By Barbara Safani, Posted Aug 5th 2010 @ 7:25PM
As more job seekers use their mobile devices to get their daily information feeds, more will also use their smartphones to search for job leads. Many job boards are now Web-enabled, which means that they can interact with mobile users very easily. According to Gary Zukowski, Founder of Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
TweetMyJOBS.com, "employers get the early-bird advantage by using mobile technology strategies since they can potentially reach active and passive candidates well before traditional recruiting methods. Potential candidates can be instantly notified of job leads regardless of where they are."
There's little doubt that smartphone use is on the rise and that the implications for recruiting are enormous. Consider these statistics on cell phone use, according to The Atomic Marketing Blog.
- In 2009, U.S. cell phone subscribers sent and received on average 390 text messages per month, compared to making 230 voice calls a month, according to the Mobile Business Statistics.
Those ages of 12-45 will send 60 percent more text messages than make voice calls. Currently 1/3 of the world has mobile Internet access -- which is twice as many as the number of Internet-connected PCs. 60 percent of the world's population is expected to have access to the Internet through a mobile device in one year! Mobile web technologies allow us to provide location-specific resources to users. Two thirds of mobile phone users are subscribers of SMS text messaging. What does that translate to? Approximately 2.1 billion people are actively text messaging today (according to mobile statistics 2009). There are two times as many active SMS users as are active users of e-mail. In the United States alone, over 450 billion SMS text messages were sent in 2009. On average, text messages are read within four minutes, compared to 48 hours with e-mail. While 65 percent of e-mail is spam, less than 10 percent of SMS is spam. 62 percent say they use text messaging to communicate with friends. According to Zukowski, mobile recruiting can apply to any industry, but he has seen the greatest fit for retail, hospitality, sales, temp workers, and health care.
