People are more wrapped up in their smartphones these days than ever before. According to one study, Americans now check their phones 80 times per day, or once every 12 minutes on average. In May 2015, Google confirmed for the first time that it was receiving more search queries on mobile than on desktop computers.
Of course, smartphone owners don’t just use the device to send text messages and update their Instagram account. For job seekers, search queries likely focus on their job hunt. In fact, 45 percent of job hunters use their smartphone every day to look for positions, and 89 percent of them believe that mobile devices are crucial to the job hunting process.
With all these statistics in mind, it’s no surprise that mobile recruiting has emerged as one of the top HR trends of the last few years. In this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about mobile recruitment: what it is, its intersection with social recruiting, and the latest trends shaping human resources.
What is Mobile Recruiting?
Mobile recruiting is a recruitment method that uses mobile technology to find and engage with both the active and passive candidate.
If this definition seems rather broad to you, that’s because it is. Mobile recruiting comes in several forms, and can be used to provide a variety of solutions. Here are a few examples:
- Mobile-friendly company websites and job portals that make it easier for smartphone users to do research, search for jobs, and apply for open positions.
- Text messages that enable candidates to apply for jobs or receive new job listings, simply by sending an SMS message to a given phone number.
- Mobile apps that are optimized for the smartphone experience, allowing users to search for jobs and submit job applications.
- Social recruiting that leverages social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter on mobile devices.
With the use of mobile devices increasing across the board, it’s hard not to see the argument for mobile recruitment.
Mobile Recruiting vs. Social Recruiting
Although mobile recruiting and social recruiting aren’t connected by definition, the two are growing ever closer. Social media is one of employers’ and candidates’ most preferred methods for both recruiting talent and for searching for a job online, with 91 percent of companies saying that they use social media as part of their recruiting efforts.
Advertisements on social networks are one way of getting attention from candidates. However, it’s usually much better to organically develop their interest by making smart, engaging posts that promote a positive brand image and attract reactions and responses (and even go viral, if you’re lucky).
Mobile recruiting will also increase in importance as the younger generations are hired in greater proportions. The millennial generation—the first to grow up with smartphones—is already the largest segment of the U.S. workforce. Generation Z, whose members are even more intimately familiar with their mobile devices, will begin entering the workforce in just a few years.
Mobile Recruiting: Where to Start
You might think that mobile recruitment is simply a matter of redesigning your website for mobile devices. However, best practices for mobile recruiting require you to rethink key aspects of the job search and application process.
For one, mobile users tend to be more impatient than desktop users. A Google study found that more than half of mobile users will abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
It’s important to have a well-designed, attractive, mobile-friendly corporate website in order to generate interest from prospective customers. However, it’s equally as important to make your careers page responsive, mobile-friendly, and easy to use. The applicant journey you’ve set up through your applicant tracking system should be as simple as possible in order to attract mobile candidates.
Along the same lines, your job application portal should be as simple and straightforward as possible. Consider saving candidates’ data and resumes from previous applications, so that they can reapply to another job with just the tap of a button.
One interesting avenue to explore is the use of video content in attracting candidates and retaining their attention. Cisco has predicted that by 2020, video will make up 75 percent of all mobile traffic. Smartphone users are both more likely to watch videos as well as share videos with their social circle.
Conclusion
The growth in everything mobile means that mobile recruitment is a natural direction (and a highly rewarding one) for HR departments. To learn how you can leverage mobile and social recruiting for your own benefit, reach out to us today for a discussion about your business needs and objectives.
