Hiring Smarter through Mobile Recruitment

What if you could dramatically increase the number of job applications your company receives? Attracting qualified candidates to your open positions is easier than you might think. The secret? Mobile-optimized job applications.

When golf and country club operator ClubCorp learned about the success other mobile users had experienced with mobile recruiting, it created a mobile-friendly application and saw their number of applicants jump – by 50 percent!

This is pretty telling of the power of mobile optimization. As a recruiter, it’s important to understand why mobile matters and how you can embrace the mobile job seeker to acquire top talent.

The future is mobile

Mobile use for all purposes is growing year over year and that includes job searching. Ninety percent of job seekers use a mobile phone during their job search. Finding the right talent means leveraging the power of mobile to facilitate a quick response from candidates and efficiently move them through the recruiting process.

The demographics of mobile job-seekers

Employees of many industries – such as hospitality, warehousing, logistics, trucking, home healthcare, food service and hundreds of others - are more likely to have access to mobile phones than computers while on the job. This means an increased dependence on mobile devices.

There are many Americans who rely solely on a smartphone.  Lower-income smartphone owners, such as those making $30,000/year or less, are especially likely to use their phone during a job search. This demographic is twice as likely to use their smartphone to access job information and four times more likely to use their phone to submit a job application.

Millennials also drive the trend toward mobile recruiting. According to the Jobvite Job Seeker Nation Study, 47 percent of millennials use mobile devices for job searching and they expect employers to optimize their applications for mobile.

Mobile efficiency

A mobile-friendly process streamlines the hiring process and lets candidates apply from anywhere, even if they don’t have computer access.

Pre-employment background checks are a great example of where mobile optimization can streamline processes. A background check can’t be conducted on a candidate without the candidate’s knowledge and consent. Traditionally, consent has required a signature on physical documents. This method takes time, especially if the candidate doesn’t have access to a fax machine, scanner or computer.  Mobile consent streamlines this process through the use of electronic signatures.

Electronic signatures with a unified consent platform, available on mobile devices, will help eliminate issues related to accessing information.

Getting started with mobile recruiting

Though 90 percent of job seekers use mobile devices for job searching, only 19 percent of organizations have implemented a mobile-friendly career portal. Many employers are aware of the value of mobile but are short on resources to make a separate application for mobile devices.

Even so, there are many things you can do to effectively target the mobile job seeker:

• Use social media. According to Jobvite, 67 percent of job seekers use Facebook, 45 percent use Twitter, and 40 percent use LinkedIn. As a recruiter, you can send open applications out on these channels and know that your open positions will be viewed on a platform that is optimized for mobile use.
• Make your website mobile. If you don’t yet have a mobile application, you can make your existing site more mobile friendly by implementing a responsive design that allows mobile job seekers to quickly determine if your open position is a good fit. Having the information more accessible and easier to view is the first step to getting more applications.
• Partner with mobile friendly companies. Your company may not have the resources to completely optimize job postings for mobile devices but partnering with strategic HR management companies with mobile-friendly job postings and applications will make it easier for potential employees to apply, get hired and stay engaged with your company.
  

Creating valuable partnerships with companies like GoodHire, TriNet and others can help your company attract and hire the right candidate for the job.

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