Last week eMarketer released a study indicating that mobile users are warming up to the check-in and that’s great news for HR and recruiters. As we talked about, allowing your employees to use social networks can have great repercussions to your company and I think mobile check-ins are packed with benefits. Why aren’t you encouraging your employees to check-in at work?
And the survey shows…
The study indicates that most users of check-in services such as Facebook Places, Foursquare and Gowalla are under 35 years of age and that might not come as a surprise. The interesting stat is that almost 50% of users of check-in services are employed full-time and 23.3% are full-time students. That means your current employees and future employees are increasingly using check-in services.
How can you leverage this
Up front, there are two ways you can leverage this trend. First, you can encourage your employees to check-in every morning — that’s it, pretty simple. Ask them use their service of choice. The bigger your company is the better. What’s going to happen is as your employees check-in the office, your brand will travel through each of their personal networks and if enough of the employees use the same service, it might be a trending location in your area. Not only will it show how cutting edge your company is, but it’s going to give you some social proof. As I talked about before, I’ll trust my friends that your company is cool more than I’ll trust your ads so as I see them check-in there’s a better chance I’ll start seeing your company in a positive light. If you want to kick that into a slightly higher gear, these services allow you to add custom messages when you check-in, if you’re hiring new sales folk, ask your your employees to add a message saying so when they check-in…branding and communicating in one shot!
The second way you can leverage check-ins is slightly more time intensive. Look at who’s check-in around your office…restaurants and coffee shops. It means they work or live around you, try finding out more about them by searching their name on LinkedIn, they might be interesting candidates. I agree that that can be a long shot, but how about surveying student check-ins at local universities — especially departments that are of interest to you such as the management department or engineering department. Start following them on Foursquare (or whatever service they’re using) or Twitter and start building relationships with them. When graduation time comes, you’ll be seen in a much more positive light.
How to start today
The best part of all is that theses services are financially cheap or free (but they will take up some of your time). Here are a five tips on starting today:
- Show by example: Get you and your HR staff on different check-in services. Use the one you like, but try to get people to use each one. Use them daily.
- Add your company as a location to each service if it’s not already there. Add as much detail as the service will allow (full address, pictures, description, etc.)
- Put signs up at the entrances reminding employees to check-in. Or even better craft and send out cards for employees to set-up at their desk to remind them
- Create a contest around check-ins. For example, the mayor of the place at the end of the year gets an extra week vacation.
- Set-up up a group of recruiters to survey who’s checking-in around work and at local universities and colleges to find focused candidates. Start following them on social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn and start building a relationship with them BEFORE they graduate.
This won’t lead to fresh new hires today, but it will increase your employer brand reputation and it’s pretty easy to implement. Another interesting side effect might get a write-up in a blog or other publication.
What’s your take?
(Photo credit: Nicolas Nova)
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