Don’t be surprised the next time you’re bombarded with local ads specific to the location you often commute to. Or see ads related to local service providers such as restaurants, retail outlets, or public transportation services such as Uber or Lyft as soon as you visit a new region. You have geofencing technology to put the blame on.
Geofencing is increasingly being used by businesses to send targeted ads and other marketing communications to individuals based on their location. Similarly, job boards, too, can utilize geofencing for recruiting processes by displaying local job postings to candidates. They can target individuals with job listings that are in the immediate vicinity of their residence. Since individuals generally look for a workplace that is closer to their home, leveraging geofencing can help attract more quality applicants to the job board. Before we understand how job boards can transform their local job postings with geofencing, let’s have a look at…
…what geofencing technology exactly is
In the simplest of words, geofencing can be broken down into two components, geo – location, and fencing – putting a boundary or a perimeter around the location. When an individual enters this virtual boundary set up by geofencing technology, it triggers the software to activate or push ads specific to that location, so get individuals engaged and turn them into potential customers.
If you’re a geek or are interested in knowing the nitty-gritty or textbook definitions, geofencing can be described as a location-based service in which an app or other software uses GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi or cellular data to trigger a pre-programmed action when a mobile device or RFID tag enters or exits a virtual boundary set up around a geographical location, known as a geofence. Now that you’re aware of what geofencing is let’s see…
…how geofencing technology works
Geofencing establishes a virtual boundary around a pre-defined or specified location in an RFID-enabled or a GPS software. Developers use API to specify location coordinates and “draw a circle” around, say, a 100-meter radius of the specified location. The app is then programmed to trigger a response such as a push notification, text message, or even an email to individuals when they enter the geofenced zone. Businesses can use geofencing to display their products or services offered by their organization in the area aiming to convert an individual into a customer. For instance, if you walk into a mall, businesses having outlets in the complex can send push notifications about their store location within their premises or inform the user about new products or any sale or discount offers that might tempt you to visit the store and purchase items. Thus, geofencing helps in creating highly accurate region-specific ads. And here’s…
…why job boards need geofencing for recruiting processes
You might be wondering that most job boards give users the option of location filters for job searches, so what’s the use of using geofencing technology in job boards. Well, you might already be aware that there are two types of job seekers, active and passive. Geofencing technology can prove highly beneficial in attracting passive job seekers to your job board.
How?
The average employee spends an average time of 26.1 minutes in commute to the workplace in the United States of America. Spending long hours commuting can result in increased stress and reduced productivity at the workplace. This is detrimental not only for the individual but for the enterprise as well. Thus, most individuals look for local jobs, actively or passively, to reduce their time spent in traveling and have a stress-free work environment and mindset. Geofencing tools can be used to attract such candidates that spend long hours commuting to and fro from their home and workplace.
If you look from a job board’s perspective, job boards can use geofencing for poaching candidates from competitors. The technology can be used to ‘understand’ an individual’s residence and workplace locations. Based on this data, job boards can push job listings in these locations. Your job board can suggest and display better job listings than those on the competitors’ website to attract individuals to your job board.
Leveraging geofencing helps job boards attract candidates who are starting their professional lives or are looking for short internships, as such candidates usually prefer their workplace to be as close to their residence as possible. Such candidates generally want to save travel time so that they can utilize it in developing other professional skills. And geofencing is not limited to attracting such candidates but can also be helpful in drawing experienced professionals to your job board. Now you might be wondering how job boards can leverage this. Here’s…
…how job boards can utilize geofencing
As described earlier, geofencing uses an individual’s location data to show local ad listings. Similarly, your job board’s mobile app can access the user’s location (if they grant location access) to display job postings that are in close proximity to their residence. Similarly, based on an individual’s work location, it can show job vacancies in similar firms, in the same area, with better professional opportunities. For instance, suppose the geofencing tool pins an individual’s work location as an IT firm in a certain location. Based on this information, it can display job vacancies to the individual in the neighboring locations in similar organizations. This model can result in high engagement from passive job seekers as such candidates don’t spend a lot of time in job searching. However, they might get interested in looking out for new opportunities if they get desirable job suggestions without putting in a lot of effort. So here’s…
…what job boards need to do to leverage geofencing
Even though the geofencing tool helps determine the work and home locations of individuals, it alone can’t help job boards deliver location-based job postings. What job boards need are premium recruitment tools that can capitalize on the capabilities of geofencing tools.Now you may be wondering what recruitment tools we are referring to.
Job boards need to utilize recruitment automation tools such as job wrappers if they want to fully utilize the potential of geofencing. A premium job wrapper scours the internet for jobs and adds location tags to them. Thus, the geofencing tool can be used to tag locations of individuals, whereas job wrappers can similarly be used to tag job locations. The combined use of these two technologies can thus streamline the online recruitment process for job boards, enabling candidates to find location-specific job vacancies. For example, job wrapper tools can scour jobs from an employer located in a specific region, and tag the location for the jobs posted by them accordingly. It can then display these jobs to individuals that work in the same location or reside nearby.
With the rise in popularity of mobile devices, geofencing has become a standard when it comes to targeted local ads. And the geofencing industry is expected to grow further, by about 27 percent by 2022. The opportunities geofencing brings to job boards are limitless and are too good to be ignored. Thus, as a job board, you should start utilizing geofencing services along with premium recruiting tools at the earliest to gain the early mover advantage.
