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

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

Virtually every member of Gen Y — today’s college students and recent graduates — and about 90 percent of Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers care enough about only one electronic device to carry it with them virtually everywhere they go: their cell phones.

Most young adults see their cell phones as important to carry with them as their wallet and keys and the significance of their cell phones has only grown as most of those young adults have graduated from feature to smartphones like iPhones, Androids, and Blackberrys. Indeed, some studies are now projecting that in 2013 the large majority of college students and recent graduates will own smartphones.  Continue Reading

58% Experience Road Rage Commuting To or From Work

A new study shows workers may have more than heavy traffic to contend with on their way to work. Fifty-eight percent of workers who drive to work said they experience road rage at times while traveling to and from the office, similar to findings in 2006 when the study was last conducted. Nearly one-in-ten workers (9 percent) who drive to work have gotten into a fight with another commuter. The study was conducted online by Harris Interactive© from May 14, 2012 to June 4, 2012 and included more than 3,800 workers nationwide.

The vast majority of workers (83 percent) said they typically drive to work and, of those, 12 percent reported they took a job with a longer commute during or post-recession. While incidents of road rage are more prevalent among those with lengthy commutes, workers with short trips to their jobs aren’t immune. Thirty-seven percent of workers with commutes of less than five minutes said they experience road rage from time to time. The same goes for 54 percent of workers with commutes of less than ten minutes.

Gender and Age Comparisons

Women were more apt to feel road age – 61 percent compared to 56 percent of men. In terms of age groups, workers ages 25 to 34 were the most likely to experience road at 68 percent while workers 55 and older were the least likely to experience it at 47 percent. 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

Fewer Employers Using On-Campus Recruiting to Hire Students, Graduates

On-campus recruiting used to be widely regarded as the most effective, efficient way for employers to hire college students for internships and recent graduates for entry-level jobs but then this thing called the Internet came along and changed all of that. There’s no doubt that on-campus recruiting is still the best way for many employers to hire students and grads, but it no longer has a near monopoly on that and more and more employers are supplementing or even replacing their on-campus efforts with job posting ads, targeted email campaigns, targeted cell phone text messaging campaigns, and other tools.

Today, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reported that “there is a slow, but steady, move away from using on-campus interviews in the recruiting process. Continue Reading

The Power of Cell Phone Text Messaging

CollegeRecruiter.com has been delivering targeted cell phone text messaging (sms) campaigns on behalf of our employer and consumer marketing clients for about five years now and we’ve learned a lot in that time. For example, it used to be that we’d send the text then follow up with an HTML (graphical) email a few days later and the open and click through response rates would be far higher than if we just emailed the same people.

Now we are seeing comparable open and click rates but the real response rate — applications for employers or leads/sales for consumer marketers — are much higher than you’d see with just an email.

We also continue to see far higher response rates than other types of media such as banner ads. Our numbers are consistent with those published by the Direct Marketing Association in its 2010 Response Rate Survey. It saw click through and conversion rates of 0.76 and 4.43 percent for banners, 6.64 and 1.73 percent for email campaigns, and 14.06 and 8.22 percent for sms campaigns.

So what does this mean to you if you are marketing employment or consumer marketing opportunities? Well, a click is not a click is not a click. Clicks from sms campaigns convert better than those from emails but banners outperformed both. On the other hand, banners grossly underperformed both sms and emails in generating the clicks in the first place. At the end of the day, sms campaigns are proving to be very effective and efficient sources of clicks and, more importantly, applications or leads/sales.

Video: Taking Your Recruiting Message Mobile: Why, How, and When

I had the pleasure of delivering this 75 minute presentation a couple of months ago in San Diego, California at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2010 annual conference. The description of the presentation was as follows:

Learn why your organization needs to have a mobile recruitment marketing strategy and how best to implement it so you can recruit the candidates you need and stay within your budget.

Virtually every member of Gen Y and about 90 percent of Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers care enough about only one electronic device to carry it with them virtually everywhere they go: their cell phones. If your organization’s web site and recruiting message are not fully accessible to your most sought after candidates on their mobiles then those candidates will end up becoming employees of your competitors. In this highly interactive and humorous presentation, learn why your organization needs to have a mobile recruitment marketing strategy and how best to implement it so you can recruit the candidates you need and stay within your budget.

The Sexy Side of HR

Jessica Miller-Merrill of Blogging 4 Jobs recently contacted me to ask if I would be interested in partnering with her and a few other human resource industry professionals to deliver a panel presentation at the SXSW Interactive conference in March 2011 in Austin, Texas. Her vision was to put together a group of us who could talk about how and why employers should use cell phone text messaging, social media, and other technologies to recruit and retain top talent. I gave her the enthusiastic thumbs up.

Jessica submitted the proposal in July and last week was notified by SXSW that her proposal made it to the second round of consideration. This next round consists of voting from visitors to the SXSW Panel Picker Page and those votes count for 30 percent of the score given to each proposal. In short, if you think that this is a good topic, it is really, really important that you vote for our panel.

Jessica (@blogging4jobs) will moderate The Sexy Side of HR panel and we’ll be joined by Joel Cheesman, Blogger & VP at Jobing.com (@cheezhead) and Carrie Corbin of AT&T Talent Attraction (@thealphafemme).

Please take out two minutes and do the following: Go to the Panel Picker Page, click the link to “Sign In” near the top corner, click “create a new account” (assuming you don’t have one already), complete the simple form, and vote for The Sexy Side of HR panel. It really is that simple. Thanks!!