An effective recruitment marketing strategy is grounded in research and audience analysis. For the best possible ROI, sourcing and advertising decisions should be based on the behavior, needs and desires of your target talent. This is especially true in mobile recruitment, as mobile devices, preferences and usage can vary greatly between audiences by age, location and background.
“If you’re trying to reach people today, understand what devices they have in their hands right now,” said Michael Becker, Managing Director of North America for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), at a mobile recruiting conference last week.
Becker went on to say that mobile is the most effective and direct medium we have right now. However, if your mobile recruitment strategies are not based on audience behavior, you could be missing out on a huge pool of talent.
Assess Your Audience
Currently, 77% of the world’s entire population owns a cell phone, but only around 60-70% of those devices are smartphones. For recruitment, this could mean that a majority of your audience are using mobile devices without access to the Internet and may not be able to download your job app or view your mobile careers site. Or, the exact opposite may be true, but the only way to uncover these behaviors is by getting to know them.
Ways the World is Using Mobile
Technology has made accessibility to everything on the Internet a breeze, and mobile devices are no longer just means for making phone calls or sending messages here and there. Currently, mobile is being used in the following ways:
- 200 million YouTube views via mobile each day
- 350 million mobile Facebook users that are twice as engaged
- 70-80% of all mobile downloads are games
- 200,000 text messages sent every second
- 800% increase in QR code usage in the past year
Choosing Your Strategy
Mobile recruitment means different things for different organizations. If your brand is well-known and your jobs highly sought after, a mobile careers app could work for you. But for smaller companies, app pollution may kick in. Are candidates really likely to download a new app for each company they’re interested in applying to? Will your target talent even be aware that the app exists? Your mobile strategy could be as simple as optimizing your website and leveraging social media.
Bottom line: Chuck Martin, CEO of The Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center of Media Research at MediaPost, put it best, “If you’re going to implement mobile, you must find out how your target talent is using it.”
Image: Nina Matthews Photography/Flickr
Author: Autumn McReynolds
Autumn McReynolds is a master of communication, and with two years in the recruiting industry and over five years of experience in journalism and content creation, she was thrilled to take her career in a new direction as a Blogger and Content Strategist focused on talent acquisition in the digital age. In addition to writing, Autumn spends her time managing social media accounts for business and pleasure. Follow her on Twitter @AutumnMcRey.
