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Top 10 reasons why mobile recruiting is here to stay and some say if you don't hop on board you'll be left behind follow this blog post

posted by on March 6, 2009

I started thinking about this list after I wrote a blog post but what really got my juices going are the replies I received after sending out an email invitation to Michael Marlatt's upcoming webinar.
 
The responses were all over the place, from dramatically enthusiastic to insanely missinformed! What really amazed me though were the misconceptions and doubt that surfaced are out there about mobile recruiting. I had one particular gentleman reply to state "Oh this would never work in IT" and another lady commented that "response rates to mobile direct marketing are declining."
 
First of all, let me clarify that mobile recruiting is about finding and connecting with people who use mobile phone, not about recruiting from or through your mobile phone. You don't even have to have a web-enabled phone to recruit on the mobile web!
 
But I digress. I thought... what better way to evangelize how important mobile recruiting is than to borrow from some of Michael's initiative and write a top ten list with the hopes that it would dispell some of these myths:
 

1.     Your prospects use the web on their mobile phones privately while waiting in line, going to lunch, taking a coffee break, where their employers can't watch them!

2.     Mobile phones are portable, well-connected, relatively inexpensive computers providing the primary or sole Internet connection to a majority of the people across the world

3.     You�??ll be left behind if you don�??t go mobile. PEW Internet states the mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.

4.     By 2020 work and play will be seemles. Well-connected knowledge workers will eliminate the industrial-age boundaries between work and personal time

5.     Nielsen Mobile reports that...

a.     Text messaging (sending & receiving) is up 450%, in the past two years. In the USA 262 million subscribers send over 75 billion text messages a month

b.    Mobile Internet extends audience reach of leading sites by average of 13% over PC traffic alone

c.     87 million U.S. mobile users subscribe to mobile Internet services, more than 1 in 10 (13.7%) actively uses mobile Internet each month

6.     IT Facts says that there will likely be 100 million mobile VoIP (voice over IP) users by 2011.

7.     Mobile more ubiquitous than the PC. GSM World and the CTIA confirm there are 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions on the planet, vs. just 1 billion PC owners

a.     53% of US cell phone subscriber base (or 138 million people) use text messaging

b.    If you are reading this on your mobile, so are your candidates! More than 76% of consumers aged 18-24 communicate via this medium.

c.     The bag is open, the cats are everywhere! Mobile subscribers now represent 60% of the world's population and quickly growing

d.    Today's teens text more than they talk. Those teens are tomorrow�??s interns and salespeople and managers and CEOs�?�

8.     Highly relevant content snacks get passed around, this is viral marketing at its best!

a.     The average response rate to a mobile call to action is 12%, versus 2% for traditional media

b.    Open rates for messages are three times that of email (over 90% of text messages are read by the recipient)

c.     Click through rates can be up to 25 times higher than email, and the average time to open a mobile marketing message is 30 minutes while email's average is 24 hours.

d.    Most forms of advertising will decline in... but not Mobile! www.jackmyers.com reports traditional media will go down 15% in 2009 but mobile up 15% + another 30% by 2010

e.     Mobile rich media advertising to near $2.8 Billion by 2012. Where there�??s money there�??s candidates!

9.     12% of US households have abandoned fixed landlines and moved to mobile phones only

10.  Google is now reporting that it is seeing a rapid increase in mobile Internet search and usage
 
 
OK so I cheated. There are really 20 items on the list :)
 
I'd really like your reaction to these data points!
 
I over did it because I'd really like your reaction to these data points! I've also posed a question about these in several LinkedIn groups and I'll report back here under the comments sections with any juicy replies I get there as well as from my other blog post. 
 
Cheers,
Shally 
 
P.S. Follow me on Twitter!
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6 comments

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  • 1 point 8 months ago

    True, true, true...and taking it one step further, there is the reason that clients need to ensure that their career site is accessible by mobile devices(WAP).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol

  • 1 point 8 months ago

    I don't think that because certain folks don't adopt a new technology that they are "out of the loop". They may well be out of A loop, but not THE loop. So while mobile computing does break down somewhat 'generationally', there are avid adopters of new technology at all ages and also people who survive very well without, say, texting (but not my 18 year old kid :)). What strikes me as important at this time is the customized nature of contacting people. This is why CRM's with an integrated outreach may be a particularly effective approach. Mobile CRM - even better! Thanks, Shally!

  • 1 point 8 months ago

    Great info. .. another good read was cheezhead's whitepaper http://www.mjob.com/wp.pdf on mobile recruiting .. explains why you need to start thinking about branding your co. on mobile ads or why RSS is just not enough and you need to have mobile readable career sites.

  • 1 point 8 months ago

    Yes, Glenn, some of the most disbelieving comments were from Boomers, but I am not going to point a finger quite yet. Like when I first started talking about sourcing on the Internet, I think the resistance is simply because this is new and different. I also had a tough time adopting SMS. When I got my first text message (from a GenY employee) I was compelled to call the person back, primarily because I didn't even yet know how to reply to a text message with my old phone. Now I have a phone with a keyboard, and its loaded with web applications like Google search, Yahoo Go, Facebook and LinkedIn, Opera browser, Shozu, Viigo, GPS mapping software, and so on. Once I got past the initial learning curve I'm now addicted.

    So what we have to do is keep talking about it until adoption increases, then the fear and uncertainty will go away.

  • 1 point 8 months ago

    I think the problem is that when a new label is slapped onto a concept, some people misinterpret that because they come from a position of minimal information. At this point, "Mobile recruiting" means different things to different people. The generation growing up with mobile devices clearly have a different view of them than older folks, or at least from those who aren't in professions that depend on mobile.

    Are the misinformed comments coming primarily from the Boomer generation? Do the old dogs fear learning new tricks? Based on your comment, "You don't even have to have a web-enabled phone to recruit on the mobile web," it sounds like even they will be pleasantly surprised by what they can do. I hope a lot of them show up for Michael's webinar!

  • 1 point 8 months ago

    Yes to all.

    Many of the emerging workforce prefer texting to e-mail and they will still be more inclined to respond to e-mail on their mobile device vs pc.

    Newer evolutions of CRM's are including the inclusion of mobile connectivity so it is going in that direction on all fronts. Not mainstream, but going there with a bullet.