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Will the iPad turn recruiting on its head, much like the iPhone and mobile recruiting are right now? We're going to find out real soon! I picked up an iPad Friday and have been locked in my office since trying to find answers to that question. Here is what I've come up with so far:

Over the past year, I have recognized that the mobile space is the next frontier, the next evolution for recruiting. I have since developed my own mobile recruiting strategies and opinions, and had the opportunity to share them at ERE in San Diego last month in my mobile recruiting workshop. 

The iPad is a gorgeous piece of technology that will bring out the "geek" in just about anyone, especially recruiters. Tablet PC's have been around for awhile, but nothing out there compares to what Apple has just unleashed. It has 150,000+ applications to start working with right out of the box, and 3,000 that are iPad specific. It's blazing fast, humming between anything you touch, search or command it to do. It's portable, being small enough and light enough to take with you on the go. It's not as small and convenient as a smartphone, but you'll want to make room in your work bag for this trust me. It's got enough under the hood to technically be a laptop minus the physical keyboard and extra bulk. However, once you start using it, it's clear the iPad is creating a category separate from smartphones and PC's. 

How will recruiters use the iPad:

1) Work-around solution for restrictive environments. No access to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter at the office? I understand. I've consulted with many companies that wouldn't let me get to these sites. The iPhone or smartphones offer a way to recruit through the popular social networks today, but are really only good for short periods of time. Bite-sized tasks. Enter iPad. The screen is 9.7 inches and gives you exactly what you need either through the web or social networking applications. TweetDeck for iPad is hands-down the best Twitter client on the market. 

This past month, I had the privilege of presenting on the topic of mobile recruiting at the ERE Expo in San Diego, California, and at First Interview in New Orleans, Louisiana. I have a strong passion for mobile technologies and mobile recruiting and sourcing in particular, as is evident in My Mobile Recruiting Starter Guide, a previous post last year. 

The following is an abbreviated version of my three hour ERE workshop and my one and a half hour talk at First Interview on mobile recruiting titled, The Mobile Recruiting Experience. This slideshow gives an overview of mobile technologies and the mobile recruiting landscape. The reason for not including the original presentation is that it is loaded to the gills with hundreds of slides that require a personal guided tour. The full presentation will be made available upon request.

The Mobile Recruiting Experience
While some in recruiting at AT&T, Hewitt, KFC and CollegeRecruiter.com are making successful strides into mobile recruiting, I have found that mobile is a virtually untapped market. Most in recruiting haven't realized that mobile represents a smart and cost-effective means for finding, sourcing, recruiting and hiring talent today.  

Piggybacking on my panel discussion, "Leveraging Mobile as a Supplement to Recruiting" at the Onrec Expo, I wanted to share several tips to help you get started in the mobile space, as well as give you plenty of resources to work with.

Over the past year I have gone from 0-60 miles per hour with my mobile adoption, not only for recruiting, but for also marketing myself and my businesses (General Lead & RecruitChute). I mobilized this website with Everywhereigo, set-up QR (2D bar code) campaigns with ScanLife, and ran several text campaigns with TextMarks.



From my experiences, here are some starter tips for getting into mobile recruiting:

1) Get familiar with the mobile scene. A good start on this front would be to research the terms SMS, MMS, short codes and QR codes via Wikipedia. These three have become synonymous with mobile technologies. Another good outlet for "mobile" information is CloudRecruiting.net. Continue by reading up on industry leading blogs such as Mobile Marketer, Mobile Marketing Watch, Mobile Marketing Profits, IntoMobile, Communities Dominate Brands and mTrends. In addition, check out these four books: The Mobile Marketing Handbook, Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market, Mobile Marketing: Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Wireless Technology, and Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media. Finally, don't forget to stop by the Mobile Marketing Association which has a wealth of resources to soak up.