Ideas for new technology are never in short supply, and usually come decades before they can be put into practical use. Just look at the gadgets used in Star Trek and Doctor Who, as far back as the 1960’s. Practical application takes much longer, however. In 2000, many people were predicting the end of the recruitment agency, print advertising, and that employers would easily be able to tap into a huge database of suitable candidates at will. Conversely, candidates could be immediately alerted to all suitable vacancies as soon as they became available, and would never again miss an opportunity by not seeing the advert. In 2000, it was predicted that in the coming three years, all newspapers would be online, and everyone would have high speed internet, via not only PC’s but also TV and mobile phones. Only now are many of these things coming to pass; print media has all but given up on income from classified and recruitment advertising, the PC has been dragged out of the back bedroom, onto 42” plasma screens in every room, and almost everyone has access to the internet via their mobile phone. That is to say, everyone has a mobile phone, and most phones are able (with a bit of jiggery-pokery) to gain internet access.
In 1986, aged 20, I found it extremely difficult to sell fax machines (fresh from selling cable TV in Glasgow). “It’ll never catch on son” they’d say. And “I don’t know anyone else with a fax, so who could I send a message to?” Most gallingly, a lawyer once said “What could be so urgent, that it has to go now, and not in the post?” Immediacy was, and is, the answer. Actually, 10CC would say that “communication is the problem to the answer”. After growing up wanting Captain James T.Kirk’s communicator, we’ve always wanted the ability to speak directly to anyone, wherever we are. Moreover, we wanted to send and receive messages, and have access to all the information in some great shared computer. Well now we have it. Or at least we are on the very brink of having it. Today’s smart-phones, heralded by the iPhone, are leapfrogging each other daily, in terms of speed, functionality, and easy-peasy everyday use. Gone are the days when you attached your Ericsson T29 to your Palm Pilot with a cable, and used a manual to send one very basic email (I was that soldier). The phone companies have finally worked out that there really is a demand for these features, and that if they make them simple to use, they can make a lot of money.
There are many smart phones out there (and I’ve tried most of them), but let’s concentrate on the current runaway leader, the iPhone from Apple. Much slimmer and easier to use than you’d imagine, this truly is the gadget that keeps on giving. But it’s not the basic functionality of the iPhone that seals it, although it is superb. It’s the ability to automatically install third party programs that truly sets it apart. With an immense head start, due to so many millions already owning iPods, the iTunes pc program is the perfect gateway to the iTunes Store, where you can select over 50,000 applications (Apps) for your phone, ranging from games, utilities, entertainment, business, navigation etc. Most are free, and many others cost as little as 59p. How do they make money then? Well in its first 12 months, over 1 billion Apps were downloaded from the App Store.
Let’s bring it back to recruitment. With over 1.5 million iPhones sold in the UK, wouldn’t this be a fantastic way of enabling, and communicating with, jobseekers? Not everyone dares to use their office PC to search for vacancies, and certainly not to receive emails about job applications. Texts are good, but very rudimentary. Here at 1Job, we have a search engine, which is replenished with over 300,000 live vacancies every day from the UK’s most popular job boards and recruitment agency websites. With the iPhone, and App Store, we saw a clear opportunity to develop an application (UK Jobs) that would put our search engine directly into the hands of job seekers, wherever they were, at any time of the day. We knew that only a small percentage of candidates would apply via an iPhone, so we added the function to email selected job details to their home pc. The demand was such that already UK Jobs is the No1 downloaded Business App in the UK. This, and future planned functionality, based on user feedback, will ensure that control, communication and immediacy are in the hands of candidates at all times.
Let’s look a little further into the future. I expect that most professional job boards will develop their own mobile phone applications within the next year, and not only for the iPhone. If a candidate has a favourite job board, then why wouldn’t they want that functionality in their pocket? Some recruitment technology is easier to dismiss or delay, like video CV’s or social media integration. However, the job search engine in the palm of your hand is already here. Get on board now, or miss the boat.
Stephen O’Donnell, http://www.1job.co.uk/
Download Article (PDF)
