Recruiters #fail at #TruLondon
Yesterday was day one of TruLondon, ran by @BillBoorman, as usual it was organised chaos. Listening to the chatter my biggest conclusion is the behaviour illustrated by recruiters is slow to change.
If you have not experienced #Tru it is key to realise that there is no PowerPoint, little structure to ‘tracks’. It’s an audience participated discussion – typically a thought leader will lead the discussion. It is a great two days, with loads to learn.
So what did I take away?
I am a seasoned #Tru attendee and have been to all the London events. They key points for me are the following:
1. To my dismay, most still fail to recognise the value of Mobile web activity and it’s intrinsic link to all established social networks! Smartphones outsold PCs last month, EBay, PayPal
and Amazon generated $11bn from on phone purchases but apparently no one is using them for job hunting or career research – that kind of radical behaviour is just crazy talk!
2. Advising consultants love Fads – it gives them something new to talk about and enlightens their day from repeating their wise words. I understand that. Now don’t get me wrong I am sure the growing platform of Pinterest does have sourcing value, currently their biggest audience is mid US stay at home women. The pond is getting bigger and learning about it is great, but there are other bigger ponds we ignore, this is just a current headline maker! The other fact is Pinterest has significant user base consuming the network from mobile web, yet nearly every recruiter ignores mobile as a channel!
3. 4MAT ran a great workshop on career sites which illustrated some very interesting insights to recruiters mindset. When detailing audience segmentation of the career site the participants captured passive & active job seekers, but missed out existing employees? Now it may be the audience was full of Recruitment Consultants / Agencies but it is a huge #fail.
SEO was in the middle of critical and useless? How people are supposed to find your website baffles me. Clearly your employer brand or agency name is so sort after everyone will flock to it. I am surprised there is not a queue at your gates every morning of budding PhDs wanting to work for you!
Social media was deemed important – oh good.
But to my dismay mobile was pushed back into useless. Oh dear, if that is the case you must be doing it wrong!
Talking with leading European job boards the volume of job seekers via Mobile is critical to their business. How many jobs sent by email are read on mobile, how many of those links are mobile friendly. How many of those ‘important’ tweets and Facebook posts are consumed on Mobile – nearly 50%. It is not difficult or even that expensive, in many cases the entire investment is recouped within a month of going live. If you care about social then wake up and start caring about Mobile! The candidate already does!
4. The biggest, noisiest session yesterday afternoon was “Is the CV Dead?”. Why did you go to this talk? How many CVs do you get through your inbox every day? You already know if it’s dead! Do you review a candidate from snippets of info exposed by Twitter etc? Do you follow that up and find their LinkedIn profile? Then who cares if the CV is dead? Unless you are in the business of writing CVs, what does it matter?
What this does show, is the the industry is most fearful of change. A discussion where you can be told about the change you are already living, and help you feel comfortable about this change is comforting. I can understanding this, the industry was static for so long and then technology introduced new fangled ways- change is tough!
Even better maybe you can waste your time at #Tru remembering the good old days when you had a phone (fixed line maybe with a dial) and a Filofax!
I am ranting and being very picky! There was a lot of very valuable and interesting content and I seriously suggest if you are in London or on Twitter you join in the discussion!
If you are at #Tru today, let’s talk about how to do things better and learn from the experiences in the room.
CareerBuilder know mobile matters
As a switched on social network aware employer, you know you need to expose your employer brand on mobile web. You already know that half of all tweets are read on mobile etc etc. So I will step down from my soap box and assume you have seen the light. So what next? Where do you go to get your jobs and brand on mobile?
The world of mobile agencies is a wild west at the moment, lots of growing companies, lots of cowboys and lots of cash being handed over! If you go to a generic mobile agency they are going to be charging you for behind the scenes database work, the typical CMS will be targeting product sales or editorial articles neither of which are good match for job adverts. These guys will cost you a lot more money and time.
To help you out I am building a small directory of vendors that specialise in mobile recruiting. I will interview each company and review their solutions. I want to be totally transparent – there is no money passing between myself and the vendors. If I feel there solutions have serious faults, or are over priced I will write that. My goal is to help Mobilize the industry.
I recently chatted with Eric from CareerBuilder Mobile, you can check out their solutions here.
What do they offer?
They focus on mSites, instead of getting mixed up in the complexities of native apps. While I believe there is value to the native appStore approach I do feel that every mobile strategy should start with an mSite. So CareerBuilder can really get your mobile strategy moving forwards. They have existing clients all over Europe and the USA.
The solutions are simple and do what they say on the can. Reviewing a number of their clients live mSites shows that the template the product is built around is very flexible. Whilst Eric was not transparent with a rate card, I got the impression that the more bespoke the look and feel the more the cost.
The flexibility in the solution allows for a various options for the candidate to get into touch over mobile. The most effective according to Eric was, using my terminology, is “an extended business card”. This is where the candidate provides contact details and answers 1 or 2 key questions around the application. Unfortunately a quick audit of the showcased clients shows that not all companies are prepared to add a pre-ATS screening step to their recruiting process. Shame, their loss.
What about promotion
CareerBuilder provide additional promotion support including employer branded QR codes – something that is less popular in the UK but works a treat in the US. The sites have been built with SEO in mind and I found them in Google from my mobile.
Whats the sting?
So what about costs? Sorry I can not help at this moment, but contact CareerBuilder and I am sure they will. Even better if you do get prics, please comment on this blog post and share the quote details.
What would I like to see?
Transparency of cost could be better! I expect the difficulty is around how much you may already spend with CareerBuilder.
I would like to see campaign or micro targeted mSites on offer. Just as social and desktop solutions are best used when highly targeted, the market mobile is the same. Do we really have to go through the same learnings again and again?
Any insider gossip?
I was very impressed with CareerBuilders plans for the future. They have a product out soon that will rock your socks! It’s a very cool native solution but with a twist so tight that it could multiply an existing recruiting source the industry knows could do better! I hope to have some leaked preview screenshots and more detail really soon!
CareerBuilder know mobile matters
As switched on social network aware employer, you know you need to expose your employer brand on mobile web. You already know that half of all tweets are read on mobile etc etc. So I will step down from my soap box and assume you have seen the light. So what next? Where do you go to get your jobs and brand on mobile?
The world of mobile agencies is a wild west at the moment, lots of growing companies, lots of cowboys and lots of cash being handed over! If you go to a generic mobile agency they are going to be charging you for behind the scenes database work, the typical CMS will be targeting product sales or editorial articles neither of which are good match for job adverts. These guys will cost you a lot more money and time.
To help you out I am building a small directory of vendors that specialise in mobile recruiting. I will interview each company and review their solutions. I want to be totally transparent – there is no money passing between myself and the vendors. If I feel there solutions have serious faults, or are over priced I will write that. My goal is to help Mobilize the industry.
I recently chatted with Eric from CareerBuilder Mobile, you can check out their solutions here.
What do they offer?
They focus on mSites, instead of getting mixed up in the complexities of native apps. While I believe there is value to the native appStore approach I do feel that every mobile strategy should start with an mSite. So CareerBuilder can really get your mobile strategy moving forwards. They have existing clients all over Europe and the USA.
The solutions are simple and do what they say on the can. Reviewing a number of their clients live mSites shows that the template the product is built around is very flexible. Whilst Eric was not transparent with a rate card, I got the impression that the more bespoke the look and feel the more the cost.
The flexibility in the solution allows for a various options for the candidate to get into touch over mobile. The most effective according to Eric was, using my terminology, is “an extended business card”. This is where the candidate provides contact details and answers 1 or 2 key questions around the application. Unfortunately a quick audit of the showcased clients shows that not all companies are prepared to add a pre-ATS screening step to their recruiting process. Shame, their loss.
What about promotion
CareerBuilder provide additional promotion support including employer branded QR codes – something that is less popular in the UK but works a treat in the US. The sites have been built with SEO in mind and I found them in Google from my mobile.
Whats the sting?
So what about costs? Sorry I can not help at this moment, but contact CareerBuilder and I am sure they will. Even better if you do get prics, please comment on this blog post and share the quote details.
What would I like to see?
Transparency of cost could be better! I expect the difficulty is around how much you may already spend with CareerBuilder.
I would like to see campaign or micro targeted mSites on offer. Just as social and desktop solutions are best used when highly targeted, the market mobile is the same. Do we really have to go through the same learnings again and again?
Any insider gossip?
I was very impressed with CareerBuilders plans for the future. They have a product out soon that will rock your socks! It’s a very cool native solution but with a twist so tight that it could multiply an existing recruiting source the industry knows could do better! I hope to have some leaked preview screenshots and more detail really soon!
Step one to increase Apple Fan-Girls and Boys
So yesterday Apple announced how it will revolutionise education with iOS. The quick answer is by selling lots of iPads and taking commission on text book sales. This is marketing utopia.
The focus of the product release was aimed at K-12 education – high schools / secondary schools. So how will Apple change the classroom for ever? By replacing the text book with the iPad, of course what else? What did you expect, maybe to replace the teacher with the iPad and have a new social network ‘Ting’ answer any questions.
The solution to education is iBooks 2 which supports a new authoring tool from Apple which will be free. The text books will be submitted to iTunes in the same fashion as Apps, and go through a review process. Presumably for functionality not accuracy and correctness. No textbook can cost more than $14.99. Apple will take their standard 30%.
So how will an iPad actually change the text book? The solution supports rich media, note taking (although the demo of this looked awkward), search, and quizzes. This is a big ask from the publisher, how many text book authors have 3d modelling skills to demonstrate a concept, or video content to illustrate their point? I think its great, and if the content is created at a high enough quality then this could be a wonderful learning tool. In the UK it could change the textbook industry and boost the BBC / Open University to a premium position. They have heaps of rich media content and now have the opportunity to add text and wrap it up in a more compelling package.
But there are a few areas I believe are missing and clearly must come in the future. Perhaps the most obvious is the kindle feature of shared highlights between readers, or the ability for a class to socially communicate between each other around the textbook but limited to their class. It brings the text book half way to Internet generation.
A well as iBooks 2 and an authoring tool Apple are providing new planning tools to support schools. They are also extended their already successfully iTunes 2 so K12 level can have access.
Will this change education? If the teaching staff adopt it with the and embrace it as they did by adopted computers when I was a kid then – no freaking way!
But we have a younger generation of teachers now, who are IT literate and grew up with a computer. If this format is more to the pallet of pupils and we can reach a stage where kids consume the text book more rapidly or even in a different format within school then the impact could be huge. This is key so teachers have more time with the kids to overcome the areas that need support and to inspire.
The different format could really help those who suffer from learning difficulties, and greatly improve the experience for those with various impairments such as sight. The text book could be listened to.
I struggle to see this working to its max and with no prejudice across social class barriers, which in my opinion is a serious problem.
It does feel like a very clever marketing strategy to increase sales of iOS and generate millions of Apple FanBoys and FanGirls. We learnt yesterday that there were 1.5 million iPads in the education system. This really could establish Apple for a long time into the future.,
If at all successful this move will result in success for Apple at the University / College level. Students leaving secondary level bound to the iPad text book will not be pleased with a heavy, static, probably damaged, textbook. In addition Apple are under threat of various tablet innovations from the Android market targeting education. If they sit back and do nothing, school leavers may all be running around as Android fan boys.
I believe this can really have an impact on education, and as with ALL technology it will be down to the people who implement it. Apple need to run teaching training courses to ensure this solution has the biggest impact it can.
Will it revolutionise education, I who knows, but let’s hope so. The hope is what makes it such a powerful marketing message.
I fully expect Apple will sell a LOT of iPads and text books. It’s just too irresistible for a secondary school to not interact- assuming budgets allow. Apple should offer educational discounted iPads.
The education system is out of date, I would be keen to see a bigger change with focus on vocational skills, problem solving, social skills and project ability. My 9 year old is currently doing a class project which copies the young apprentice (a uk tv show with Alan Sugar). Through designing a company logo, a Product and calculating costs, profit margin etc the groups within the class are engaging in multiple elements of their curriculum, while competing and having fun. And gaining entrepreneur / business skills This has nothing to do with a text book, instead it is inspired and innovation from the teacher.
Mobile solution guide
The mobile industry expectations are on target, mobile web will be bigger than desktop really soon. The world of marketing and commerce has worked it out. We are all consumers of various apps and mSites which sell product or extend brand. But have you recently been looking for a new job? What was the experience like?
In the UK the recruitment industry should be ashamed that the biggest site where job ads are viewed in the millions is GumTree. The major job boards are now enjoying mobile as a channel and are befitting from huge growth in this channel. In some examples job boards are getting 10 times more traffic through mobile compared to just 12 months ago.
Now that marketing has proven this mobile stuff can work. Now that job boards have delivered millions of job seekers via mobile. What are companies doing to engage with the channel directly?
This is dependent in many ways on what are vendors offering.
For our industry to capture mass market mobile we need vendors helping us. So I am kicking off a number of posts to share and review what is on offer. So hear up, if you are a vendor contact me, tell me all about the product and give me interesting case study example and I will share your product and add it to my list of mobile vendors. Ideally I want to have a Skype chat to uncover the details.
If you have been a customer of a mobile solution, please contact me. I want to hear all the problems and all the great stuff. These stories need sharing, if you don’t want your name unpublishing then I can keep that to myself.
So who is brave enough to go first? Who is good enough to set the benchmark? Next week I will publish the review of CareerBuilder Mobile who are based in the USA but have clients all over the world.
Eye grabbing QR codes
This gallery contains 8 photos.
It frustrates me how frequently I have seen examples of eye grabbing QR codes on Mashable, but there is never any that are related to recruitment. Well here are some examples of eye grabbing QR codes: After a great chat with Eric J Offner, Managing Director at CareerBiulder Mobile US, I am pleased to share [...]
Recruitment industry #fail the candidate
Does your recruiting function send emails to candidates updating them with new job opportunities? Are links to job adverts posted on social media? Do you think carefully about SEO to attract job seekers to opportunities? Do you attend recruitment fairs or visit college campus? Do you run Google Adword or Facebook ad campaigns?
Did you answer yes to any of the above? So last question, do you have a mobile website?
Did I hear “no” to that last question? Why not? The mobile channel can increase your return around all the activities mentioned above. You are failing to double your social recruiting return, empower your SEO and attract more candidates while offering a better candidate experience. Today you are failing in good company – most of the recruitment industry.
The silver lining is you have vast potential to increase your pipeline of talent from your existing marketing activity simply by supporting mobile devices with an optimised mobile website. By demanding mobile support from your advertising channels (such as job boards and recruitment agencies) you can improve your situation. But to do things properly you need to ensure your career site and web campaigns are fully mobile optimised. In case you had not noticed, or have been in a cave for the last 5 years – web activity, either via apps or the browser is increasing rapidly. Next year it will overtake desktop activity.
So it is clear that the mobile channel is here to stay. However it is feels a technical project and recruitment functions are putting their heads in the sand to avoid it. There are very few companies engaging with mobile for recruitment, in the UK companies making the most of mobile is barely out of single digits.
In a typical month in the UK the mobile channel attracts over 2m job seekers (according to ComScore) and the number is increasing every day. So which companies are winning and capturing the traffic?
Currently the recruitment industry is failing the Job seeker who uses their mobile. The number one site in the UK where job ads are viewed on a mobile is GumTree. While GumTree is I am sure wonderful for classified adverts to buy sofas and cars, the candidate experience is not ideal.
After GumTree the major job aggregators are attracting the next level of traffic, lead by Indeed. If you pause for a moment, this is possibly a worse experience than that of GumTree for the job seeker.
The candidate experience is typically:
1. Search in Google Mobile
2. Land on a mobile optimised aggregator site such as Indeed or SimplyHired
3. See an interesting job advert and click it.
4. Be taken to a desktop website to read the full advert, #fail
6. Struggle through the non mobile friendly job advert, click the apply button and immediately be faced with an impossibly large application form or more frequently a browse button to upload a CV.
Incase you don’t know, uploading a CV from your phone is near to impossible and very few people will have their CV on their phone.
The process is disappointing for the candidate and makes the company look rubbish.
A few UK job boards support mobile web very well, Jobsite and Total Jobs perform very well. However the niche job boards, company career sites and recruitment agency sites typically fail completely.
Why is so much of the recruitment market failing on mobile?
Is it cost and budgets?
Is it the lack of mobile application solution?
Is it disbelief that mobile matters?
Is it failure to recognise the benifts?
Is everyone getting such great returns from social recruiting that no one wants to double the return by engaging on mobile?
I would very much like to hear your thoughts on why you have done something on mobile, or why you are not bothering. Or is it as I fear, you are waiting for everyone else to do it first?
Why I did not buy the Nokia Lumia 800
Over the festive period I purchased a new phone to carry about everyday. My needs are simple, email, social network access, Skype, Yammer if possible, a good chess game, an alarm clock, a note taking app (ideally Evernote), a good camera and a fast browser. I guess would like to make calls and send text messages too.
My desires for a new phone was change, something different, I have carried an iPhone for too long but the replacement had to be slick and look great so I ruled out a Blackberry straight away as it does not do it for me! The latest ice cream sandwich Android versions look great and the HTC and Samsung devices are nice to hold and do everything I need. For me the Android OS now looks great, but many of the apps I looked at still felt clunky and unfortunately the apps are really where my usage will be. Few apps appear to make best use of the bigger screen or the high resolution, this is a result of so many different Android device form factors. I have other Android devices, but always carried the iPhone, so until the Android apps get better, I rules out Android. A shame because some of the Google innovation is great.
It was looking hopeless, it felt that fate would force me to buy the iPhone 4S. But in the shape of a curved blue bound device came hope for change. The Nokia Lumia 800. The device feels really great to hold, it’s very well made. It is running the latest Windows Phone 7 which feels slick and easy to use. All my favourite apps are available on Windows Phone 7 and new ones I looked at felt great and well designed. The camera takes good photos, and the phone quality is great. The CPU etc are slower than others’ but the apps I tested seemed to work well.
So for a week prior to my contract upgrade date I felt decided, I would go back to Nokia. The memories of my old Nokia 3110 and all those that followed that first one made the decision feel nostalgic.
Then upgrade day came, as I walked to the shop, I remembered I had not used mobile Internet Explorer since owning a Compaq iPaq about 10 years ago. I could not recall the last time I used IE on a computer. Did I really want to return to IE?
Some research quickly (via my iPhone) showed that IE on the Nokia was slow, it’s JavaScript benchmarks were about four times slower than iPhone 4S. This was a disaster, I use mobile web all the time. So on arrival to the shop I tested a few websites out and compared to the 4S. The result was a huge disappointment. A browse of MS marketplace showed no suitable alternative browser that may be quicker. The performance may well be impacted by that slower CPU.
So, after lusting over the Nokia for weeks, I bought an iPhone 4S. It is super fast, the camera is wonderful, I restored a backup from my 4 and everything was working within minutes. As for change, I now carry a white one not a black one.
Free Mobile Recruiting Guide
Over the last few months after attending Mobile Recruiting Camp I felt that the industry needed some well defined documentations to support executives around the recruitment industry.
So with the fantastic support of Matt Alder, we put together a mobile recruiting guide in a white paper format.
Please do send us your feedback, @Mobile_Dave or @MattAlder
Authored @Mobile_Dave & Metashift
#mvir 2011 Top 4 Take mobile take aways (so far)
I am sitting at the Mobile and Video in Recruitment conference. Before saying anything congrats to Mike Taylor for setting up a great event. I was honoured to be invited to speak for the second year in a row, I wonder if I can do the hat trick next year?
So what is there to share from this event? What are the top 4 lessons and tips for you to take away?
1. The job seeker is already on mobile web. The overall attitude from the audience this year is aligned that mobile matter. This is a contrast to last years attitudes. The challenge now is understanding how to make it work for recruitment. Potential Park were able to share wonderful research from thousands of students which illustrated 88% of job seekers are or want to search for jobs on mobile.
2. ComScore provided great data and reminded us that Mobile Internet is not just Apple iPhone. Depending which cut of the data you read Android is ahead of iOS. The “real” feeling was well put in the Meeker report that it is a two horse race. ComScore also reminded us of the power of SMS and number of devices that are SMS capable.
3. Social and Mobile are handcuffed together. Autodesk illustrated a preview to their app which was heavy in social media. Facebook gets 33% of all its traffic from mobile and Twitter gets 55% of all its content from mobile web. Any strategy using social must support mobile.
4. Top most wanted features by a jobseeker according to Potential Park is Job Search, then Job Alerts. A surprising result was the third most wanted feature by jobseekers is the ability to track their application.
Mobile in recruitment is still young. It needs to be planned and strategically aligned with clear objectives. Even those that appear to be doing mobile well are failing at the basics. One example is where a careers url was pushed via SMS to job seekers, which was great, until you clicked on the url and discovered it goes to the companies mobile site which sells screws with no career information.
Consider the basics, think about who clicks your links and on what device. A simple mobile website could significantly increase the return from your social efforts.
