Use Keywords to Speak The Language of Your Gen Y Candidates
How do you effectively communicate the message that your organization is current to the college students and recent grads you are hoping to recruit? The answer is simple: Offer them the option to text their interest in your opportunities to a cell phone text messaging short code! Is there anything today's students and recent grads do more than text? The answer, quite simply, is no. So, why not talk their language?
What exactly is a keyword and a short code? Do you remember how American Idol asked viewers to text the word VOTE to a four digit number? The word VOTE was their keyword and the four digit number was their short code.
Employers can use keyword advertising in pretty much the same way. You can provide a short keyword (very often only a couple of letters, like your company's initials) for them to text to a short code. A short keyword makes it less likely they will spell something wrong when texting their interest. For example, if your organization's name is Zigmore Pharmaceutical Testing, have them text " ZPT " as that will be a whole lot easier than having them text "Zigmore" or "Pharmaceutical" to your short code. Don't have your own short code? No problem. That's where we come in as we can and do work with you so that you can use our short code in your ad campaigns, whether they're TV, radio, newspaper, billboards, on-line, or any other kind of advertising.
Why do you even want to get involved with a keyword response? Because it shows your candidates, especially Gen Y / Millennial candidates, that your organization is current and empathetic to what is the newest technology in recruiting today. That is the kind of company the best candidates want to work for!
What happens when they text the keyword to the short code? When people respond to your ad by texting your keyword to our short code number, we'll automatically send a text message of up to 145 characters to them. That text message can include a phone number, a link to your web site, or other information you would like them to have. We can also forward you a list of cell phone numbers that have responded with the keywordfor follow up. This can also build up a future database for your organization.
Keywords can be part of a SMS (text message campaign), asking them to respond to the SMS message by texting the keyword. They can also be the response method (or one of the response methods) for an email, banner ad, job posting, newspaper, television, radio, billboard, or any other type of ad campaign. Quite simply, keywords can and should be part of every piece of recruitment advertising you do. They should be including in the above mentioned SMS and email campaigns, on recruitment brochures, websites, business cards, everywhere that you would list a phone number, email address or website for responding to a job offer. It is just one more way for candidates to respond...and it is quickly becoming the preferred way for Gen Y to express their interest in the job opportunities offered by leading organizations!
For additional information, please call Caddy Rowland (800) 835-4989 x707 or email us
Article by Caddy Rowland, CollegeRecruiter.com National Account Executive
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