondson asked me to deliver a presentation about the U.S. job market for college and university students and recent graduates. Many of the issues we’re facing are similar to those they’re facing. They’re experiencing some of them before we do and we’re experiencing some before they do.

One issue that I knew was important but didn’t realize just how important it would be to them was the high cost of attending just about any type of post-secondary school. The cost of attending a higher education institution is far higher in the U.S. than it is in almost any other country and FAR higher than it is to attend an equivalent school in the United Kingdom. But their recent implementation of austerity measures threatens to put their schools on a similar path to that which our schools have long been on. Without exception, every attendee and organizer with whom I spoke greatly appreciated my urging that they do not follow our lead as we are making higher education impossible for many and soon, I fear, for most. As bad as that would have been decades ago, it is even worse moving forward as we cannot and should not hope to compete against other nations to see which can manufacture goods at the lowest possible cost. Unless we want our citizenry to again have third world standards of living, we need to ensure they have first world standards of work. And that means that we need a workforce which uses the muscles between their ears more than the muscles on their backs. Continue Reading

Half of CIOs Say Their Firms Have or Will Offer a Mobile Application in 2012

Got Mobile?

“There’s an app for that” may apply to nearly half of U.S. businesses before the year is over, a new survey by Robert Half Technology shows. Twenty-seven percent of CIOs polled recently said their companies already offer a mobile application, while another 22 percent said they plan to offer one in 2012.

CIOs were asked, “Has your company developed a mobile application for customers and clients, or do you plan to offer one in the next 12 months?” Their responses: Continue Reading

Looking for a Marketing Job? Job Postings for Mobile Marketers Up 120% In Two Years.

Over the past 90 days, employers and staffing firms have placed more than 4,400 job ads for marketing professionals with mobile skill sets, according to WANTED Analytics, a leading source of real-time business intelligence for the talent marketplace. The volume of job ads that include mobile criteria in the job description grew significantly over the past two years, as mobile websites and applications become a more common business strategy. Hiring demand increased 16 percent compared to the same 90-day period in 2010 and more than 120 percent versus 2009. Mobile skills now represent 10 percent of all job ads for marketing professionals. Continue Reading

Videos and PowerPoints From FedCollege Recruiting Conferences on 12/7 and 12/8/2011

On April 1, 2011, Steve Tiufekchiev of RECSOLU and I co-organized the first FedCollege recruiting conference for federal, state, and local government employees who were involved in the hiring of college students for internships and recent graduates for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities. The conference was at The George Washington University’s Marvin Center in Washington, D.C.

Partnering with RECSOLU on this non-profit venture was a natural as Steve and I work well together and RECSOLU’s services are quite complimentary to the job postings, targeted emails, banner advertising, targeted cell phone text messaging, and other job board services sold by CollegeRecruiter.com. RECSOLU is a leading recruiting software, solutions, and services company, whose clients include more than 100 major corporations. Their packaged solutions enable their clients to achieve their college recruiting goals more effectively, with less staff time, greater efficiency, greater accuracy, and less cost.

We had hoped for 50 attendees to the April conference and were pretty happy when we ended up with 72 attendees. It was apparent to us that we should host another but we didn’t want to end up with even more attendees so we split the conference into two days with corporate and non-profit employer representatives scheduled for Wednesday, December 7th and government employer representatives scheduled for Thursday, December 8th. It was a good thing that we split the conference into two as we ended up with over 80 attendees between the two days. The smaller number of attendees per day really paid off as the sessions became more interactive than they would have been in larger rooms and attendees were able to meet and visit with each other much more easily. Continue Reading

How Employers Should Text Message Passive Candidates

Two of my favorite recruiting industry experts, Jim Stroud of The Recruiters Lounge and Michael Marlatt of mRecruitingcamp recently sat down for a conversation about whether employers should use cell phone text messaging (SMS) to reach passive job seekers, how they employers should text those candidates, and some tips and tricks to use to help ensure a successful campaign: Continue Reading

Most Job Seekers Want Mobile Yet Few Employers Seem to Care

I’ve advocated for years that employers need to re-think how they’re communicating on-line with candidates because more and more of those candidates are using their cell phones as their primary connection device and not land lines, desktop computers, or even laptop computers.

It never ceases to amaze me how high a percentage of hiring managers, recruiters, and other human resource professionals have NEVER visited their own web sites using an iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or other smartphone and how few of those who have visited their sites have never attempted to actually apply to a job using their mobile phone. Those who have realize almost without exception very, very quickly that they can’t. And when they see that typically 10 to 15 percent of their career site visitors are using mobile devices, you can see in their faces that they know they have a big problem that is getting bigger very quickly. Continue Reading