Mobile. It’s taking the world by storm and taking over my life. Just today my husband called me from our upstairs bedroom to ask me about my work schedule and what day was best for me to go to the school to enroll my daughter in Kindergarten. I felt weird when I answered his call because I was in the downstairs living room. He decided to call me on my mobile device because he didn’t want to yell downstairs and interrupt me if I was on a work call. He’s being considerate you see. This is just another example of how mobile is essential in my life.

I, personally, last week filled three open reqs of recruiter and sourcing openings I had using my personal network and only my mobile phone. Mobile is my personal and professional super power. I’m sourcing and hiring from my phone by building a candidate pipeline before I have the opening and driving registrations via social media using my mobile device.

Mobile’s Role in Recruitment Marketing

So if mobile is everything how does it impact recruiting, hiring and specifically recruitment marketing? It’s more than a single channel and a talent community. Communications, video and other employment branding strategies need to be developed for the mobile job seeker who is always on the go. Websites have to render correctly, and Flash sites can’t be used. Unless you are wanting to exclude iPhone and iPad users as the ideal candidate.

Earlier this week while visiting the fine folks at LinkedIn, I learned that now an astounding 50 percent of LinkedIn profile views are happening from our mobile devices. Recruiters must now be prepared to engage job seekers via mobile, but what exactly does that entail? Well, here’s my short list:

• Mobile Apply, Talent Network or Mobile Application Process. Companies might not yet be ready for a one click mobile apply process. It’s scary because we don’t want more candidates. We are already overwhelmed with job seekers as it is. We just want better ones which is why a talent network is an easy first step.

• Engagement on mobile friendly channels like social media sites. Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or LinkedIn, job seekers are living and loving on mobile. They are job hunting too. This means sharing stories, building relationships and finding that mix of job openings and announcements via your RSS or XLM job feed along with fielding job seeker questions and sharing advice. And doing so before they even have to ask. I call this the performance of now.

• Content that’s digestible via a mobile device.  Developing and designing content, video, photos, blogs or job postings specifically with mobile in mind. Screens are smaller and users have a smaller attention span and patience level for the pinch and zoom. Maybe a job app is right for you instead of a total career site redesign. They are expensive I know.  Job seekers are always on the go. Mobile is the thread that connects are life with everything. It’s the reason that we ladies leave our purse at the restaurant table but bring our mobile device to the bathroom.

• Short, quick, creative and to the point conversations. Engagements should be quick but our memories as recruiters should be good. Good candidates want to be remembered and an experience created. Create conversation points that get you noticed. While this isn’t an easy task at present the bar is set very low. You can own the recruitment branding and conversations for your geographic area, demographic or industry and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.

Mobile is no longer a utility player in your recruiting and marketing efforts. It is a full 0n strategy.