Video: When, Why and How to Use Mobile Technology in Your Recruitment Efforts

Below is the first eight minutes, 39 seconds of my presentation on mobile marketing at the 15th Minnesota Recruiters conference. The conference was held on November 8, 2011 at the General Mills world headquarters in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota. About 230 recruiters, hiring managers, and other human resource professionals attended.

Introducing me was conference organizer Paul DeBettignies. In his “real” job, Paul is a Minnesota I.T. recruiter with HireCast Consulting. Continue Reading

Job Search – There Must be an App for That – Part 3 of 5

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great, make you feel that you too, can become great.” – Mark Twain

“Help Wanted! Sophisticated smartphone resume writing tool needed to help job searcher create or update resumes from anywhere. Low rated apps need not apply“. 

A friend of mine has been out of work for several months due to his company failing. Although he’s been diligently looking for work, he’s not had much luck. His background is fairly diverse, so there are a number of different functional roles he could fill. One of his problems is that his resume is not particularly focused on any one job type and he has decided he must have several resumes (each of which will focus on a particular field). This is a fairly big task, further compounded by “spur of the moment” calls from recruiters, looking for a resume which is targeted to a specific role. So how does one tweak a resume while “on the run”? There are some apps out there (see below) to (somewhat) help. Continue Reading

Job Search – There Must be an App for That – Part 2 of 5

“Not all problems have a technological answer, but when they do, that is the more lasting solution.” - Andrew Grove

I was looking at the LinkedIn “find jobs” tab (found under “Jobs” at the top of your LinkedIn page), did a quick search and found a job opportunity that looked like it would be a perfect fit for me. As I read through the job description I got more and more excited about the opportunity. I decided that I must apply for this job. I quickly scrolled down to the bottom of the page where there was a large “Apply on Company Website” button. I was about to click this when I say the following – “On Fire! 285 people have clicked” Yikes! Maybe if I was one of the first 25 people to apply I might have a chance, but number 286, not very likely to be worth my time. Continue Reading

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

Job Search – There Must be an App for That – Part 1 of 5

We live in an “always online” world these days. Whether we are responding to emails at our desk, checking updates on Facebook, texting our friends, looking up just about everything on Google, it is never-ending. And when we can’t connect, like the 5 minutes our train goes through the tunnel or the 30 seconds we spend in an elevator, we get very agitated.  There is this need to “communicate now”, although my favorite is watching people attempting to walk and text at the same time (and if you have any doubts, check out the amazing number of “texting while walking” videos on Youtube). Well job search is no different. No, not searching while walking (although I’m sure it’s been done), but being able to job hunt and manage your career from (almost) anywhere. Continue Reading