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Tag: mobile
To help you better understand mobile optimization, I have prepared a simple checklist, taken from my 2012 mobile recruiting guide.
Are you building great relationships from your career website when candidates visit on mobile? If you haven’t considered the following, you could be damaging your employee brand. keep reading…
If you’re going to be an effective recruiter, you need to continually change your mix of recruiting tools in order to stay ahead of the competition. Adopting new tools is critical because once any tool is used by everyone, it loses its effectiveness. In part one of this article, I provided a list of bold sourcing, referral, event, and college recruiting tools. In the second part, I continue the toolkit with advanced recruiting tools for the most aggressive recruiters, and bold closing tools for getting difficult to land candidates to say “yes.”
Advanced recruiting tools and approaches keep reading…
Buoyed by the early returns from the launch of its mobile-optimized career site, Microsoft is working on what for some companies is a major goal of mobile recruiting: a way for candidates to apply for jobs straight from a mobile phone, without going to their computer later in the day. The apply-from-your-phone experience is a “top priority” of the Microsoft team, one that is being pursued as its other work on mobile recruiting goes on simultaneously.
The company joined the early movers in mobile recruiting this year with the launch of its mobile career site. Those movers, among many others, include Pepsi, UPS, adidas, McDonald’s, Intel, Citi, and Sodexo. Microsoft had started working on the site last summer, 2011, and had brought on Punchkick Interactive for help. On the Microsoft side, the players included Heather Tinguely, as well as others in recruiting, staffing marketing, and the global talent labs division.
There was some interesting discussion within the Microsoft walls: keep reading…
a company page for iPhones
LinkedIn is launching a few changes. Some of the most interesting revolve around a mobile-friendly version of its company pages. Droid and iPhone users, rather than using a phone to view company pages like they do with a computer, will have a streamlined, mobile-optimized company page (see graphic at right).
Another change is that as part of people’s “Recent Updates,” the “jobs you may be interested in” will appear.
Below is an example of what those “jobs you may be interested in” looks like, also shown on an iPhone.
"jobs you may be interested in"
LinkedIn had been experiencing some pretty high bounce rates when smart phone users tried its non-optimized pages using smart phones, an issue it has wanted to address as about one of five users come to LinkedIn via a mobile device. Nineteen people-searches are done on LinkedIn every second from mobile devices, and 41 LinkedIn profiles are viewed every second from mobile devices.
Growth is particularly strongly coming from LinkedIn iPad users, who generally tend to be more in more managerial positions than other LinkedIn users.
Meanwhile, here are a few other recent tidbits about recruiting job boards, venture capital funds, databases, and more.
Loews Hotels’ award-winning mobile site
Based on a recent study by Mongoose Metrics, only 9% of all the websites in the world are optimized for mobile devices. And yet more and more people are viewing sites on smartphones and tablets. That means your site is probably failing a large part of your audience.
So you need to make your site mobile-ready. It’s not easy. You have to rethink everything.
A lot of clients I speak to think that “mobile optimization” means just shrinking their site to fit on a smaller screen. There’s much more to it. Because of the different needs of a mobile user and the different experience of a phone, the entire design has to change. This means bringing in your creative director to craft a new look and feel for the site, while keeping your branding. Seem like a big step? It’s only the beginning.
The mobile web has been a long time coming, but it has arrived and it is here to stay. The big tech players are re-optimising their mobile channels.
Google has been investing time improving search on the mobile web. It recently announced a raft of visual changes for searches such as finance, currency conversion, holidays, etc. This is clearly the start of a serious mobile optimization program. A source inside Google shared that the global search volumes for mobile were overtaking global desktop searches.
The mobile optimization effort is paying off. The search results are significantly different on mobile and currently favor mobile-optimized sites. Is your recruitment site in or out of Google’s favor — are you mobile optimized? keep reading…
It’s just like 1995 all over again for Ed Newman, the new VP of strategy at iMomentous. It’s a company you probably haven’t heard of but you may have used. We’ll get to that in a minute.
Newman is having a Back to the Future moment because in 1995, 70% of the Fortune 500 didn’t have a corporate website. Now though, 90% of them don’t optimize their career sites for mobile usage.
That’s according to a report that his company recently completed surveying the mobile recruiting landscape of the entire Fortune 500. He sees the same lost opportunity and slow adoption that plagued companies well into the new millennium when it came to overall Internet adoption.
Only now, things are bound to be much more difficult for late adopters.
Sure, mobile is a hot market. But are employers making the blunder of not responding quickly enough to simplify and streamline their job application processes?
Simply Hired’s CEO & Co-founder Gautam Godhwani talks about that with me in Hollywood, California, for about five minutes in the video below. We also get into:
The social recruiting hype went huge and has not burst, but mobile has followed a stealth, almost, cult adoption. Over the next 12 months the continued convergence of mobile and social will catapult mobile to the front of recruiters’ minds.
As an industry, recruitment is suffering the growing pains of mobile web. You know you need to support mobile, and reap the rewards of the powerful digital marketing and engagement channel, but it is not clear what the objective is, or how to go about it.
Is mobile the ultimate connectivity tool providing employer information and candidate communication? Or is it the new way to apply for jobs? Maybe it is the next best referral tool? Perhaps it is the ideal back-office device allowing the candidate database to be carried in your pocket! Perhaps the true jackpot mobile recruiting solution is still waiting to be discovered.
Recent research shows that 31% of the global $5.3 billion mobile advertising spend is to achieve market presence, while 25% is for lead generation. If recruitment followed the same pattern, this would be 31% for employer branding and 25% to attract applications; but today most companies have pushed mobile off the agenda in place of social media. The problem with this typical approach is social media is rapidly morphing into mobile! keep reading…
The use of the Internet with a smartphone is fast becoming the next mass media channel. That’s particular true with social media such as Facebook. Recents statistics from a company called comScore show the mobile Internet audience is using Facebook nearly an hour more a month than they’re using it on a desktop.
Facebook mobile users have a choice of downloading an application, or using the mobile Facebook. Eighty percent of mobile Facebook users use the application. With Twitter, users prefer the application, too. This data has confused many industry commentators, with many bloggers writing that applications are “winning the battle.” This interpretation is wrong. keep reading…
In that recent look at Intel’s social media moves, I said the smart phone application for job-seekers was “still being tweaked.”
The company has now launched “Jobs at Intel” for Android phones. The iPhone application will probably be unveiled in a week or two. You can get an idea of what these applications look like at the “Google play” store; in a nutshell, right now you can view videos, search for jobs, and follow Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook feeds.
If you have a Droid, you can download it on the “Play Store” icon on your phone.
Intel is talking internally about how it can improve upon and expand the application, including doing more for internal job-seekers. Intel’s Keith Molesworth says it’s all part of an effort to improve the user experience for people connecting with Intel on the move, an effort that includes a tablet application designed by the U.S. college recruiting team, and developed by IT. There’s also a tablet app in use in Costa Rica, and mobile technology solutions in Germany and Israel.
“The app is part of our strategy to position ourselves to hire the best hardware and software talent to enable us to achieve our vision to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth,” Intel’s Allen Stephens says. “Very few companies can say that.”
SelectMinds, TheLadders, an RPO, and more are making announcements at the ERE Expo in San Diego today. Just a sampling:
First SelectMinds, which “moved deeper into the employee referral world” a couple of years ago and then into the “talent communities” competition, today is launching what it calls the “first-of-its-kind software to allow corporate HR to automate all aspects of social recruiting.”
It’s an upgrade to the company’s TalentVine product with six new modules: a jobs distributor to send out listings and links to company Facebook pages and Twitter accounts; a talent community module; a referral program module; a Facebook jobs page builder; a social-media-friendly career-site builder; and a module that optimizes job listings for mobile phones. keep reading…
Regarding its new jobs app, Cummins says, “Finding a job has never been so much fun.”
Not for me, really — as I’ve got the new Droid 4 phone, and Cummins’ new application isn’t available on Android yet. But iPhone users looking for jobs with the company can view interactive engines using the application. They can also watch videos, get custom feeds with the jobs they want, and more.
The company says that the engine-viewing part of the app, where you can zoom and rotate around the diesel engine, is aimed at everyone from middle-school students to high-school students to experienced engineers who might want a new career.
Cummins is an Indiana-based designer-manufacturer-distributor with about $18 billion in annual sales.
Sodexo is launching two things: a new mobile-friendly careers site, as well as a job-hunting application for U.S. job seekers to use on iPhones, iPads, Androids, and soon Blackberries. Candidates can use the app, available from a landing page, to search for jobs, apply for jobs, join a talent community, get job alerts, and learn more about working for the company.
What makes it not just-another-mobile-recruiting-launch is, for one, that it’s Sodexo. The company earned the 2010 recruiting department of the year award; is a finalist this year in the best-brand category; and is a leader in recruiting with social media. Also, candidates who create a profile in the Sodexo career center can apply for a job straight from the mobile device; this differs from many other setups, where companies need candidates to eventually get to their laptop or desktop to apply. keep reading…
An IT staffing company you probably haven’t heard of is quickly hiring employees and recruiters after it won some new business that it probably hadn’t dreamed it would.
XpertTech has already grown about 400% in six months money-wise, and in terms of employee size, from 12 employees to 61 employees in six months. Now it’s hiring 30 people in 30 days in the San Francisco Bay area for a mobile phone application project. It’s looking for designers, coders, and others. Joe Budzienski, the company’s executive vice president, is telling candidates, “Whether you have just graduated college and have been developing in your dorm room between classes, or have worked as a senior engineer who realized app development was your true calling, we want to speak with you. The only thing we ask is you live, breathe, and eat APPS!”
“To be trusted with this project is an honor,” says Budzienski. “It’s a very very prominent company, global.” One job listing on LinkedIn suggests the client is a banking company, as do some other posts.
The 30-day hiring blitz started Monday, and XpertTech has hired 12 of the 30 already. keep reading…
Mobile technology especially the apps that go hand-in-hand with portable devices, is fueling tech hiring this year, as companies scramble to build out their mobile capability.
Just over half (54 percent) of IT leaders surveyed for the quarterly TEKsystems’ Executive Outlook Survey will implement some mobile initiative during the year, with more healthcare leaders (76 percent) planning projects than those in any other sector.
Mobile apps are among the leading projects, according to CIOs polled by Robert Half Technology. Twenty-two percent of them say they’ll be developing a mobile application for their company before the end of the year. Besides getting their development teams, the biggest challenge, say 28 percent of the CIOs, is finding and hiring IT staff with the necessary skills.
“Building mobile applications requires intense collaboration between numerous groups within the organization, including marketing, IT, operations and sales,” said John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology. “It’s important for mobile application developers to have strong soft skills, in addition to the ability to write code and test and debug software applications.” keep reading…
I was just reviewing the predictions I made for 2011 written at roughly this time a year ago. Much of what I thought would happen unfolded as expected, except for talent management. I had thought there would more focus on integrating the employee development and recruitment functions, and more internal hiring. I still think that’s on tap for this year. I was on target regarding hiring: There was no great uptick in the volume of hiring, and unemployment remained static. And I was on target with predicting that social media would be core to recruiting success and that RPOs would thrive.
Over the past two years, the way we think about work has changed. Perhaps accelerated by the recession, there is more focus now on finding satisfying and rewarding work than on just finding a job that pays the most.
More people are thinking about finding something interesting, challenging, and perhaps even fun to do that provides enough income. The key words here are interesting/challenging and enough. Fewer expect to get rich and there is less focus on the money. There is more focus on lifestyle, flexibility, free time to pursue other learning or hobbies or sports, and less interest in family. I’ll do more columns on these trends soon, but partly because of them here are the major changes that I see happening this year.
Perhaps one of the most significant trends will be a greater focus on finding current employees to fill existing jobs. keep reading…
Recruiting never seems to change very much. As I have often written, even with computers, smart phones, cheap video, big bandwidth, and years of accumulated experience, the way we look for people and select them looks very much the same as it looked 50 years ago.
The question is: why haven’t these tools and technologies made any significant difference?
If we look at other professions, it is clear that technology is not what makes the real difference. Take building as an example. Using only primitive hand tools, carpenters and masons from Roman times on crafted buildings that are enduring and emulated. The construction methods they used are studied and copied, while their tools gather dust in museums. Chinese accountants used abacuses to keep their books and sailors had glorified rowboats to explore the world’s oceans. It turns out that knowing how to do something is a far more critical skill than what tools are used to do it. Tools do not cause change and transformation, but methods and processes do.
The skills involved in building, accounting, or sailing are what make the difference between success and failure and often between life and death. Those who have improved the methods of building — the ones who figured out how to build skyscrapers and elevators — have contributed more to our progress than have the tools they used.
Technology saves labor and time and often lets us do things we could not do with our own muscles or brains, but it is not a substitute for core knowledge or for understanding how to do something or for human behavior.
And that is most likely why recruiting has not changed. While recruiters have many new tools, they are using traditional processes and methods without much innovation. This is most likely because, despite the hype about a talent shortage, there is really not a major problem finding talented people. If fact, most recruiters would be bored if their job became too easy — and many enjoy the hunt. Innovation usually occurs when there is an unsolvable problem or a major problem or a crisis, and recruiting has yet to run into any of those.
But what could be is still interesting. What would an efficient, updated recruiting process look like? Here are a few ideas that I think might work.
If anyone has already tried them or plans on giving them a try, I would like to hear from you in the comments section. keep reading…
Matt Jeffery said this was coming, as did Kevin Wheeler: Using games in recruiting. It has been tried by a consumer product company and an animal hospital on Facebook, among many other companies, like Siemens.
Now, a company called Upstream, in the mobile marketing business, has created an online game for its marketing campaign manager positions. Candidates are led through seven “missions” or questions — that is, after they put in their contact details, including a resume. (A requirement I wasn’t so fond of, as it deters those without one.)
One question — one of the seven missions — asks, “If you were to promote Skype to a general target audience who are not current users, which features would you highlight?”
Upstream has added about 45 people in 2011, and opened offices in Silicon Valley, Rio, and Dubai, and is still hiring. Part of what it plays up to potential customers is its use of games in mobile marketing.
John Sullivan asked: Are QR codes the next big thing in recruitment technology?
For adidas, an award winner last year, they’re already a big thing.
Craig Larson heads up U.S. recruiting. He started about a year ago, about the same time, he says, that adidas “identified a problem that needed a solution.”
The problem begins with the fact that adidas sends lots of people to trade shows in places like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York. These people aren’t recruiters, usually — and in fact recruiters sometimes are not welcome at the conventions. They are designers, marketers, buyers, and others there to “push product and get orders,” Larson says. “There’s a lot of deals down there and a lot of passive candidates.” Depending on the event, adidas can send a recruiter or two, but “a lot of times they don’t like us tagging along.”
On top of that, trade-show goers are often with their bosses, and not able to talk jobs. keep reading…
This video from Code.org, pointed out to me by my friend Julia Gometz, provides an awfully strong message that being a comput... more »
