Home Depot, in an interesting twist, is leveraging mobile not to attract new customers but to attract new employees with a social video series and a mobile-optimized careers site.

The brand is working on a number of digital and mobile innovations designed to attract potential employees and streamline the application process. This move is a great example of the ways mobile can work for brands outside of marketing and commercial prospects. 

"We want everyone to have an easy and convenient experience with The Home Depot, whether they're shopping with us or applying for a position," said Tim Crow, EVP -- Human Resources.

When brands and marketers think about mobile, overwhelmingly two things immediately come to mind: how can I use this to attract customers and how can I use this to facilitate transactions from customers.

These are understandable instincts, and both areas have seen huge innovations thanks to the introduction and proliferation of mobile.

But it is also important for brands to understand the ways that mobile can work for them outside of just the commercial aspect.

Home Depot understands the opportunities presented by mobile and is working to make mobile work outside of just attracting customers or facilitating purchases.

The brand is now using mobile as a way of attracting employees and streamlining the process by which they apply for a job.

The first step for this is massively streamlining the application process through mobile and digital enhancements.

Home Depot launched a new careers site that is fast, responsive and optimized for mobile. A stated goal of the campaign is to make applications easy on any device.

The brand claims that the application process has been sped up by 80 percent and that applications can now be completed in under 15 minutes.

Additionally, Home Depot is promoting a digital video series aimed at showing potential employees what it is like to work at Home Depot called Behind the Apron.

The digital campaign is coordinated to make the process of learning about Home Depot, finding a job and applying for it as simple as possible

Using mobile as a means of recruiting new employees is a novel, but intelligent, way of leveraging the popular tech.

In the future, as mobile only continues to grow in popularity and dominance of the digital landscape, it will become more and more important for brands to make mobile an integral part of every aspect of their business and not just the commercial aspects.

Home Depot has already taken this lesson to heart on the commercial side with a commitment to chatbots and beacons last year (see story).

Additionally, the brand used mobile to solve a difficult paint-related problem, that opened up its eyes to how mobile can be an effective tool in the future (see story).

?In talking to customers, we were able to identify where the biggest gaps were in the experience,? said Samara Tuchband, senior director and general manager of online merchandising at The Home Depot. ?One of the big nuggets that came out was that we really needed to focus on just color and their ability to have confidence when they came in-store to take in our color wall, which can be overwhelming.

?We had to reimagine how we might approach color in a nontraditional way and digitally replicate the store experience.?