This is the second in a new series of guest blogs from TempBuddy which will cover themes around the temp market. The first was the ever present question; How can my Temp Agency Stand Out from the Crowd? This one looks at the risks of ignoring “mobile”.
Mobile technology is undeniably ubiquitous. If you don’t believe it there are two methods of proving the theory.
The first is industry and academic reports. In 2015 smartphone ownership is expected to topple 2.5 billion users with a growth rate that is showing little sign of slowing down. Tablet ownership also increasing, conversely laptop and notebook sales are plummeting and desktops are becoming antiquated relics of computing’s past.
The second method is simply looking around a tube station, your workplace, a restaurant or even walking the streets of a busy city. People are consuming media and communicating on the go with a powerful piece of tech that offers recruiters significant opportunity to communicate with and organize their workforce. One third of the world is using mobile technology and that is a serious opportunity for agencies of all types looking to grow by becoming more connected to their agency.
However, simply having an app that is a copy of your existing website or using mobile as a purely broadcast based medium will not give you the return you need. Mobile devices have a number of benefits for agencies and understanding them is a key success factor.
Essential Mobile Websites:
Log in to your web site analytics and investigate what proportion of your traffic is using a mobile device. No matter what sort of agency you are running you can expect that number to be a significant proportion of your traffic. The second statistic you should be looking at is the bounce rate, the number of people who came to your site and then immediately left without visiting another page.
A responsive site is an absolute essential part of your recruitment strategy and failing to have a mobile friendly site means you are losing out on mobile users applications. Secondly more often than not recruitment websites make mobile applications extremely difficult to achieve, even when they are responsive. People tend to research their jobs on a mobile device and then apply on a desktop device later in the day based on research carried out by LinkedIn talent solutions.
Mobile Apps Vs. Mobile Sites:
Mobile sites are an essential but they do not enjoy the same benefits that a well-planned mobile application can give you. Mobile applications have additional hardware that helps enhance their usefulness to your workers and recruiters. At TempBuddy we make good use of this additional hardware. We use GPS technology to geo-locate the workers and the assignments. This means that a worker can get directions to their assignment; once they arrive they check in by taking a selfie on their camera for biometric identification and then we automatically generate the timesheets using GPS. Once checked out and send that to the agency and client for approval at a predetermined date.
We can also predict if a person is running late by calculating the distance away from an assignment and alerting the agency that the temp is running late. This sort of data driven recruitment allows a recruiter to turn a negative story in to a positive one. They can check in with the temp to see what the problem is then inform the client that they are on their way or they can search for another available temp in a closer location in the event of a no show using the GPS map in the agency application. Similarly, the GPS location and time tracking and bio-metric facial recognition means that your clients are your agency have more data and reduced risk across the board, while simplifying the recruitment, booking, billing and approval processes.
By shifting some of the control and workload on the person who knows best how to manage their availability we give temp agencies data about the future allows you unprecedented forward planning and a reduction in time spent on non value added activities like chasing time sheets or fixing avoidable problems.
Mobile Communication:
Mobile apps also have the benefit of push notifications; using an application to communicate important relevant information at the right time safe in the knowledge that your temp will receive this information is critical. It is also cost effective when compared to traditional job advertising like jobs boards or print media or the reliable but expensive SMS solutions. Using an application does not just get you in front of your prospective temp, it gets you in their pocket and they take you with them wherever they go. This sort of connection is why mobile should be the Centre of attention for your recruitment marketing plans in 2015.
Furthermore, as a more passive method of finding workers the marketing savvy agencies are increasing their spend in mobile advertising, using social media organic and paid marketing techniques and search engine advertising tools like remarketing. These highly targeted campaigns mean your ads are getting to people on the device they are likely to use.
People are now spending more time in front of a screen and searching for jobs across multiple devices at different times of the day.
Mobile technology for a mobile workforce:
Unlike other forms of recruitment temporary recruitment is much more mobile and much more actively engaged with job seeker tech than perm or contract. Particularly when the temp moves around a lot and let’s face it, they do move around a lot. Until now most agencies in the temp space have been struggling to define the candidate experience for their workforce.
At TempBuddy believe the problem lies solely in the slow rate of adoption of truly mobile technology for the temp workforce and the inability or the lack of desire to offer temp workers control their availability and thereby maximizing their earning potential. We also believe that data driven recruitment simply does not exist for the temp workforce.
Most agencies still rely on lists in static CRMs and times consuming expensive ring-a-rounds to get the right people to their clients on time. We built our platform around the mobile app that makes full use the hardware that most people carry in their pockets nowadays.
Avoiding a strong pitch the application we built has shifted important work off the temp desk and on to the temp. By forcing the recruiter to give up control of availability we free up their time. Temps are all too happy to let you know when they are ready and willing to work. This means recruiters are gathering updated data based on location and their busy lives. We have created a much stronger link than SMS, Jobs boards, ring-a-rounds and emails ever could.
Mobile is not going to disappear and it is increasingly evident at the release of every smart device that it is a trend that will not disappear. You can ignore but rest assured, your workforce will not.
