It’s virtually impossible to walk around a college campus these days without seeing students sending or receiving text messages to each other via their cell phones. Although email is often regarded by Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers as being too fast, Gen Y (today's college students) regard email as too slow and formal.

Indeed, many Gen Y'ers believe that if messaging isn't instant, it isn't relevant. Recruiters who still rely on newspaper ads are irrelevant to this audience. Only moderately more relevant are recruiters who use the Internet just to post jobs to the Big Three (Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs) or to search their resume banks.

But recruiters whose messages speak to the needs and wants of their Gen Y audience, and whose messages are located where Gen Y prefers to see them, find that the messages are regarded as relevant and therefore well received.

Getting to the point
Unlike emails, cell phone text messages (SMS) are extremely limited in the number of permitted characters, thus forcing recruiters to be direct and succinct. Recruiters who want to woo Gen Y must take a leap of faith and have a bit of know-how in order to switch to SMS from emails or even phone calls.

Although the number of permitted characters varies between carriers, all of the major carriers will deliver a message of up to 145 characters. While that may seem like very few characters, it gets worse. Those characters include the “From” field (your name or the name of your organization), the spaces between words, and punctuation.

If an average word contains six characters, that means you must communicate your entire message in about two dozen words. So how do you craft a relevant cell phone text message when you're faced with such a tight word limit? Use a simple message with an easy to follow call-to-action.

Text to reflect your organizational culture
Let's first address the message itself. Keep it simple and don't make the mistake of trying to speak the language of a college student because there is no universal language for students. Don't think that throwing in words or phrases like "Drop it like it's hot" or "Fo' shizzel" are going to make you look cool on campus. These attempts are far more likely to make your organization look dorky, which will ensure that your recruiting efforts will fail.

The best approach is to use the words of your own organization's culture. Today's college youth will appreciate your honesty and transparency and, therefore, will be more receptive to it.

If you're recruiting insurance sales representatives in New Jersey, tell them so just that clearly. For example, your message could be:

From: XYZ Corporation
Message: Now hiring college seniors and recent grads for insurance sales positions in New Jersey.

That's 104 characters, leaving you with 39 for the call-to-action.

Call-to-action
The call-to-action is marketing speak for the words that encourage the candidate to respond, and that instruct the candidate how to respond. If you send the above message without a call to action, the candidate will likely say, "So?"

In addition to telling them who you are (the “From” field), and why you are contacting them (the message), you need to tell them what you want them to do if they're interested.

Because most cell phones carried by members of Gen Y are Internet capable, and because Gen Y values immediacy, the best practice is to include a link to the career page on your web site. If you do so, your message becomes 141 characters:

From: XYZ Corporation
Message: Now hiring college seniors and recent grads for insurance sales positions in New Jersey.
http://www.xyzcorporation.com/careers

Why not include an email address instead? Including an email address isn't as desirable because the student will need to re-type the email address into their computer's email program in order to respond. Those additional steps remove the immediacy from the campaign and imply to the candidate that you are not really willing or able to communicate with them as they would choose: by cell phone text messaging.

Brand your campaign
Finally, when planning your cell phone text messaging campaign, understand that the media is best suited for branding campaigns. Rather than using cell phone text messages to generate resumes, use them to generate awareness of and interest in your opportunities.

If you want your ad campaign to result in Gen Y candidates emailing their resumes to you or posting them to your web site, then contact them in a way other than text messaging. They can't email their resumes from their cell phones and won't likely post them to your web site using their cell phone's web browser.

Text messaging is your banner ad
Cell phone text messaging campaigns are great for reaching members of Gen Y in much the same way that banner ads on web sites are great for reaching older candidates. Both help to improve your branding but neither are good at directly generating resumes.

But SMS campaigns can give your organization a tremendous edge in recruiting Gen Y if you deploy them as part of a well integrated marketing campaign using media such as job posting ads on job boards (which are specifically targeted to the niche that you're trying to recruit), on-campus career fairs, and on-campus interviews.

Steven Rothberg is the President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com at www.CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading job board used by college students who are searching for internships and recent graduates who are looking for entry-level jobs and career opportunities.