Is Cell Phone Text Messaging the Next Frontier for Recruiting College Students?

The following is this week’s entry from the Recruiting.com Blog Swap. I am a big fan of Steven and CollegeRecruiter.com and we have often quoted each other. Steven is headquartered here in Minneapolis and I look forward to seeing him again soon.

   

As the President and Founder of Minneapolis-based CollegeRecruiter.com career site, I recently had the pleasure of meeting Paul DeBettignies so was thrilled when I was given the opportunity to be a guest blogger on his MN Headhunter site. Paul has a sterling reputation amongst bloggers who are involved in the world of recruiting.

   

Given our location in Minneapolis and the fact that CollegeRecruiter.com is primarily used by college students and recent graduates who are looking for entry level jobs and internships, I read with great interest an article in Media Life Magazine that describes how Minnesota-based Campus Media Group is helping its clients target the college population by sending advertisements and other text messages to the cell phones of those students. While organizations that want to pitch products and services are the earliest adopters of this new media, leading edge employers are closely following.

   

In some ways, the cell phone text messages bear a closer resemblance to classified ads that run in newspapers than to job posting ads that run on career sites because the cell phone text message must not exceed 160 characters, which equates to about 30 to 40 words. Abbreviations can and often are used. Students who respond may reply back with a text message or they may be directed to a web site. Ads that are employment-related can therefore direct students to the web sites of the employers. As is the case with targeted email campaigns, the best practice is to direct the candidate to the employment section of employer’s web site as most of the candidates will want to apply yet those who are interested in learning more about the employer can navigate through the site prior to applying.

   

Think that this is a fringe product? Think again. Of the 16 million college students in the country, nearly 80 percent send and receive text messages with the average being 115 messages per month. In addition, three million students have opted in to receive these commercial cell phone text messages and that number is growing rapidly every day. Another exciting aspect of sending ads to cell phones is that the response rate occurs very quickly, which greatly helps employers reduce the time to hire. Indeed, about 80 percent of the responses come in within the first hour and some campaigns see a response rate of 30 to 60 percent.

   

So if you’re an employer, should you use cell phone text messaging and, if so, how? It is very early still so a year or two from now we’ll all know a lot more, but because of the huge cost differential it appears that the best approach for employers who want to reach job hunting college students by sending a text message to the cell phones of those students is to first send an email to the targeted group. Track which students open (read) the email and which ones actually respond by clicking through to the career section of your web site. Send a text message only to the students who click through and who do not register. Do not refer to their response rate as that will come across as too Big Brotherish. Instead, send an abbreviated version of your message. Marketing professionals know that it often takes repeated impressions of the same or similar ad before someone will respond to an ad by purchasing a product or service. Employment-related offers are no different.

   

Cell phone text messaging to potential job seekers is leading edge and costly. But the phenomenal response rates and ability to precisely target this highly sought after, tech savvy, generation is very exciting.

   

-- Steven Rothberg is the President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com the highest traffic career site used by job hunting students and recent graduates and the employers who want to hire them. To reach Steven, send an email to Steven@CollegeRecruiter.com.

Comments

[Dennis Smith]

Great post. I love this idea - and why shouldn't I! I think that T-Mobile should be leading the way in this type of targeted effort. I think I need to talk to somebody in Bellevue!

[Shannon Seery]

Awesome post! This strategy seems like it would be particularly successful with the college crowd and for marketing a recruitment event specifically.

I firmly believe that connecting and communicating with the next generation of jobseekers via wireless devices is where it is going to be at in the near future. Great to see a post touting successful and smart ways to use text messaging rather than claiming that this type of communication will be viewed as an intrusion by job seekers - for the next generation, communications on their wireless devices will just be THE WAY to connect and market to them.