Seamless Recruitment: How Companies use Mobile Media to Build Brand and Attract Talent

Abstract: Recruiters must not only understand how job design and incentive programs contribute to talent attraction, they must also comprehend how target job seekers make employment decisions and how they, as recruiters, can influence those decisions through more effective recruitment marketing communications (also called Employer Branding). An important part of recruitment marketing communications planning is media selection. By choosing the right media and the right combination of media channels, recruiter can optimize message delivery and information processing. One particularly important media channel for the future of recruitment marketing and is mobile media.The purpose of this thesis is to analyze why recruiters use mobile media for recruitment marketing communications, as well as how they plan to use mobile media for more effective recruitment marketing communications. To fulfill this purpose, a qualitative research study was designed, and interviews were conducted with three senior level recruitment managers at three different firms. The main conclusion of the thesis is that mobile media is an ideal tool for Employer Branding and recruitment. Moreover, due to its compatibility with other channels, mobile media fits perfectly within an Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program. By collecting some candidate data via mobile recruitment activities like smartphone job apps, mobile career websites and SMS, the firms in this study were capable of segmenting talent and personalizing messages. However, the three case firms also acknowledged that their efforts to collect and use mobile candidate data had not gone far enough and would need further investment to be truly effective. The findings suggest that, while mobile media is a unique recruitment marketing tool, without proper data collection and management, hiring firms will not be able to take full advantaged of the interactive, two-way and personalized nature of mobile media. Therefore, the conclusion is that until investments can be made in candidate database management, mobile media will continue to be used primarily as an Employer Branding tool, rather than as a tool for recruitment (i.e. the collection of job applications).