This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
November 19 2013 by Editorial - admin
Last week the Manchester team hosted the first in a new series of seminars aimed at discussing some of the hottest topics in attraction and recruitment today.
The first session ‘Smartphones – the ultimate recruitment tool’ covered not only the whys and wherefores of creating mobile optimised careers sites. It also introduced the topic of using mobile as a media channel to reach out to the growing mobile audience.
Anna Steele gave an insightful introduction to – what some conspiracy theorists might view as – the ‘mobile tracking device’ you carry with you wherever you go. It included an overview of the type of data your phone transmits about you and how it collects it – to the great surprise of many of the participants.
Many people are very protective of their mobile numbers when it comes to completing forms, but that’s only one of the ways mobile operators (and therefore advertisers) can obtain your data. Did you know that of the 63 million people in the UK with a mobile phone, 40 million have opted in to mobile marketing databases in one way or another? Anna went on to discuss the ways in which recruiters can harness this information and use it to create typical candidate audience profiles in order to target jobseekers through their mobiles.
Once we’ve reached people, the interested candidate needs to be engaged and provided with relevant information in an easy-to-view and digest format. The user journey is crucial in supporting and enhancing your employer brand messages.
The focus for the second part of our session saw Scott McGougan talk our delegates through the options for mobile-optimising the careers site and the implications if you don’t. We also looked at options for those who haven’t considered mobile users yet because their ATS doesn’t yet allow candidates to apply via mobile. Most importantly we took heart in the fact that a large majority of candidates and consumers are very happy to use a number of devices to complete any task.
The statistics for mobile are overwhelming:
- 94% of the UK population own a mobile phone (64% of which are smartphones)
- mobile data usage is up 70% in the last year,
- mobile web traffic accounts for over a quarter of all visits to websites (and steadily increasing) and
- 77% of mobile data usage is actually used whilst at home or work, so people are choosing the mobile device to browse the web even when there is a large screen available.
The question isn’t ‘Can you afford to incorporate mobile into your employer communications strategy?’ but rather ‘Can you afford not to?’
View the full presentation here.
